Chapter 26
Emma slipped from the bed, determined not to wake him. He’d held her the rest of the night, and she’d pressed her face against his shoulder, burying herself in his skin, his scent, his body, letting the temporary peace fill her.
It wouldn’t last. Nothing lasted, neither the good nor the bad, and she would survive this, the loss of him, as she survived everything else. It didn’t matter that this loss would be the hardest.
He didn’t want to let her go. In sleep, his body relaxed, but he still held her, and she moved by small increments until she finally slipped from his protective grasp. She stood in the early morning light, not reaching for anything to cover herself, and looked down at him. The unscarred side of his face was against the pillow, and she looked down at the war’s devastation and wanted nothing more than to climb back into the bed, to stay there, to stop fighting, stop trying.
She couldn’t do that. Not to him. Not to herself. He would marry quiet Miss Bonham and learn to love her, he would live a good life without the shame Emma would bring him, even as his whore. And she would have been his whore, gladly, sold herself on the streets for him, die for him.
But
she would only bring him disaster. She loved him, had loved him, probably from the first night she’d seen him, and she would love him until the day she died. Loving wasn’t about selfishness and pleasure, it was about wanting the best for someone. It was about letting them go.
They had ended up in his old bedroom, though she couldn’t remember how. Her clothes were hanging in the clothes press—she moved swiftly, gathering them in an armful and then slipping back through the adjoining door. No one had brought fresh water or tea—they probably had strict orders not to disturb either of them. Mrs. Patrick was a wise woman who saw more than most people, and no one would bother them until they were called. At least there was an ewer of cool water in the basin, and she washed herself quickly, doing her best to ignore the tenderness in her breasts, her hips, between her legs, sensitivity that squeezed her heart and brought back a shocking arousal. It would pass, she told herself, pulling on her clothes with shaking hands. It had to.
She almost escaped the house without notice. She’d stayed there often enough to know that the servants would be down in the basement having tea at that hour, and she was almost at the door when a familiar voice startled her.
“Where do you think you’re going, young lady?”
She turned to face Noonan’s disapproving glower, keeping her own expression blank. “I doubt it’s any business of yours, Mr. Noonan,”
“Anything that affects the boy is my business,” he growled.
“He’s hardly a child,” she said briskly. “He doesn’t need your protection.”
“He’s got the heart of a boy, true and good, even though he hides it. I won’t have you troubling him.”
“Trust me, I won’t have the slightest effect on his heart.”
“Trust me,” he mocked her, “you already have. We do just fine up in Scotland without a bunch of women running around. You’re no’ good for him.”
“I know that.”
Noonan looked startled. Despite the hard night of drinking Brandon had mentioned, he looked no more ill-tempered and craggy than usual. “So what are you planning to do, then, miss?”
“I’m planning to let him be.”
She expected satisfaction in his faded blue eyes. Instead his frown deepened. “And if he doesn’t want that?”
“It’s not his choice. Goodbye, Mr. Noonan.” She hesitated. “Look after him.”
“I’m thinking he won’t want you leaving without a word.”
“Then tell him I said goodbye.”
The old man was already racing up the front stairs by the time she closed the massive front door, and she knew she had to hurry. Within a matter of moments she’d blended with the crowds, gone before Noonan could wake his precious “boy.”
Her precious boy. Her angry man, her broken soldier, her salvation and destruction. Let him go, she thought fiercely. Let him go.
She had never taken a hackney cab in her life, and this wasn’t the day to start. She could walk for miles, in both city and country, and she knew the way to Temple Hospital well enough to cut through neighborhoods and alleyways and shortcuts, reaching there in half the time a vehicle might take, well before Brandon might arrive, if he even wanted to. She paused in the shadows of the old hospital, built by one of the Stuarts hundreds of years ago, and stared up at its imposing stone walls. She’d been happy there, fulfilled, infuriated, heartbroken. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Fenrush and his underlings, her life would have been perfect.
But that time was gone as well. Taking over from Fenrush would mean a battle she was no longer willing to wage—and if she didn’t care, then she would never win, even with Benedick’s power and money behind her.
It was time to find a new place, a new way to bring her gifts, such as they were, to people. Melisande would be hurt and furious if she disappeared, but perhaps, after a few years, Emma would be able to contact her, beg her forgiveness. By then Brandon would be settled in his new life, her existence forgotten once more.
She pushed herself forward. She needed her book on anatomy, the most important one, and some of her instruments, but most of all she needed the change of clothes and the cache of money she kept hidden in her private changing room. Leaving anything of value in her rooms by the dock had never been an option—here, everyone had kept their distance as if she’d carried a plague. They would avoid her today as well as she retrieved her necessary possessions.
But in this, at least, she was mistaken. Emma had no sooner set foot inside the door that had been allotted for her use when she ran into Mr. Grimley, the young surgeon she’d stabbed with a scalpel when he’d tried to interfere with her. Not the best luck in the world, she thought, but she had given up any hope of luck long ago.