A Rakes Guide to Pleasure (Somerhart 2)

She'd spoken the truth—almost—and the pain of that truth held her rooted to the spot. She stood there, dumb and silent and staring at a small rip in the wallpaper against the far wall.

No, she did not want children. She could not bear the thought of it. Not because her mother had grown fat; Emma suspected she'd done that purposefully to avoid her hus­band's desires. It wasn't even her mother's slow descent into death after Will's birth.

Emma did not want a husband, and so it had always been easy to dismiss the thought of children. But when she'd spoken the words aloud, the truth of it had stabbed through her heart. She had already had a child. Will. She had loved him and raised him. Seen to his needs. She'd comforted him after his nightmares, and held his little body when he'd hurt. She'd taken him everywhere with her, even taught him to read when his nanny had been occupied in the baron's bed­room. And then he'd died.

One moment he'd been her whole world, and the next he'd been lowered into a dank, muddy hole and covered up with dirt. The world had moved on, and she'd been left standing there, staring at turned earth.

She had loved one child, and that had been enough pain to last two lifetimes.

Emma made her feet move back to the stairway. She trudged slowly up to the second floor, shuffled into her bed­room and climbed beneath the cold sheets. She was too tired to prepare dinner, and she knew that Bess was just as heart­sick as she.

The sky outside slowly darkened, and Emma closed her swollen eyes.

"She is gone. You will have to forget her."

Matthew glared at his father. "How can you say that?"

His father threw up his hands with a grimace. "How can I say it? She is gone, Matthew. Now I agreed she was a fine match when she was here, but the girl is clearly determined not to marry. She turned down your every offer, and then she ran off. Use your head for something more than prayer."

Matthew shot to his feet and slammed his hands down on the table. "How dare you. I am obligated to honor you as my father, but I will not tolerate you mocking the church."

"Our church is the Church of England, and that vicar is nothing but a Romanist."

"Reverend Whittier is a great man! He and others like him are determined to bring the church back to God. He is help­ing the church find its soul, just as he is helping me find mine."

His father ran a hand through his thin white hair. "Your soul is right here and there is nothing wrong with it. And there is nothing wrong with the church. Those men you speak of will soon be driven out of it like the vermin they are. And if you continue your plan to join their ranks, you will be driven away too."

"You know nothing about it," Matthew spat.

"The church has made its position clear about your Ro­manists and their papist rituals."

"I will not listen to this. As soon as I'm married, Father Whittier will sponsor my admission to the clergy. I will heal people's souls. I will help lead the church back to its spirit. But I cannot do that if my own soul is shadowed with sin and wanton lust."

His father only shook his head. It was a conversation they'd had many times. Matthew stared at the old man's cot­tony puffs of hair and his pink skin. He was weak; he'd always been too kind, too forgiving. Always given into his wife's stronger personality. Matthew said a quick prayer of thanks that he'd inherited his mother's spine.

"You promised that I could marry her. Promised you would help."

"I thought she wanted the same. She—"

"She made her choice when she led me astray. She toyed with my heart and sullied my soul and now she will reap her harvest. I will marry her, Father. I must."

The old man's head dropped into his hands. "You have no idea where she is. You've done nothing for the past months but travel half the country looking for her. I refuse to sup­port you any longer. I cannot afford it."

Frustration urged him to rail and fume, but Matthew man­aged to hold onto logic. When the time came, his father would do as he asked; he was sure of it. So he tempered his voice when he spoke. "I understand, Father, but I am pray­ing for an answer every day. If God brings me information about her, will you offer me one last chance?"

His father said nothing for a long time. His shoulders dropped.

"I love her," Matthew whispered.

Finally, his father nodded. "If you find her, I will send you to see her, but I will do nothing to force her back. You under­stand?"

Satisfaction burned through him. Yes, he understood, but it didn't matter. He would need no help forcing her back. Matthew smiled down at his father's bowed head. "Of course. Thank you, Father." And he headed back to the church to pray harder.

Chapter ll

The sun was warm against her back, nearly as warm as the heat of Lancaster's arm beneath her hand. She smiled toward the bright, shifting light of the Thames and slowed her pace a little. Their walk was coming to an end and she didn't quite want it to stop. Lancaster was charming and handsome. A friend, it seemed, since he wasn't a suitor. And the day felt like spring.

She felt a prickling of alarm at the idea and pushed it away. She had a month, nearly, before the crowds began their return to London, and her assets grew daily. A few members of Parliament had begun to trickle back to town, but they left their families in the country until March. The men wanted entertainment, and gambling was the order of the day. Whor­ing too, she supposed, but the gambling was all that inter­ested her.