Improper Miss Darling. Gail Whitiker

whatsoever.’

      ‘Very well. I shall prepare the letters and have them ready for your signature by this evening.’

      ‘Thank you.’ Alex paused, frowning. ‘When is Lady Glynnis due back?’

      ‘The twenty-fourth, my lord. A week Friday.’

      Friday. The day after his brother’s dinner to introduce the members of his family to those of the young lady he intended to marry. Pity. Glynnis’s presence would have gone a long way towards calming the troubled waters this first meeting was sure to stir up. His father liked Lady Glynnis Pettle. He heartily approved of Alex’s plans to marry her. And he was far less likely to fly off the handle or to embarrass Peter in front of a houseful of guests if she was there lending her graceful manners and soothing influence to the proceedings.

      Of course, there was always that other kind of soothing influence, Alex reflected. One his father was known to be particularly fond of …

      ‘Godfrey, have we any of the earl’s favourite whisky tucked away in the cellar?’

      ‘I believe so, my lord.’

      ‘Good. Have a case of that put in the carriage as well.’

      ‘I shall see to it at once.’

      Might as well go in prepared for all eventualities, Alex thought as he slid the letters into his desk and locked the drawer. If it didn’t help sweeten his father’s mood, it would certainly improve his. He could sit back and watch as the rest of his family battled around him, all the while thanking the gods of fortune and fate that love had not chosen him to be the unfortunate recipient of Cupid’s annoying little arrows.

      If there was one thing Emma Darling longed for, it was harmony—the blissful absence of the emotional strife that turned one’s life upside down and made rational people do completely irrational things. Witness her Aunt Augusta. For the last three weeks, Emma had been staying with her aunt in Bath, listening to her go on about her daughter’s unhappy marriage and her son’s unsuitable bride, about the loneliness of her life and the scandalous affair her husband was supposedly having with the widow next door. When she became too emotionally overwrought to function, Emma had made the tea and run errands, baked Chelsea buns and read poetry, all in an attempt to console her aunt in what was obviously a very trying time.

      Then, without a word of explanation or thanks, Aunt Augusta had simply packed her bags and walked out, saying she was going to stay with a friend in Newport and that she wasn’t coming back!

      Not sure what else to do, Emma had hastily written letters to her cousins, explaining that their mother had gone to Newport and that it would be a good idea if one of them contacted her as soon as possible. Then she had written a note for her uncle with much the same message, adding that she would be leaving Bath the following day and returning home to Hampshire.

      Emma doubted he would care. She had scarcely seen the man since her arrival in the spa town three weeks ago. And had she known the state of affairs in her aunt’s house before boarding the coach, she would never have come in the first place. The only reason she had come to Bath was as a result of her father’s other sister, Dorothy, suggesting upon her arrival at Dove’s Hollow for her twice-annual visit, that Augusta ‘wasn’t well’ and perhaps seeing Emma’s smiling face would help lift her spirits.

      Aware now that it would have taken a Belzonian pulley to lift her aunt’s spirits from the abyss into which they had fallen, Emma closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief that she was almost home—back at Dove’s Hollow, where life was, for the most part, tranquil and uncomplicated. When she went downstairs in the morning, it would not be to find a middle-aged woman weeping into her tea, but her father, quietly perusing yesterday’s copy of The Times as though there were nothing of greater importance that needed to be done. Rory and Ranger, their two ageing spaniels, would be lying at his feet and there would be pleasant conversation, perhaps something of interest to be shared, until her younger sister, Linette, came downstairs to fill the room with chatter about hairstyles and dress patterns and whatever gossip happened to be circulating in the local shops the previous day.

      At that point, Mr Darling would pick up his paper and escape to his study for the rest of the morning, leaving his daughters to discuss the latest goings on in London and to speculate upon who was marrying for love and who was marrying to better their position in life.

      Emma, who tended to believe that everyone wed for material gain, would eventually finish her tea, bid her sister good morning and then go about her day. If the summer months were upon them, she would head into the garden to cut fresh flowers for the various table arrangements, or take a book into the shady recesses of the garden to read. In autumn, she would don her riding habit and enjoy a brisk canter along the leaf-covered roads, or collect apples from the trees in the nearby orchard. Once winter fell and the air grew chill, she might harness Bess and take the trap down to the village to shop for fabric, or, if too cold to go out, gather up her embroidery and settle in front of the fireplace to sew.

      But now in the spring, her days were devoted to painting, to capturing the myriad shades of the new season on canvas, from the pastel greens of the freshly burst buds to the delicate pink-and-white blossoms of apple and cherry trees. With brush in hand, she would venture into the garden and try to replicate the glorious panoply of colour all around her.

      Having to spend three weeks with Aunt Augusta at such a time had been agony!

      However, that was all behind her now, and with her brother away at Oxford and Linette in a lull between passionate storms, Emma had every expectation of life being uneventful. As the carriage finally rumbled to a halt in front of the old stone house, she found herself counting the minutes until she could escape into the peace and quiet of the garden with her easel and brushes—

      ‘Emma, dear, welcome home,’ Aunt Dorothy cried, appearing in the courtyard as the carriage door swung open. ‘Did you enjoy your stay in Bath?’

      Emma frowned. Aunt Dorothy was still here? ‘Not exactly, but I dare say you’ll be hearing why from one of your nieces in the not-too-distant future. But what are you still doing here, Aunt?’ she asked, climbing down from the carriage. ‘I thought you were to have gone back to London weeks ago.’

      ‘That was my intention, but there have been some interesting developments while you’ve been away and your father asked me if I would stay on a little longer.’

      Developments? Emma wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. ‘What kind of developments?’

      ‘You’ll see. Your father is waiting for you in his study.’

      Emma paused, arrested by the expression on the older woman’s face. ‘Aunt Dorothy, you look like the cat that swallowed the canary. What has been going on?’

      ‘I would love to tell you, my dear, but your father insists on giving you the news himself. But once he has, come to us in the drawing room and we will tell you all the things he has most likely forgotten.’

      Emma didn’t miss her aunt’s use of the words us and we. ‘Has this something to do with Linette?’

      ‘It has, but more than that I dare not say.’ She kissed Emma fondly on the cheek, smelling vaguely of sherry and peppermint, and then turned to lead the way into the house. Emma followed, wondering what could have happened to warrant such an inexplicable turn of events. Aunt Dorothy was not fond of country living. She only came to stay with them twice a year, saying it was the least she could do for her poor widowed brother and his three motherless children, but Emma knew she counted the days until she could return to London again.

      What kind of ‘development’ could have prompted her to stay on, and to look as though there was nowhere else she would rather be?

      ‘Linette is engaged?’ Emma repeated after her father gave her the news. ‘To whom?’

      ‘Can you not guess?’

      ‘In truth I cannot. The only gentleman of whom she has spoken