Tempted By The Roguish Lord. Mary Brendan

I am expecting my friend soon.’

      ‘I won’t take up too much of your time. I also have an appointment to keep. Is Joshua Gresham related to Simon Gresham?’

      Again, their eyes clashed in the dim hallway and Emma moistened her lips with a slip of her tongue. He wasn’t one for beating about the bush, then. ‘Yes...they were brothers,’ she said and tilted her chin. ‘Have you been checking up on me?’

      ‘Yes...’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘I’m curious about you.’

      ‘Why?’ Emma demanded with more feeling. She was alarmed as well as baffled by his persistence. Peers of the realm didn’t bother themselves with spinsters sullied by scandal. She’d noticed Joshua Gresham’s deference to Houndsmere. The moment he’d understood that the Earl expected him to go, he’d complied with that unspoken command. But both men were privy to shameful secrets about her behaviour. And aristocrat or no, Lance Harley might not be above using what he knew against her in the same way as Simon’s brother intended to do. Perhaps in that they were equally base.

      ‘What did Gresham want?’

      ‘I think that is none of your business, sir,’ Emma spluttered.

      ‘I could ask him. I’d sooner you told me.’ He paced away from her and every slow measured step echoed on the hallway flags like a drumbeat.

      ‘I’ve no intention of satisfying your inquisitiveness, sir,’ she said stiltedly.

      ‘That’s a pity...my need for an answer is in no way altered by your refusal to do so.’

      Emma made a small exasperated noise. How dare he treat her like this! A stranger she’d known not yet one full day! The arrogance of the man!

      But Joshua might tell him all he wanted to know and disparage her in the doing of it. He would brag about his intentions towards her, especially to a superior who’d seemed to strike admiration into him.

      Gentlemen who were married still kept mistresses. Simon had told her that when the whole sordid story of his duplicity had come out and he’d tried to justify what he’d done. He would have gone through a sham marriage for her sake, he’d said, as though that were enough to appease her outrage at his appalling betrayal. Joshua had proposed to her after Simon died, saying his conscience wouldn’t allow him to see her spurned and ruined. She had turned him down immediately and made it clear she would never again want to hear him martyr himself by repeating his offer. And he hadn’t. He’d married Simon’s widow and some years later had offered Emma a position as his doxy. Joshua had since proved many times that his claims to want to help the Waverleys were spurious. She understood now that he had always desired her, even when Simon had been alive, and her continual rejection had made him bitter and vengeful.

      The silence in the hallway throbbed with tension. Slowly, Emma came to the conclusion that my lord was expecting her obedience as well as Joshua’s. Well, loathsome Mr Gresham might have bowed and scraped to Houndsmere, as he’d called him, but she’d never do the same.

      She jerked open the door and said stiffly, ‘If you wish to speak to Mr Gresham that is your own affair, sir.’

      ‘Are you his affair?’

      ‘He would like to make me so,’ she hissed and banged shut the door in a temper. Why had she given in and let him goad her into telling him that? She tilted back her head, exasperated with herself.

      Lance felt his hands balling at his sides. So he’d been right in thinking that Gresham had been here with lechery on his mind. He’d seen the possessive way the fellow had looked at her. ‘I could quite easily make him leave you alone. He would never come here again if I told him not to.’

      ‘No!’ Emma swiftly approached him. ‘You must never do that.’ In her agitation she had come too close and her hand had raised as though to shake an immaculately sleeved arm in emphasis.

      ‘Why not?’

      She gestured hopelessness, but avoided the two blue eyes that were boring into her. She could properly see the damage to his jaw now that it was no longer covered in stubble. A wound he’d got protecting her. She realised they ought to go somewhere more private to finish this conversation. She trusted Mrs O’Reilly not to gossip, but even so discretion was called for and he’d not leave until he had an answer of some sort. She gestured at the parlour, then rapidly entered the room confident he’d follow without waiting for more of an invitation.

      He closed the door, stationing himself against it with his hands plunged into his pockets. He watched her as she paced back and forth across the rug, her countenance bearing an expression of fierce concentration. He imagined she was trying to decide whether to dissemble or blurt out the truth.

      ‘My father owes lots of people money,’ Emma informed him very quietly. She’d concluded that she was divulging nothing that couldn’t easily be found out from any fellow at any gentlemen’s club. ‘Papa’s main creditor is Mr Gresham. If you meddle, he will call in the debt from spite and take this house. He has the deeds as security and has threatened to make us homeless, and he will.’ She lifted proud amber eyes to clash on his steady blue stare. ‘Now are you satisfied? I have admitted we are beggarly, but you already knew that, didn’t you? You just wanted to hear me say as much.’ She walked closer to him, gazed at him accusingly. ‘What I can’t understand is why an earl would bother with any of it. Unless of course you and Mr Gresham are of a kind and both see an opportunity to be had in being privy to my misdemeanours.’ She detected a slight reaction to her accusation; an increased slant to his mouth and a spark of something far back in his eyes. Perhaps he deemed risible her hint that he found her desirable.

      ‘Every person with a memory long enough is privy to your misdemeanours, my dear.’ She’d touched a raw nerve with that accusation. He wasn’t sure himself how pure were his motives.

      ‘They might think they know it all,’ she said bitterly. It was an unguarded comment that she immediately regretted and tried to cover up. ‘Nobody other than you and my kin know what happened last night. I would be obliged to have your word that you will not speak of it.’

      ‘Your kin?’

      ‘My father,’ she murmured, inwardly wincing at yet another slip.

      ‘Why are you pretending I don’t know that your brother is alive and that you visited him? What does Gresham know that gives him a hold over you? Has he found out your brother didn’t perish in France?’

      She turned from him, biting her lip in frustration. Lance Harley might have saved her life last night, but he was now proving to be a devilish danger.

      ‘I take it this mess springs from your brother defending your honour years ago. Is he feeling worried enough about developments with Gresham to risk breaking cover to protect you?’

      ‘The mess was my doing and I can look after myself.’

      ‘Are you sure about that?’ Before she could answer he demanded, ‘Did you know that Simon Gresham was married when you eloped with him?’

      ‘Of course not!’ Emma sounded outraged.

      ‘I doubt your brother meant to kill him, just teach him a lesson. I expect his heroics have stranded him in no man’s land. And that’s a bad place to be.’

      ‘I’m afraid, sir, I don’t know what you mean...’ She tried to escape, but he again closed five hard fingers about her forearm, keeping her still.

      ‘I think you do. You know your brother is lying low, alive to his family but dead to others...especially Joshua Gresham and his vengeance, I imagine. You sought your brother to ask for his protection again. But if he’s supposed to be buried in France, how can he intervene on your behalf, Miss Waverley?’

      ‘Well, you’re wrong there!’ Emma sounded triumphant. ‘I did not ask him to help me!’ She swung her face up to his so violently that loose tendrils of ebony hair swung to cling to her