Читать книгу The Historical Collection 2018 - Candace Camp - Страница 36

“There.” Emma helped do up the last button on Davina’s new day dress. “Is it comfortable? You don’t feel too pinched?”

“No, not at all.”

With Fanny’s help, Emma had been able to arrange a fitting at the dressmaking shop. They’d kept the shop open late for Davina while Madame was making her weekly visit to the storehouse to see the latest imported silks.

Davina turned and regarded herself in the mirror. “You truly work wonders with fabric, Emma.”

Wonders, perhaps. But not miracles.

“It should help you conceal it for another few weeks, I hope.”

“I hope so, too. Just the other day, Papa commented on my waistline. I told him that I’d been eating too many rich foods.” She took Emma’s hands. “We must secure permission as soon as possible. When will the duke be able to meet Papa?”

Oh, dear. Emma had been dreading this conversation. She would have to tell the girl that their original plan just wouldn’t work. Ash wasn’t willing to circulate in society, and as Annabelle Worthing had made clear at the theater, in London’s eyes, Emma was still a seamstress, not a duchess. She was hardly the sort of lady an ambitious gentleman would allow his unmarried daughter to visit for the winter.

The whole scheme had been doomed from the start. Emma saw that now. She felt horrible for raising the girl’s hopes.

That didn’t mean there was no way to help, however. She had Nicola, and Alex, and Penny—dear Penny, who never met a creature in need she wouldn’t coddle. If the four of them put their minds to it, they could devise an alternative.

Yes, that was the thing to do. She would consult them next week at tea.

“Give me a bit more time,” Emma said. “You have my word, I will not fail you.”

Once Davina had left, Emma let Fanny go, offering to close up the shop as she’d done in the past. She felt an odd sense of nostalgia as she went about drawing the shades and putting away the shears, ribbons, and pins. She’d passed years of her life in this shop, after all, and that couldn’t be forgotten in a matter of months.

Thump-thump-thump.

Emma looked up, startled. “We’re closed,” she called.

Thump-thump-thump-thump.

How curious. The last time she’d heard that sort of incessant knocking, the Duke of Ashbury had pushed his way into the shop—and into her life, as well. Surely he wouldn’t have followed her today?

Who could know when it came to her husband? Emma went to the door, ready to receive a fresh scolding about duchesses not stitching garments.

She turned the latch. “Really, my stallion. I only came by to see my old fr—”

When she opened the door, her heart stopped.

A middle-aged man dressed in black stood in the entry, holding his wide-brimmed parson’s hat in hand. “Emma, my child. It is you. I was told I’d find you here, and here you are.”

“Father?”

Emma felt detached from her body, out of communication with her own mind. Her heart was in utter tumult. So many emotions and impulses warred inside her. Revenge was tempting. She could turn him out, as he’d once cast her into the night.

Gloating also appealed. A small, petty part of her wanted to take him home and show him about the house until he was sick with envy for her newfound wealth, and then send him on his way with a fifty-pound donation to the church.

And somewhere, beneath all this, she wanted to sit at his knee. She wanted to hear that she was loved, and still his little girl.

Be careful, Emma.

“Why are you here?” she asked quietly.

“To see my daughter, naturally.” He moved into the shop, and she closed the door behind him. “Look at you. Emma, my own dear girl, fully grown.”

“I’m Emma now, am I? Your own dear girl? When last we met, you had taken to calling me Jezebel.”

“That’s why I’ve come.” He bowed his head, looking down at the hat in his hands. “To tell you that I am most heartily sorry.”

Most heartily sorry?

The words slipped over her. She couldn’t grasp their meaning. Instead, Emma stared at the top of her father’s head. He was balding there now. Down to just a few straggling hairs, slicked over a gleaming pate. How strange, to see him aged six years all at once. In her memory he’d remained intimidating and thunderously enraged. Now, here in the bustle of London, he looked rather pathetic and small.

He kept his eyes downcast. “I should not have said such things. I should not have turned you out. I’ve come to confess my sins against you. And I pray that you will find it within your heart to grant me forgiveness.”

Emma’s breathing hitched. After all these years, he’d come to her and admitted his wrongs. He’d apologized. This was something she had always thought she’d wanted. Not merely wanted, but needed to make her heart sit right in her chest.

And yet . . . it wasn’t working the way she’d hoped. Nothing in her chest felt easy or at peace. Her pulse was a gathering clamor, pounding in her head.

“Over the years, I’ve thought of you often,” he said. “Worried over you. Prayed.”

“I’m not certain I can believe that. If you found me this easily now, why not years ago? If you worried, why did you never send a letter, never ask whether I had enough to eat or coal to keep warm at night? You didn’t care. You probably thought it my due penance.”

A chill went through her, and she started to shiver. She hugged herself, willing it to stop. She would not allow him to rule her that way.

“That’s not the case,” he said. “I swear it.”

“What is it you want from me now? Money? Influence? Some sort of favor? You must have heard I’ve married.”

“No, not at all. It’s as I told you. I came only to make amends.”

“Well, it seems very convenient timing.”

“I . . .” He fidgeted with the brim of his hat. “To be truthful, it was God. God spoke to me.”

God spoke to him? Emma couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“That is to say, it wasn’t precisely God who spoke to me.” A queasy look came over his pale face. “I . . . I was visited by a fearsome messenger in the night. A demon.”

“Oh, truly,” she said, dispassionate. Clearly in his advancing age he was going mad.

“It was terrible, Emma. He appeared to me in my bedchamber, in the middle of the night. A demon from the very mouth of Hell. He told me that my days are numbered on this earth, and that I must make my peace with you or else face eternal hellfire.”

“So you’re not here to make amends to me for my sake. You’re here for your own interests.” She shook her head. “You truly haven’t changed.”

“Can it not be for the good of us both? I know—I have always known, long before this unholy visitation—that I treated you ill. The sin has weighed on me like a millstone all these years. I cannot rest easy until I know I have your forgiveness.”

She laughed bitterly. “You cannot rest easy. Perhaps you should try sleeping in the cold, as you forced me to do.”

“You can’t mean to say you are withholding your forgiveness?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t feel any haste to grant it.”

“You cannot deny me this.” He grew indignant. She knew that chastening tone so very well. “You are my daughter. Did I not clothe and feed you, raise you in the principles of charity for sixteen years?”

“And did I not love you for every one of those years?” Her voice shook. “Every Sunday, I sat in that chapel, and I might have prayed to God, but it was your blessing I sought. It made no difference, did it? One mistake outweighed it all. It wasn’t the lack of clothing or shelter or food that hurt me, Father. It wasn’t even the rejection of my sweetheart. What tore me in two was seeing you for who you are. Knowing you were never the man I’d believed you to be. Not by half.”

“Emma, please. Do not judge so harshly. You must understand I was taken by surprise that night. Stunned. I scarcely knew what I was feeling, let alone doing.”

“You knew exactly what you were doing. And I know exactly how you felt. You were ashamed. Ashamed of me, and ashamed of what people would say if they knew. It was cowardice, pure and simple, that was your motive then. It is cowardice that brought you here tonight.” She went to the door. “I would like you to leave.”

“No! No, you cannot do this to me.” He fell to his knees before her. “You didn’t see him, Emma. The demon. Oh, he was horrible. Fearsome to behold. His face . . . it was all twisted and burned, and he had—”

“Wait.” Emma’s heartbeat stuttered. “You say his face was burned?”

“Yes. Most wretchedly. From the brimstone, no doubt. But it wasn’t only his face that was evil. He . . . he threatened me with hellfire and bureaucracy. He insulted my curtains. He called me the vilest of names.”

“Names such as what?”

“Oh, I don’t like to say.”

“Names such as what?”

“I don’t know, I . . . Something like m-mammering canker-blossom?”

“Thank you, Father. I think you’ve given me a very clear image of this ‘demon’ you encountered.”

And that image looked a great deal like her husband.

Mammering canker-blossom. Now that one was new. He must have been saving it.

Her father rose to his feet. “I beg you. If you deny me forgiveness, you do not know how I will suffer. For the rest of my life, I will never be easy. Never at peace. Always fearing that each day will be my last.”

“I lived with that feeling for six years. Now it’s your turn.” She opened the door. “If it’s forgiveness you want, you may come back and ask me again in another six years. Right now, you will leave. At once.”

“But—”

She gave him a push between the shoulders and he stumbled through the open door. “Begone, you beetle-headed gudgeon.”

Oh, the look on his face. For as long as she lived, she would laugh whenever she recalled it.

“Beetle-headed . . . ?” He huffed with offense, and his face turned purple with rage. “You will not speak to me that way, Emma Grace Gladstone.”

“Emma Grace Gladstone,” she echoed. “No, Emma Grace Gladstone would not have dared to speak to you that way. But I’m Emma Grace Pembrooke now. The Duchess of Ashbury. And if you ever speak to me again, you will address me as Your Grace.”

She shut the door and locked it.

And then she sank to the floor for a good long cry.

The tears came, and she surrendered to them. There was no one to hear, and no one to see. She cried until her eyes were dry and her heart was empty. The foolishness of it all. She’d wasted so many years allowing the value he placed on her to dictate the way she regarded herself.

Emma fished a handkerchief from her pocket. She wiped her tears and blew her nose. She would not let her father hold her back. Not from trusting. Not from living. Not from loving.

Not anymore.