“Clothes for Emma.” Lady Fanchere led them down the street, then up toward the upper city.
“What? Why?” Aimée hurried to catch up with Lady Fanchere.
“Why do I need more clothes?” Emma smoothed her hands over the skirt of her gown, the gown she had treasured. The gown she had worn for two whole days without tearing or covering with soot.
“You can’t go to the palace dressed like that!” Lady Fanchere said.
Aimée took a breath. “Eleonore, why would it matter what she wears when she goes to the palace? She’s merely your companion.” Aimée cast an apologetic glance at Emma.
Emma nodded, not at all offended. Aimée’s frank assessment needed to be said.
“That is not true.” Lady Fanchere swung to face them both, stopping them in the middle of the street.
“Emma, I suspect you know I was speaking to Sandre about you.”
“I thought perhaps that was the case.” Emma bit her lower lip. “My lady, he came into my room and I begged him to leave, told him it wasn’t proper. I’ve done nothing of which I should be ashamed.”
“I believe that, Emma; however, sometimes, when a man is rich and spoiled, a girl doesn’t have to do anything to attract his attention. In your case, Sandre saw you in your bedclothes—”
“I wish he hadn’t!” Emma said fervently.
“—and was charmed by your beauty and your modesty,” Lady Fanchere finished. “I told him that you were a young woman of admirable character and I would not have him seducing you. He assured me his intentions were honorable.”
“Honorable?” Emma’s heart sank. How bad a situation had she created? “What do you mean?”
Lady Fanchere spelled it out. “If you are amenable, he would like to spend time with you with the intention of discovering whether the two of you could make a match.”
“A match!” Aimée’s blue eyes went wide with horror, and she put her hand over her heart.
“A match. Do you mean . . . to marry?” This was not what Emma intended when she had hidden the Reaper in her bed, nor when she thought to encourage Prince Sandre to tell her of his plans. This was serious.
Lady Fanchere smiled, her eyes dancing. “You look stunned.”
“I am. You must know I am.” Emma almost choked. “I’m a . . . a paid companion!”
“Eleonore, have you lost your mind?” Aimée was almost shouting. “Emma can’t marry the prince!”
People on the street turned to look.
Emma tucked her chin close to her chest and wished fervently to be elsewhere.
“Shh, Aimée. Be quiet.” Lady Fanchere took their arms and led them up the hill once more and into a small, elegant shop.
A stylish female of middle age, dressed all in black, looked up from bolts of silks, satins, and cottons. Her eyes lit up, and she hurried forward. “Lady Fanchere, Lady de Guignard, welcome. Welcome! What can I do for you?”
“Madam Mercier, this is Miss Chegwidden.” Lady Fanchere indicated Emma.
Madam Mercier assessed and dismissed Emma with one glance. “Hmm. Yes?”
“I want you to create a new wardrobe for her.”
Madam Mercier looked to Aimée for guidance.
With a matter-of-factness that seemed foreign to her nature, Aimée said, “For what reason, Eleonore?”
“No. Please, Lady Fanchere.” Emma was squirming with guilt, with embarrassment, with the desperate need to escape this rapidly escalating situation.
“Don’t be silly.” Lady Fanchere put her arm around Emma’s waist and smiled at Madam Mercier, the kind of smile that imposed a noble will on a person of lesser station. “You should think of Miss Chegwidden as my daughter, one I wish to prepare for her first series of balls and parties.”
Emma objected: “You’re not old enough to be my—”
“Yes, I am,” Lady Fanchere snapped. More calmly, she looked into Emma’s eyes. “Yes, I am, and I want to do this. It will be fun, something I’ve dreamed of doing all my life. Indulge me.”
What could Emma say to that? “I appreciate your kindness and will never forget the debt I owe you, Lady Fanchere, but—”
Lady Fanchere wasn’t interested in
buts
. She said, “Good! Then, Madam Mercier, let us see what you have in mind.”
Madam Mercier exchanged another telling glance with Aimée, then bustled forward and tapped her chin as she circled Emma, staring as if she were a mannequin. “Yes. Yes. She’s young. Good hair. Excellent figure. The eyes . . . hmm. Witch’s eyes. Stormy. Unpredictable. The color changes with her mood. In medieval times, she would have burned. Lady Fanchere, I will make Miss Chegwidden lovely. Er . . . what amount should I . . . ?”
“Spare no expense,” Lady Fanchere instructed.
Madam Mercier curtsied again, and again, and Emma saw the glint in her eyes. She had just stumbled into a gold mine. She hustled toward the back room.
“Eleonore, what are you doing?” Aimée asked fiercely. “You wish to present Miss Chegwidden—an innocent!—to Sandre?”
“Sandre is not so bad as you think, Aimée, and even if he might be, he is of an age—thirty-five—to look for a wife. Certainly I have urged him in that direction. Additionally, he’s in the enviable position of not needing to care whether his intended is wealthy or titled.”
Emma had never meant anything so much in her life as when she said, “I am neither, and this honor would be too much for me.”
“You’re of respectable birth and have shown yourself to be resilient, kind, and intelligent, all requirements for a princess,” Lady Fanchere said.
“Don’t mislead Emma. She deserves better than that!” Aimée faced Emma, her eyes bright with indignation. “Sandre can’t get a bride who’s wealthy or titled because none of the nobility of Europe will have him. He’s like Henry the Eighth of England—after you’ve killed enough people, no one wants to lose her head to you. Sandre has a reputation for consorting with criminals and scoundrels in the name of profit. Not that nobility doesn’t consort with scoundrels, but the scoundrels grovel to them. The criminals bow to them. Sandre will bow to anyone to keep his gambling houses going. Furthermore, the nobility of other countries have learned from the French Revolution, and at least pretend a concern for their common people. Here the misery is so great, Sandre’s policies are an embarrassment to us all.”
“Aimée, your grief over Rickie’s death has unhinged your mind.” Lady Fanchere’s eyes shimmered with tears, and she looked like what she was—a woman torn between two loyalties.
“I am not unhinged; I am . . .” Aimée caught her breath. “Look, Eleonore, Madam Mercier is waiting with a bolt of cloth in her arms. I think she wants to consult with you.”
Lady Fanchere stared at Aimée.
“Go on.” Aimée shooed her away. “You worry too much.”
Because Lady Fanchere loved her friend and cousin, and trusted her, she walked to Madam Mercier and engaged in an intense conversation about style.
In a low, rapid voice, Aimée said, “Don’t do this, Emma. I beg of you. Eleonore wants this because of Sandre. She hears the rumors about him, but she doesn’t want to believe them. She wants to think he’s a decent man, but more and more she’s had to face that he isn’t. She has urged him to marry, believing the love of a good woman would bring him back from the brink of damnation where he now teeters.”
Emma kept her eyes down, her hands folded, and spoke as softly. “That’s a big role for one woman to perform.”
“Exactly. Now he wants you, and
you’re
a good woman, just what Eleonore wanted for him. Dear girl, don’t take this badly. I’m going to be blunt, but I know Sandre. I know men like him, and I know the worms that twist and turn in their minds.”
Aimée was talking about Rickie, Emma could tell.
“Yes, Sandre is attracted to you because of your pretty face and lovely manners. But more than that, he wants you for your virtue, because you’ve never had another man and he won’t have to try to satisfy you. He wants you because you have no fortune or nobility, so you will be grateful for the elevation. He wants you because you have no family at all and few friends here, and he’ll have complete control over you. Emma”—Aimée took Emma’s hands in her own and looked into her eyes—“you are better off poor and alone than trapped in a marriage with that man.”
Aimée gave desperately earnest advice, no doubt learned from some horrible experiences in her past, and she made Emma want to cry. But nothing changed the facts: Emma had to stay and play this game to its end. The Reaper’s life depended on it—and who knew how many other lives depended on him? To Aimée, Emma said, “My lady, I take your advice in the spirit in which it was given, and I do believe you. I will do everything I can to avoid this fate, but right now, circumstances compel me to stay here.”
“Do you need money?” Aimée asked urgently. “I can give you money to return to England.”
“It’s not that.” Emma glanced at Lady Fanchere, still engaged by the couturiere.
“Oh, of course.” Aimée’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s my dear Eleonore. She has confided her previous infertility and her fear she cannot carry this child, and you feel responsible. You are such a kind girl!”
What could Emma say?
No, it’s not that
? Because it
was
that. But it was also the Reaper, and Damacia, and Elixabete . . . and after a lifetime of being the vicar’s daughter and then a repressed and oppressed paid companion, this was Emma’s one chance to live passionately and fully!
In the end, she said nothing, but tried to look modest and concerned, and she must have succeeded, because Aimée sighed and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.
And when Lady Fanchere called, “Emma, come here. Madam Mercier is ready to fit you now,” Emma wanted to die of guilt.
At the same time, while she spoke to Lady Fanchere and listened to Madam Mercier’s suggestions, her heart beat heavily in her chest, because all she could think was . . . would
he
return tonight?
Chapter Nineteen
E
mma sat on her bed in her room, propped up on her pillows, her book open in her hand.
Everything was as it had been the night before. Her nightgown was white, clean, and worn, and buttoned up to her throat. Her hair was braided and carefully arranged over her shoulder. As before a storm growled in the distance, inching closer, sending wisps of wind swirling through the open window.
But Emma wasn’t really reading. She was listening. Listening for a man’s step in the corridor.
The hotel was silent. Sleeping.
She shouldn’t want him to come. Her actions today had been foolish in the extreme. It was one thing to feel as if she had a debt to pay to the man who had rescued her from certain death.
Last night she had paid that debt.
So why had she so eagerly listened when Prince Sandre told of his plot to capture the Reaper? Why had she so desperately wanted to find some way to pass that report to him?
She could tell herself it was because she was appalled by the conditions in the lower city and wanted to help. That was true. But her tense anticipation tonight proved she had another motivation.
She wanted to see the Reaper again. She wanted him to feel gratitude to her. She wanted him to escape Prince Sandre so he could return to her arms and kiss her as he had kissed her last night. Because last night she had discovered a whole new, unsuspected facet to her personality. She was shallow and easily swayed by passion—she, a rector’s daughter!
She laughed softly to herself.
The candle flickered in the breeze.
She glanced at it, then realized—a still figure, clad in a shroud, stood in the shadows.
She should have been prepared. Instead she gasped. Jumped. Gave a little scream. “It’s you.” Putting her hand over her thumping heart, she said, “It’s you. You frightened me!”
He didn’t answer.
“How did you get in?”
Of course, he still didn’t answer . . . but he moved into the light.
He glided with eerie soundlessness, almost as if he really were a ghost, when she knew very well he was not. Last night he had proved that.
“Did you get my message?” she asked.
There was a flash of glee rapidly subdued. He removed his white gloves, tucked them in his belt. Putting his hand over his heart, he bowed.
She relaxed against the headboard and smiled back. “Good.” She had helped him. “Mr. Lawrence is your friend? You sent him to me?”
Again the Reaper bowed.
His bare hands, she saw, were long fingered, broad palmed, tanned, and capable. The sight of them stirred her; it was almost as if he had revealed one of his secrets, showed her a part of himself no one else knew.
“I’m going to spy for you,” she said.
He shook his head, an emphatic no.
“I want to. Really, it’s easy. All I have to do is flatter Prince Sandre, widen my eyes, and ask if I’ll ever be safe from the big, bad Reaper”—Emma pouted seductively, a skill she didn’t even know she had—“and he’ll tell me anything.”
The Reaper frowned, and again shook his head.
“Why not? He has spies everywhere. I visited the lower city and he knew about it. He knew whom I had visited and he knew what I had done. Someone there told him, and that’s not fair. You need to know who his spies are.”
I will find out.
She understood him so well, even without words. “I want to help you.” She didn’t have to tell him about Prince Sandre’s request to court her, and how much he frightened her. Let the Reaper think this was easy for her. “I
did
help, didn’t I?”
Outside, the thunder rumbled, coming closer, and the candle once again flickered in the breeze.
He nodded. He moved his lips as if to speak, then put his hand to the cloth over his throat. Then, in the first awkward move she’d seen him make, he swung around and stumbled toward the door.
“Wait!” She scrambled out of bed.
He turned back, eagerly, she thought.
She came to a halt three feet away from him. “Don’t you want to kiss me?” she blurted.