Cardiff Siblings 01 - Seven Minutes in Devon (3 page)

“
That’s hardly the
point.”

“
No.” Emma set the book
beside her cold, forgotten cup of tea and stood, smoothing her
skirt back into its proper place. “But it amuses me to see you in
pique.”

Vanessa narrowed her eyes, taking
obvious pains to keep all trace of amusement from her expression
but failing spectacularly. Then she stopped trying and smiled. “You
arrived sooner than we expected. I suppose your travel was
favorable? David is still meeting with his secretary, and I was in
the nursery with Patrick and Danielle when Baxter informed me you
were here.” She crossed the room and pulled Emma into a full hug,
then tugged her down to the settee again. “I miss you.”

With a half-smile, Emma
pushed against her sister’s shoulder. “No one held a pistol to your
head and forced you to marry David, you know.
You
left
me
to marry a peer, not the other way
around.”

“
And I made Mama and Father
very happy in the process,” Vanessa said. Her brown eyes lost a
touch of their glimmer. “How are they? I’ve been worried since the
end of the Season. Mama just seemed so…frail, I suppose.
Weary.”

“
Not to mention Father was
too indisposed to even accompany us to Town.” Emma looked her
sister in the eye. “They’re both so worried about me, about what
will happen to me when they can’t—”

Emma cut herself off, pressing her
lips together and pinching the bridge of her nose. Saying the words
aloud was too much. Her heart broke just thinking of all they had
sacrificed to give her a better life, a chance at all of the things
they had never had. She closed her eyes for a moment to regain her
composure.

“
I can’t allow them to keep
doing this. Mama took me to London for the Season when clearly it
was too much for her. She tried to insist on coming with me here
this summer, even if Father wasn’t well enough to look after
himself.” Emma choked back a sob, then pressed on. She had to get
through this. “If David hadn’t sent Fanny with the carriage to
accompany me here, Mama would surely have come along, even though
Doctor Cary has forbidden Father from being out of bed for more
than a few hours a day and he needs her assistance.”

Vanessa’s eyes widened. “It’s that
bad? In your letters…”

“
He’s coughing up blood.”
Which was not something Emma cared to ever put in a letter. If it
were written down, it would be more real. More
permanent.

Vanessa took Emma’s hand and squeezed,
lacing their fingers together as they had done as girls. “So now
what?”

Emma fought down her tears. This was
not the time for crying. There were far more important things to be
done. “So now I find a way to ease their worries.”

Vanessa opened her mouth to speak, so
Emma rushed on.

“
I know you’re going to
offer to let me stay here, but that’s not what I want. I’ve been a
burden on Mama and Father for far too long. I have no intention of
becoming a burden on you instead of them. You have children of your
own now, and David to look after…”

Vanessa pursed her lips—a habit
neither of them had managed to break—no doubt learned from watching
Mama. After a moment, Vanessa gave a brisk nod. “Very well. If you
won’t come live with us, what will you do?”

“
I’ve thought about
becoming a governess. It would be a good way for me to use the few
skills I do possess in a productive manner.” All her reading had to
be good for something other than just her enjoyment.

A wry smile greeted that
pronouncement. “You know Father would be loath to allow you to go
into service. That would hardly set him at ease, Em.”

“
I know. Which is why I
intend to find a husband. During this house party.”
Somehow
. The actual ‘how’
of the operation might prove to be difficult, particularly since
Emma didn’t even know which gentlemen her sister and brother-in-law
had invited to their gathering. And then there was the fact that
she was as comfortable in social settings as an elephant would be
drinking from a miniature china teacup designed for a
doll.

She used her eyes to plead with her
sister. It had always worked, since they were very little. “But I
need your help. I’m always so awkward and clumsy. I don’t know how
to do my hair in the ways that will attract a man’s attention. I
always say the wrong things at the worst times.”

“
Or if you don’t know what
to say, you trip over your own feet to distract everyone,” Vanessa
said wryly.

Emma cringed. “You make it sound like
I do it intentionally.”

“
Oh, you don’t?” Vanessa
chided. “It’s become such a habit, it’s like an
illness.”

“
A pox.”

“
The Black
Death.”

Emma wrinkled her nose. “No, I don’t
think the plague works in this situation. It’s more like it’s
something that is on me. Something I can’t get rid of, no matter
how hard I try to wash it away. Something you can see, like
leprosy. Like my enormous teeth.”

Vanessa frowned gently.
“They aren’t
that
big.”

“
They’re horse teeth. The
only thing that makes them look like they could possibly be
appropriately sized is the length of my nose.”

Never in her life would she understand
how she could be so long and gangly everywhere but Vanessa could be
so perfectly elegant in every way, and yet they came from the same
two parents. The differences between the two had only become more
pronounced now that Vanessa had given birth to two of her own
children. Her breasts had plumped nicely, and her hips had rounded
delicately, and she looked like the perfect example of English
beauty. But Emma? Still a giant stick.

“
Have you ever looked at a
horse’s teeth up close?” With a rueful smile, Vanessa chuckled. “I
think you might be a wee-bit prone to exaggeration.”

“
All the same, the point is
I need you. Will you help me?”

“
I will,” Vanessa said
without even a moment’s hesitation. “But only if you promise to try
your very best to make yourself amenable to the gentlemen I’ve
invited. You can’t just sit in the corner with a book the way
you’ve always done in the past.”

Emma placed her right hand over her
heart. “I solemnly swear.” She even managed to avoid bursting out
in a gale of laughter upon saying it. Likely because she truthfully
was earnest about finding a husband this time, whereas she hadn’t
ever been before. Every last bit of what she’d said was now of the
direst import, even though she had as much natural appeal for a
gentleman as a goat would.

A corner of Vanessa’s mouth turned
downward. “I suppose Fanny already helped you settle in to your
rooms? She’s to serve as your lady’s maid while you’re
here.”

“
Oh, but—”

A severely arched brow from her sister
was enough to silence Emma.

“
None of that, now. All of
the other ladies will bring their own maids. It won’t do for you to
be left out. Particularly since you’re in need of help with
arranging your hair, as you’ve already mentioned.” Vanessa looked
pointedly at the limp mass hanging indolently over Emma’s
shoulders. “Not to mention David wouldn’t hear of allowing you to
go without, whether anyone else was visiting or not.”

She had a point. David had made a
valiant effort since marrying her sister to be certain Emma had the
best of everything—as long as he wasn’t stepping on Father’s toes
in order to provide it.

“
Fine. Fanny can arrange my
hair.”

A broad smile lit Vanessa’s warm,
brown eyes. “Excellent. Now, moving on to the rest of the
fortnight, I think we should enlist the help of—”

Before she could finish her thought,
David knocked at the open door and poked his head inside. “Sorry to
interrupt, but the first of our guests have arrived.” He moved into
the room and helped Vanessa to her feet, kissing her lightly on the
cheek.

“
I’d say the
first
of our guests
arrived almost an hour ago,” Vanessa pointed out.

David winked a brilliant green eye at
Emma, then offered his hand to assist her. “Emma’s not a guest.
She’s family.”

When she stood, he leaned over and
planted a similar kiss on her cheek. His sandy-brown hair fell down
over an eye and tickled her skin.

“
Such flattery,” Emma said
with a laugh. The ladies of the
ton
were lucky he was already married. The man could
devastate a room with a smile. A wink was likely to cause heart
palpitations amongst the lesser-prepared debutantes.

“
Such
unnecessary
flattery,” Vanessa
countered. “My husband fails to recognize he won your eternal
devotion upon promising to add a proper library to Heathcote Park
and stock it to the brim.”

Not just any ‘proper library,’ either.
David had set Emma’s heart aflutter with tales of books lining
every wall of the room from floor to ceiling, of bookcases
scattered amongst cozy chairs, and even of a rotating, circular
bookcase near the entry filled with her very favorite stories. It
was all she could do not to salivate at the thought.

David held out one arm for each of
them to hold and guided their way out of the drawing room toward
the front entry hall. “Speaking of which, it’s finished. Perhaps I
can give you a tour after supper?”

“
I’d like that very much,”
Emma replied. She’d like it more to have her tour now but doubted
David would share that opinion. He could be a bit of a stickler
about things like greeting one’s guests promptly upon their
arrival. Spoilsport.

They moved past the marbled spiral
staircase with iron balusters shaped like lyres and into the main
foyer. Baxter signaled for the footmen to swing the doors
wide.

“
I thought your guests
weren’t due to arrive until tomorrow afternoon,” Emma said. Her
brow furrowed in thought. Vanessa wrote that Emma was to arrive on
Sunday and the others would arrive on Monday. There had been church
bells ringing this morning.

David winked. “Most of them aren’t.”
He led the ladies through the doors and down the stairs to the
flagstone entryway lined by a pea-gravel drive. Turning in from the
main road, two carriages rolled carefully along, gradually coming
into view. Emma immediately recognized the crests they proudly bore
as well as the spotless scarlet and silver livery worn by the
coachmen.

A faint sense of panic
clutched at Emma’s chest. “The Earl of Trenowyth?” She looked past
David to glare at her sister, who was studiously avoiding her gaze
on his other side. Vanessa ought to have warned her. She knew—she
absolutely, unequivocally
knew
—that Emma would not have come if
there were any inkling of a chance that the Cardiff family would be
in attendance.

Vanessa appeared disinclined to answer
the unasked question hanging in the air between them.

Emma caught David’s eye. “Has anyone
accompanied Lord Trenowyth? I do not believe I have seen anyone
from the family out in society since…since…”

“
Since three years ago? No,
I’m sure you haven’t.”

The carriages pulled to a stop before
them, and one of the outriders leapt down from the lead conveyance
to set out the steps.

David pulled Vanessa and
Emma forward—
pulled
being a disconcertingly literal description of the
proceedings, at least on Emma’s part, as her feet had suddenly
turned to tree roots and her legs to trunks.

“
None of the family has
been away from Tavistock Manor since then,” David continued rather
stoically, “other than brief trips into town for provisions and the
like. Even then, they’ve usually sent servants out instead. But
they’ve all decided to begin their reintroduction to social life
here.”

“
All?” Emma squeaked. The
panic clutching her chest was no longer merely a faint hint; she
felt like she was being crushed between two massive boulders and
couldn’t sink her nails into anything in order to claw her way
out.

“
Well, not quite all, I
should say,” David amended. He lifted a hand in greeting as Lord
Trenowyth, the first passenger, descended from the
carriage.

In that scant moment, Emma regained
her breath. Not quite all of the family had come. Perhaps the
odious Mr. Cardiff had better ways to spend his summer than glaring
at her from across rooms and making her feel as infinitesimal and
welcome as a splinter in the ball of his foot.

David winked at her as Lord Trenowyth
waved a hand in their direction in greeting. If he had any sense of
her discomfiture, David would have refrained from winking in such a
circumstance—it simply caused her to wish to rip his arms from
their sockets before running to hide in her chamber, never to
return.

“
The dowager chose to pay a
visit to her cousin in Shropshire instead of attending our little
gathering,” David said, smiling cheerily, as though there couldn’t
be a lovelier scenario in all the world than the one currently
smacking Emma in the face repeatedly. “She thinks such amusements
are better spent on the younger generations.” With that, he dropped
the arms of both Emma and Vanessa and moved forward to welcome his
guests.