“Most people wish to avoid me,” she said before she could think better of it.
“Why is that, Mrs. Cadbury?”
He remembered her name from their brief introduction, even if her face was lost in the mists of time. She managed a rueful smile. “I am not of your class, sir. I am a working woman, doing the best I can with no family to rely on.”
“Indeed. You are a surgeon, my sister-in-law said. That must require nerves of steel. It’s little wonder that the vicar failed to intimidate you.”
He was right, though she wasn’t about to tell him so. It did take a lot to frighten her. In truth, the unexpected return of Brandon Rohan was the only thing that had managed to break her hard-won calm in years.
“So you see, I’m entirely capable of returning to the house on my own,” she said, and yet she didn’t move. Didn’t want to move.
“Maybe I need you to protect me,” he said.
She laughed, as she was expected to, but his words gave her a strange start. She had protected him, watched over him, saved him. She would still do anything he asked of her, if only to keep him safe.
She was being absurd. She’d never seen someone less in need of saving now. “I think you’ll manage very well, Lord Brandon. Melisande has told me of your service in the late war. You are, in fact, a hero. Doubtless people will wish to shake your hand, not stab you in the back.”
“Yet they’d stab you in the back?” His voice was quizzical, and she once more cursed herself. Their long conversations so many years ago had been casual, free of social constraints. Now he seemed to pick up on every offhand remark she made.
“Of course not,” she said, mentally dismissing Mr. Fenrush, the surgeon in charge, and his hostile underlings who’d probably burn her at the stake if they could. It was little wonder that, despite the vicar, this country village still managed to feel peaceful and welcoming in contrast.
“Then what did the vicar want from you?”
She thought quickly, coming up with the best lie she could think of. “In fact, he was warning me about my habit of walking to the village and back. He was afraid I might catch a stray bullet.”
This guileless answer didn’t appease him. “It’s not hunting season.”
Emma bit her lower lip in frustration. “I thought it was always hunting season.”
“Clearly you’re not much of a country girl,” he replied.
“I am. I grew up in Devon. My family, however, were middle class, and hunting wasn’t a part of their life.” Unless they were hunting the devil and scouring it from their daughter’s flesh.
Brandon said nothing, simply surveying her in the gathering dusk. He held out his arm for her to take, but at that moment Emma’s precious courage failed her. She was exhausted from her long hours of work at the hospital, annoyed with the vicar’s bullying, but most of all she was shaken to the core by the sudden reappearance of Brandon Rohan.
She hadn’t allowed herself to think of him over the last three years, sternly dismissing him from her mind when he would appear. She had no such power over her dreams, and countless times she’d found herself talking with him, lying beside him, doing things with him that she knew she would hate in real life. But in dreams the touching, the tasting, the possession no longer seemed like an assault, and she would wake up damp and shaking with longing.
It was all too much. She couldn’t bring herself to put her hand on his arm, to touch him in any way—it brought back too many sensations. It was cowardice, pure and simple, but she wasn’t going to fight it any longer, no matter how rude or peculiar it might look.
“I believe I might retire to my rooms,” she said, annoyed to hear a breathless note in her usually calm voice. “I’ve very tired, and I have a long trip back to London tomorrow.”
He frowned. “Tomorrow? Why so soon? My sister informed me you were going to stay the week.”
She felt her stomach tighten. “You were talking about me?” she blurted out, and then shut her mouth, appalled at her bad manners.
He raised an eyebrow. “Melisande likes to talk, and I have learned to simply let her choose the subject. I wasn’t checkin
g up on you, Mrs. Cadbury, if that’s what you were thinking.”
She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. She kept her expression calm. It was one of her great strengths—to appear unmoved despite the circumstances she was thrust into. She’d learned that in her childhood, and the life that followed had given her more than enough occasions to improve that particular skill.
“Of course you weren’t,” she said quickly. She was reaching the end of that vaunted calm, and she had to get away from him. “Why should you? But it remains that I’m too tired to return to the celebration. Good-bye, Lord Brandon. Have a safe trip back to Scotland.”
He was watching her, and there was no way she could read his expression, guess at what he was thinking. “Oh, I’m not returning to Scotland, at least not any time soon. My brother Charles is arriving tomorrow, and much as I’d prefer to avoid him I occasionally do my duty. Besides, there are far too many interesting. . .things here in the south of England.”
Was he suggesting one of those interesting “things” was her, or was it her wistful longing? It didn’t matter. Their paths wouldn’t cross again—she lived in a very different world, thank God, and she knew how to avoid occasions that were detrimental to her peace of mind. She wouldn’t, couldn’t give up visiting Melisande, who was more a sister than a friend, but she would take care to come when no one else was visiting.
“Then I wish you a pleasant visit,” she said hurriedly, turning to walk away.