Page 46 of Along Came a Rogue

Mindless of the crowded room around her, she reached a hand for him. But he stepped back, leaving her to grasp at empty air.

Her hand fell to her side. As she stared at him, knowing he could see the tears glistening in her eyes yet helpless to prevent them, the words rested on her lips to tell him how much he meant to her, how desperate she was to keep tonight from being the last time she would be alone with him.

And if she did tell him? If she admitted that she loved him, that perhaps she’d always loved him, then he would know exactly how she felt, and…Nothing.

Nothing would change. She would still be a duke’s widowed daughter who might very well be carrying a future marquess, and he would still be a rake and spy. He would never be willing to love her the way she wanted, not when his true love was the War Office.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized in a strangled voice, somehow finding the inner strength to retreat from him. “I didn’t—” She inhaled a jerky breath and shook her head. “I am suddenly not hungry. If you’ll excuse me.”

He blew out a muttered curse and reached for her hand. “Brat, I’m sorry. Please listen—”

“Lady Emily!”

Emily startled at the shriek of her name across the common room. An older woman in a hunter-green traveling costume and matching hat, complete with billowing ostrich feathers and ermine stole, stood up from one of the tables. She waved a handkerchief excitedly in the air to capture her attention.

“Lady Emily—that is you, is it not?”

Emily cringed. No, please, God, no! Not her, not now! But it was too late for prayers, and dread curled inside her stomach. Of all the places to be recognized, of all the people to spot her…

Fate had no mercy, apparently. Not even for love.

Lady Gantry was one of the most gossip-mongering women in the ton, and to cut her in any way would be to foolishly risk the woman’s sharp-tongued wrath across the drawing rooms of London. Steeling herself, Emily forced a smile and bobbed a shallow curtsy as the insufferable woman quickly approached.

“Baroness,” she said tightly, “how unexpected to see you…and here, of all places.”

“Why, Lady Emily, it is you!” The woman squeezed both of Emily’s hands, completely oblivious to her distress and the way her watery eyes glanced heart-wrenchingly at Grey. “I knew it! I said as much to my George and his dear wife, Alice, when you walked inside. I said, ‘There is Emily Matteson! There can be no doubt of it.’ And, indeed, there was not!”

Her temples throbbed already at the woman’s grating voice and at Grey’s fixed gaze, which never left her face, as if wanting to gauge her reaction to meeting the baroness with him at her side. “You have been well, I hope?” she forced herself to ask.

At that moment, Emily couldn’t have cared less how the gossipy old hen was doing, or her son George, a former classmate of Thomas’s at Eton, who crossed the room toward them much more slowly than had his mother. A demure and plain woman held on to his arm.

“Oh yes, quite well,” Lady Gantry chirped, “now that my George has wed. We expect an heir before next summer, don’t we, George?”

Her son answered weakly in the affirmative and looked away, as if bored already with the conversation. His bride’s cheeks pinked delicately with embarrassment.

“Congratulations.” Emily dropped another shallow curtsy to the pair.

“Good luck would be more appropriate, I daresay,” Lady Gantry mumbled, shooting her daughter-in-law a peevish glance, but the woman never lifted her eyes from the floor to see it. “How is your family, my dear? I saw Her Grace just last month at Lady St. James’s garden party. And now, to run into you, and at a posting inn, no less—what a coincidence! Why, wherever are you traveling?”

Emily swallowed hard, feeling like a caged bird at the Tower Menagerie under Grey’s unwavering attention. “My brother was injured. I’m traveling to London to see him.”

“Oh yes.” Lady Gantry shook her head, clucking her tongue sympathetically. “Such tragic news! Shocked us all. After all, if such a thing could happen to him, then how safe are any of us? But we were all so pleased to hear that Chesney survived.”

“Not nearly as pleased as Chesney, I’m sure,” Grey muttered acerbically, unable to keep his silence.

Emily gave him a pleading look to behave himself, biting her bottom lip anxiously. Lady Gantry and her son looked at him then and blinked in unison, as if they’d just now realized that he existed.

Apparently finding him lacking or uninteresting, or both, George turned back to his wife, who still had not raised her bashful eyes from the floor.

But the baroness smiled broadly and extended her hand. “You must be Lady Emily’s husband. I had heard she married—”

“He’s not my husband,” Emily interjected quickly. Realizing how emphatically she denied the woman’s wrong assumption and unwittingly drew Lady Gantry’s puzzled curiosity, she added in explanation, “Mr. Crenshaw passed away five months ago.”

“Oh.” A perplexed expression flitted across the baroness’s face as she unabashedly studied Grey, then swung her eyes to note Emily’s lack of proper mourning attire. With a stab of rueful dread, Emily wondered if she’d just made a mistake. A terrible mistake. “I am sorely aggrieved to hear that,” Lady Gantry purred, in a voice that told Emily she wasn’t sad at all at the news. “My condolences.”

The baroness’s gaze settled knowingly on Grey, her lips curving upward in private amusement, as if she’d just caught the proverbial fox in the henhouse. Then her eyes slid back to Emily, and her smile grew chillingly deeper. She arched a brow, waiting to be introduced.

Oh God, what the woman must think of the two of them! But with no choice, Emily cleared her throat and introduced them. “Lady Gantry, may I present Major Nathaniel Grey?” she spilled out in a flood. “Major Grey is a longtime family friend. He served with my brother in Spain and is now one of Lord Bathurst’s most trusted men at the War Office. My family sent him to escort me safely from Yorkshire to be at my brother’s side while he recovers.”