Reforming Lord Ragsdale Part 22

"I know you did not. I want to do it, and I don't want a lot of argument, and please, no pouts. I am already steeling myself for a lifetime of those from Clarissa. Don't you do it, too," he concluded with some finality.

He rose to his feet, as though signifying the end to his audience. Very well, my lord, she thought. Our relationship has changed yet again. Now you are formal and dignified, and in control of things. I know this is what I worked for, but I miss the rascal a little. She held out her hand to him, and they shook hands.

"Thank you."

"It's nothing, Emma." He looked at Tim. "Lad, go tell Lasker not to hold dinner any longer. I want the two of you at my table tonight."

"Oh, that isn't necessary," she said as Tim grinned at Lord Ragsdale.

"I want to, so don't argue. The convoy leaves in a matter of ten days or so. When I visited with the new governor .. ."

"You visited with him?" she interrupted.

"Of course!" he replied, sounding genuinely indignant this time. "You don't seriously think I would just turn you over to the vagaries of life at sea without looking into the matter!"

"Such exertion," she murmured, touched at his interest.

Lord Ragsdale appealed to Tim. "See how she baits me? Was she this way at home?"

"I can't quite remember," Tim said, and then brightened. "But my brothers were."

Emma laughed and pulled Tim closer. "Very well! If you must be solicitous, I suppose there is nothing I can do about it. Go on now, Tim, and speak to Lasker."

"There isn't," Lord Ragsdale agreed after Tim left, his equanimity restored. "I learned from Governor Macquarie that the lord inspector will sail, too. You will be in quite distinguished company, so you might brush up on your manners."

"You seem determined that I remain firmly in your debt," she protested with a smile.

"Of course," he agreed cheerfully. "I like to have people owe me."

It is more than I could ever repay, she thought, but a burden I gladly bear. She went to the door, then turned back on impulse and kissed him.

Why am I doing this? she thought as his arms went around her and held her close. He was incredibly easy to kiss, and once begun, difficult to leave off. Her hands went to his hair then. She had always admired his thick hair, and she wondered if it felt as good as it looked. It did, to her gratification, and to his pleasure, obviously, because he sighed and continued kissing her.

We simply must stop this kiss, she thought, and then didn't think anymore, finding herself more occupied with the rapidity of her heartbeat and the pleasant feel of him. I am being kissed by an expert, she thought. It was nice before, but this is infinitely better.

He seemed in no hurry to end the experience, except that someone had the bad timing to knock on the book room door. Lord Ragsdale released her and began to straighten his neck cloth. "Drat!" he muttered, even as she went to the window and stared out, hoping that the intruder did not have intense scrutiny in mind. Her cheeks felt flaming hot, and she stood there, astounded at her own temerity. This indenture is not ending a moment too soon, she thought as Lasker opened the door, announced dinner after a quick look around, then took himself off again.

"Dear me," she murmured when the room seemed awfully silent.

"Dear me, indeed," said Lord Ragsdale, sounding quite as out of breath as she felt. "If I had known how you felt about release from your indenture, I'd have signed that blooming doc.u.ment once each day, maybe twice."

The enormity of her indiscretion nearly removed what breath she had left. I must be losing my reason, she thought, measuring the distance between the window and the door, and wondering why it looked so far away. And there was Lord Ragsdale, his face flushed, his eye decidedly bright.

"I cannot imagine what you think of me," she said, feeling such intense shame that she thought she would melt with it. Is it really shame? she considered. Or am I wishing you would lock that door and continue this event on the sofa? "Dear me," she said again, her voice more faint this time.

To her acute discomfort, Lord Ragsdale came no closer, but continued to regard her, his expression thoughtful. He started to smile then, and her shame deepened. He sat on a corner of his desk.

"How odd, Emma," he commented, not looking at her now, but gazing over her shoulder. "You have worked so hard to redeem me, but I wonder if you have succeeded." He grinned at her stupefied silence. "I suppose that would depend on what your aims were. Did you really plan for me to fall in love with you?"

She shook her head, astounded at his words, wishing he had not said them. "I was out of order," she said when she thought she could manage complete sentences.

"Well, no, actually, I thought you followed through in remarkably fine order," he commented as he gave a final tug to his neck cloth.

She edged toward the door. "You simply have to disregard my behavior."

He shook his head. "I am able to forget a considerable number of things, but I don't think my amnesia would extend that far."

"I was improper," she said.

"Decidedly. I wonder why 1 am not bothered by that?" he asked, more to himself than to her.

What can I say to this man? she thought miserably. I can only wish that ship were leaving in fifteen minutes. In another moment there was no need to decide. Someone knocked on the door.

"Cut line, Lasker," Lord Ragsdale snapped, giving her reason to suspect that he was not so calm as he appeared. "We won't perish if the peas are cold."

I will if this conversation continues, she thought. She went to the door and opened it, not turning around when Lord Ragsdale called her name. In another moment, he grabbed her arm.

"Emma, please," he insisted. "We need to talk."

"There is nothing to say, my lord," she replied, retreating behind her formal exterior again. "I will remind you that you are engaged to Clarissa and I am bound for Australia. Good night, my lord. I think I would rather eat belowstairs with Tim. We came somewhat close to forgetting ourselves, didn't we?"

Chapter 21.

I am a coward, she thought that evening as she stayed belowstairs with Timothy, and listened to him tell her of his life with the Holladays. She held him close, her arm tight around him, and gradually allowed good sense to reclaim her. After she was sure that Lord Ragsdale had left the house for the evening, she prepared a pallet on the floor of her attic room and took Tim there. They spoke of the coming voyage until she could almost forget what had happened in the book room.

This is the reality of my life, she told herself firmly. We are sailing to an unknown place, and we do not know what we will find. We will be among soldiers and convicts. She sighed and looked down at Tim, whose eyes were closing slowly, even as she watched. She touched his shoulder, then pulled his blanket higher, marveling all over again in the pleasure of seeing him. Am I wrong to take him along to this dreadful place? Lord Ragsdale said he would take him to Norfolk.

"Emma, I wish you would answer me," he was saying.

"What? What?" she asked, guilty at the thousand directions her mind was taking.

"I want to know if you are afraid," he asked in that matter-of-fact voice of his, unchanged by five years of difference between them.

"I used to be," she said honestly, knowing that she could not lie to her brother. "But now that you are to come with me, I don't think there is anything that can frighten the two of us."

"But suppose Da and Sam are dead?" he persisted, closing his eyes against the possibility, but taking her hand.

"We will decide what to do when it comes to that, Tim. Go to sleep now."

He slept peacefully, quietly, but he would not relinquish her hand. She sat on the floor beside him, knowing that sleep was far from her. I wish my conscience were as clear as yours, Tim, she thought as she gazed at his relaxed face. I have labored so hard to mend a faulty character, not realizing all the while that it was mine.

She undressed finally and crawled into bed, only to stare at the ceiling, and listen to house noises until everyone was asleep. Oh, well, she decided as her eyes began to close, it is better to love foolishly than to hate bitterly. I hope I am wiser than I was, and more kind.

Her resolution was firm, and in the morning she dressed quietly and tiptoed out of her room, careful not to waken Tim. She went to the front hall for the mail, dreading that Lord Ragsdale would rise early and demand more conversation.

The mail was gone. She looked around at Lasker.

"Lord Ragsdale has already perused the correspondence and placed it in the book room," he said. "He has gone to Norfolk, taking Miss Partridge and her mother with him."

She sighed with relief and went to the book room. His usual list of instructions was on the desk, as well as a folded note. She sat down and opened the note. "Dear Emma," she read, "Clarissa is eager to see the manor, and figure out more ways to spend my money constructively. We will return after your ship sails, so let me wish you happy journey and good news at the end of it. Excuse my bad manners. John Staples."

There was no need to read it again and search for hidden meanings, for there were none. She managed a smile and chided herself for being an idiot. We are talking of Lord Ragsdale, she told herself, he who loves to kiss women. It was that and nothing more. I am only chagrined that I caused such a kind man any embarra.s.sment. I trust he will soon forget it, if he had not already.

His kindness to her continued through the days of his absence. Her next visit to the bank was more in the way of a command performance, as the custodians of a major portion of Lord Ragsdale's wealth a.s.sured her that she was to take the enormous sum of two hundred pounds with her. She could not imagine such largess, and told them so, but the senior partners only looked at each other and chuckled.

"He told us you would say that," they a.s.sured her. "Lately, he is so well-organized and sensible that we do not argue with him over paltry sums."

I have created a monster, she thought with amus.e.m.e.nt. "Very well, then, sirs, so it will be. Never let anyone say that I don't know when to save my breath to cool my porridge."

She also knew better than to argue when Lady Ragsdale insisted that they visit the cloth merchants and purchase yards and yards of muslin goods, and silk stockings, and bonnets of a practical nature. "I cannot imagine where you will get these things if we do not buy them now," she said, explaining away her own generosity. She paused in front of a bolt of handsome burgundy wool. "Do you suppose ...'!

"No, my lady," Emma said hurriedly. "I fear it is rather hot in the antipodes. Let us confine our enthusiasms to muslin."

"It seems so ordinary," said Lady Ragsdale with a sigh. "Do you not suppose there will be b.a.l.l.s there occasionally, or even musicales?"

I could never tell this dear lady what I fear I will find, she thought as Lady Ragsdale cast a longing eye on a nearby bolt of pale yellow silk. We are going to a convict colony, a place of harsh rule and desperate men. She, who had been coddled so gently, would be horrified if she knew how hard it might be. I shall never tell her.

"Do you know, you may be right, my lady," she said, choosing her words carefully as her own fears returned. "I think that silk would be entirely in order."

"I knew it!" Lady Ragsdale declared in triumph. "With that and a pair of Morocco leather slippers to match, I will p.r.o.nounce you fit. You may keep my paisley shawl," she added generously.

"Where can we squeeze it all?" she grumbled to Tim several times in as many days when Lady Ragsdale continued to add to the contents of the sea chest. Her largess spilled over into another trunk and then another, each requiring the strenuous efforts of the footman to close them, with Lasker sitting on top, dignified to the end. "This has to be enough," she said firmly on her last night on Curzon Street as Lady Ragsdale met her on the first-floor landing with another nightgown.

"Certainly, Emma," Lady Ragsdale agreed. "And if I think of anything else, I can send it 'round later."

Emma turned away to hide her smile. Lady Ragsdale, you have no concept of geography, she thought. She took the nightgown from Lady Ragsdale, said good night, and went into the book room for one last look around. She could hear Tim and the footman bringing the trunks down two flights of stairs. Lasker had made arrangements with a carter to pick them up at first light.

And we will follow, she reflected. A penny post from the dockyard had informed them of their departure with the tide in the early afternoon. She went to the window to stare down at the street below, rain-slicked from a sudden squall and washed clean of the day's commerce. Soon there would be only months and months of waves and wind, and small ships. "And wormy food, and sea biscuit," she said out loud as she opened the window for a deep breath of flowers in the window box. "And serious uncertainty, as you would say, Da. I wonder what I will find at the end of my journey."

She tidied the room, hopeful that Lord Ragsdale would be able to discover everything in order when he returned. She was about to turn out the lamp, but suddenly she knew it wasn't right to leave without even a farewell note. There can be no harm in expressing myself this last time, she thought, no harm at all. She sat down at the desk.

It was easy to tell Lord Ragsdale thank-you on paper, to thank him for putting the heart back in her, for making her angry enough at times to keep her from melancholy, for finding her family, for tying up the ragged strings of her life. She labored over the page, wanting to express her whole heart and mind. "I do not know whatever good I may have done you, my lord, but you have given me back my brother," she wrote, then hesitated. I could tell you I love you, she considered, the quill poised over the inkwell. It would be true, probably the most true thing I ever wrote. She put down the quill and rested her chin on her hands. There will always . be some part of me that longs for you, but should I say that to a man so soon to be tangled in the toils of matrimony?

"How fortunate I will be so far away," she said, and picked up the quill again. "I can be no possible threat, Clarissa Partridge, bless your pouty hide." She wrote swiftly then, telling him of her love, leaving nothing out, not mincing a single word. Nothing could be safer; she would be in the middle of the Atlantic before he returned from Norfolk. She picked up the letter, still frowning over it, wondering why even that declaration was not enough.

And then she understood and laughed out loud, sticking the quill back in the ink. Not only do I love you, Lord Ragsdale, she told herself as she wrote the words, I also like you.

It looked silly on the page, like something you would say to a friend from childhood, or a schoolmate. She almost tore up the letter. He will think I have lost all reason to say something so childish, she thought. She stared at the note for a long while, then sighed and tucked it in under the paperweight. She blew out the -'. lamp, took another look around the room, and closed the door on her career as a secretary.

Leaving the house on Curzon Street was harder than she could have imagined. Lady Ragsdale cried, the footman looked decidedly forlorn, and even Lasker showed a glimmer of some expression besides patient condescension when he helped her into the hackney, nodded to Tim, and told the driver to take them to the docks. When she looked back, she even thought she saw him dab at his eyes. She may have been mistaken; it was a bl.u.s.tery day, and there were cinders in the air.

"We have so much to look forward to," she told Tim, who grinned at her.

"You sound like you're trying to convince yourself," he teased.

I suppose I am, she thought, struck by the truth of his observation. Leave it to a little brother to define my own melancholy. If I did not know better, I would accuse him of taking lessons from Lord Ragsdale.

They arrived at Deptford Hard in plenty of time to catch the tide that even affected the oily swells of the Thames, far upstream from the ocean. The Atlas rode low in the water, full of supplies for the seven-month journey, and more victuals for the convict colony that still needed food from home to take the ragged edge off hunger. She looked closer, frowning. There was no bustle of activity on deck to signify a ship about to sail, no one but the captain, who stared at a long list as he paced the deck.

Tim noticed the strange silence, too. "Emma, was it today or tomorrow?"

Before she could add her questions to his, the captain of the Atlas spotted them and came to the railing. "Miss Costello!" he shouted to them on the dock. "Go home. Something has happened, and we cannot sail today."

"What?" she shouted back, dreading a return to Curzon Street, and another round of farewells tomorrow, or the day after.

"The lord inspector died last night. We won't sail until the end of the week."

Trust the lord inspector to be so thoughtless, she told herself as they returned to Curzon Street in silence. Now we must go through all this again. She leaned back and drummed her fingers impatiently on the seat, too irritated for rational conversation with Tim.

By the time they were approaching the turn to Curzon Street, she acknowledged the hand of providence in this event. At least she would have time to reclaim the letter from the book room and replace it with something more dignified. That hope crawled up her throat, and then flopped back into her stomach as they turned the corner to see the Ragsdale carriage at the front door.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," she gasped.

Tim looked at her in surprise. "Don't you want to have a chance to say good-bye to Lord Ragsdale?" he asked. "I know I do."

"I'm not so sure," she wailed, wanting to leap from the hackney, run back to the dock, and hide there.

Tim peered at her. "Don't you like him? After all he's done for us?"

She nodded, kicking herself for her own folly, and hoping that Lord Ragsdale's indolence would lead him to avoid the book room altogether, now that she was no longer there. "Of course I do," she muttered.

"Good," Tim said. "He told me he likes you."

Emma groaned and closed her eyes. That word has come back to haunt me, she thought, then stared at her little brother. "He said what?"

"That he liked you," Tim repeated patiently, with that sly look that brothers reserve for especially dense sisters. "I told him of course he did, and he just laughed."

Well, you won't be laughing now, Lord Ragsdale, she thought as she grossly overtipped the jarvey in her confusion. You will think I am such an idiot.

She contemplated sneaking around to the servants' entrance, but Lasker flung open the door, an actual smile on his face as she started to tiptoe away.

"Miss Costello! You have changed your mind! Lord Ragsdale, can you imagine who has returned?"

To her everlasting chagrin, Lord Ragsdale stood in the doorway, too, his mouth open in amazement. "I thought you would be gone by now .. ." he began.

"I did not know you would return so soon," she started to tell him at the same time.

Tim laughed and hurried inside. Emma came up the steps slowly. She tried to observe him without being obvious, and could see no sign of disgust on his face, or exasperation. There was nothing beyond a deepening of the crease between his eyes, and a certain dullness in his expression she had not noticed when he left. As she watched, he made a visible effort to appear cheerful.

"Change your mind, Emma?" he asked as he held open the door for her. "If it's any consolation, I think I would have." He shuddered. "All that water moving up and down! I would probably get calluses from kneeling over a bucket for seven months. Wise of you to reconsider."

She shook her head. He walked with her down the hall. She glanced at the book-room door, which was closed. His trunk was still at the foot of the stairs.