Amanda McCabe - Miss Fortescue's Protector In Paris

But then again—her mother might not have been like the sweet, understanding, light-hearted being Emily held in her imagination. She might have been more like the Duchess of Waverton.

Emily watched as Alex’s mother gave her one more lecture before climbing into the glossy black carriage with its ducal crest on the door and finally leaving Miss Grantley’s. Alex looked pale against her sky-blue dress, her hands twisting in her skirt as she nodded at whatever the Duchess was saying. It was no doubt a stern list of proper behaviour for a duke’s daughter.

Yes , Emily thought. Maybe she was lucky after all. Her future was an open question, whatever she wanted to make of it. Alex’s was set.

‘Poor Alex,’ she heard a voice say behind her, low and slightly rough, a hint of suppressed laughter hidden in its depths. ‘I always thank my lucky stars the Duchess is my aunt, and not my mother.’

Emily smiled. Christopher Blakely. Alex’s cousin always livened up the school when he came to visit. Handsome, funny, light-hearted, always up for a game of tennis or a quick quarrel about whatever issues of the day happened to strike like a match between them. Yes, they always argued, but Emily had to admit it was fun.

She turned to look at him and was almost knocked over by her dazzlement. He really was ridiculously good looking; it was no wonder all the girls at the school were in love with him. Tall, slim, golden-haired like an Apollo, with vivid blue eyes and a perfect blade of a nose, sharp cheekbones, always moving with a quick, loose grace that matched the careless, yet somehow always elegant, way he dressed. She had heard such gossip about the trouble he got into in town and she quite believed it all.

‘Do you escape the famous Waverton lectures, then?’ she asked.

‘Of course not. Anyone in my aunt’s orbit is fair game for lectures on the proper way to live and I have much to correct,’ he said with a grin, a flash of white teeth and sunshine that made her smile, too. ‘She and my mother are like two peas in a pod. Organising lives is their reason for being.’

‘And what do they tell you that you should do?’ She thought of the whispered tales, of his trouble at Oxford, how he was almost sent down; the gambling and late nights in London.

‘The usual things. Find useful work, get married. But not too soon. And only to the most suitable girl. Cease my rackety ways and finish my degree.’

Emily laughed. It was hard to picture Chris married to a ‘suitable’ pale, aristocratic girl, going to an office every day in a grey suit. He seemed to have been born too late. He should have been an Elizabethan explorer, not a Victorian aristocrat. ‘And do they tell your brother that, too?’

Chris glanced at his brother William who was talking to Emily’s friend Diana near the house. Will looked so different from Chris, dark and solemn, always so perfect. ‘Of course not. Will is always serious and responsible. It’s hard to live up to his good name at Oxford, I can tell you. He knows what he wants out of life. He does what he should do.’

Emily was suddenly caught by something in Chris’s tone, something strangely wistful and sad. She had never heard that from him before. ‘And you don’t know what you want to do?’

‘Certainly not. What normal young man of my age does? Will is unnaturally solemn. It will get him into trouble some day. I intend to take my time deciding on things. Exploring the world.’

Emily sighed. ‘At least you have the time. I feel like mine is running out.’

Chris tilted his head back, his eyes narrowed as he studied her. He looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean? You’re still in school.’

‘But ladies can’t try things, can’t take their time to decide who they are. We have to find someone to marry immediately and then our lives are set. No more exploring. No more—deciding.’

‘Oh, Emily. You’re so pretty, you’ll have no worries there. You’ll find a very good husband and have a very good sort of life.’

He thought her pretty ? Emily studied him carefully, feeling a little flustered, a little pleased and a little exasperated that he had missed her point. She almost laughed. She saw he was trying to help, to be kind, but he didn’t understand. Perhaps he couldn’t. Perhaps no man could. ‘What if being married isn’t what I want to do? Not the only thing, anyway.’

He frowned. ‘What else would you want?’

Emily felt a jolt of exasperation flash through her. ‘Oh—I don’t know!’ she cried, frustrated. She thought of Diana and how she wanted to write; Alex, and her sweetness and kindness to others. They all had so much to offer the world and no one seemed to want it. They only seemed to want women to set up nurseries and go over menus.

She remembered when she was younger and her father would take her to the office with him. When he worked, she would sit at a desk in the corner and look at the ledgers. She liked seeing how the accounts lined up, liked seeing the list of imported goods and imagining where they would go. She liked the way it all made sense.

‘Maybe I want to run a business, like my father,’ she said. ‘Or travel the world! Or invent things or raise terrier puppies. The point is, I don’t know yet. And I don’t have time to find out, as you do. Men are still young blades at twenty-five, while women are growing old and useless.’

He still looked adorably, maddeningly, puzzled. ‘But you’re a lady. Good at running a household, surely. Where would society be without that? Good at raising children, helping charities...’

Emily threw up her hands, the tennis racket she still held tumbling to the ground. ‘You just don’t understand, Christopher! It’s like speaking a different language—men and women will never decipher each other.’ She stalked away, down the pathway that led through quiet, shady stands of trees to the ornamental pond. It was usually a walk that soothed her, made her feel peaceful in nature, but today its beauty only made her feel more unsettled.

She dropped on to a wrought-iron bench near the edge of the pond and stared out at the rowboats that dotted the water. It looked like a French painting, all dappled light and hazy figures in white lazing in the warm afternoon.

She heard the rustle of footsteps and Chris sat down carefully beside her. She glanced up at him and he gave her a sweet, placating smile that surely melted hearts all the way from Oxford to the Scottish border.

‘Do you really think that is all a lady can do?’ she asked, feeling so sad. ‘Marry and do charity work?’

He glanced out at the pond for a quiet moment, as if thinking over her words. ‘It seems to be what most of the ladies I know want to do,’ he said. His smile turned mischievous. ‘Except for ladies who aren’t really ladies, of course.’

Emily had to laugh. ‘Actresses and chorus girls? Women who work in cafés?’

‘And what do you know about that?’

‘Not nearly as much as you do, I’m sure. But maybe I should be an actress.’

‘You wouldn’t be the fun sort.’ He studied her closely, until she wanted to squirm. ‘You would be some terribly serious Shakespearean tragedienne, or maybe you would sing grand Italian opera. The sort that makes me fall asleep.’

Emily shook her head. ‘I can’t carry a tune at all, I’m afraid. I got tossed out of music class. And I can’t memorise a poem to save my life. I am the despair of our literature teachers.’ She felt a pang that there was something she could not, after all, excel at, when other classes came so easily. ‘I guess it must be marriage for me after all.’

She felt a gentle touch on her hand, and, startled, she glanced down to see Chris’s fingers over hers. His touch was warm, tingling, delightful. She looked up at him to see his cut-glass handsome face was serious, watchful, even more beautiful than ever. For just that one instant, she thought he might actually see her.