To Catch an Earl - Kate Bateman Page 0,74
scolded for laughing too loudly, for dancing too enthusiastically. For revealing they had a working brain. Part of Emmy’s delight in thieving had come from the knowledge that she was subverting every expectation. Breaking all the rules.
Except breaking the rules came with a high price if you were caught.
She glanced around, and for a brief, panicked moment she thought she’d forgotten the way, but then the trees thinned out and she saw the clearing she’d been seeking.
The ivy-clad ruins were as picturesque as she remembered. Grey stones, green with moss, were interspersed with later portions of crumbling red brick. Emmy dodged a patch of stinging nettles and rounded a waist-high wall to enter a roofless nave, the far end of which contained a circular window with two arches but no glass. No wooden beams or rafters remained. Doorways on what would have been the upper floors opened onto nothing. A set of crumbling stone steps led up to thin air.
Once, this had been a proper church, full of color and life. Emmy imagined it decorated as if for a wedding, with a roof, and pews, flowers, and candles. Rays of sunlight would pierce the stained-glass windows and sprinkle their jewel colors on the white cloth of the altar. A man would be waiting for her at the end of the aisle with a kind-faced priest ready to join them in holy matrimony. Emmy would walk forward, jittery with excitement and nerves. The man’s back would be facing her, his shoulders broad, but she knew his identity with a bittersweet certainty. Alex Harland would turn and smile at her as if he were the luckiest man in the world—
She tripped over a protruding stone and stifled a curse. Such foolish, impossible dreams. She turned and pasted a bright smile on her face as Harland stepped up behind her.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“It used to be an abbey, built by Cistercian monks. It fell into disrepair in the 1500s when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and took all their wealth for himself.” She shot him a glance over her shoulder. “Just think, all that social and political upheaval just because he wanted to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and marry Anne Boleyn.”
Harland’s lips curved upwards. “Cherchez la femme.”
She raised her brows.
“It’s a French saying,” he said. “Surely your grandmother uses it? It means whenever there’s a problem, or a man behaving stupidly or out of character, there’s usually a woman at the heart of it.”
She shot him an indignant glare. “Oh, that’s typical—blame the woman! Men can make fools of themselves perfectly well on their own, without any help from us.”
His expression hardened. “How very true, Miss Danvers.”
Chapter 31.
Alex tamped down the wave of self-directed anger that Emmy’s innocent comment had roused. He was no better than fat old King Henry, was he? In imminent danger of making a fool of himself over her. She’d twisted him up so much, he could barely distinguish right from wrong, madness from reason. Passion from love.
No. Not love. He wasn’t even going to consider that dreadful possibility. His attraction to her was lust, nothing deeper.
As if the very heavens disputed his denial, a rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. Alex glared up at the overcast sky, then back at the tumbling ruins. No doubt a poet like Byron or Shelley would think the place was wonderfully romantic. It was certainly picturesque, in a gloomy, gothic kind of way. All it needed was some brooding, fever-browed lover stomping around, tearing his hair out and howling for his lost love.
He repressed a snort. He wasn’t such a fool. That was why he’d refused to travel in the carriage: pure self-preservation. He hadn’t trusted himself to be confined in such an intimate space with his prisoner for hours on end. He’d have started to sympathize with her.
He’d have made love to her again.
She was a siren, luring unsuspecting idiots like himself to their downfall. The French would call her a femme fatale—a woman fatal to his sense of reason. There was an enchanting sense of mischief about her, a playfulness that reminded him of a sprite or a fairy.
Alex cast another glance upwards, appealing to the heavens to deliver him from pert young women. He didn’t hold out much hope of a positive response. He’d have more luck asking the devil for assistance in controlling one of his own. Except he suspected even Old Nick would find Emmeline Danvers too much of a handful.