footfalls pounded outside in the corridor, and he let his arms fall, facing the door. She’d changed her mind.
And yet—
“St. John,” he greeted. “A pleasu—” His greeting immediately cut off as he took in the other man’s strained features, etched in an expression he’d seen him wear only when their friend, the late Earl of Norfolk, had died. A different worry churned in his stomach. “What is it?”
“There was an accident . . .” The viscount’s throat moved as if he struggled over the emotion caught there to make the remainder of those words.
He tensed. Everyone knew of the Kearsley curse, and it had come to fruition . . . again. Charles took a quick step toward the other man. “Lady Sylvia—”
“She is fine.” His friend doffed his hat, and twisted the brim in his hands.
She is fine. “Thank God . . .” Except St. John arriving here in his cloak and hat and speaking those words meant . . .
Someone else was hurt.
Someone who had sent the other man fleeing here to Charles. Someone he cared about.
His knees knocked together, and he wrapped a hand over the curved back of the settee, gripping it so hard the carved wood dug into his palms.
No.
Charles shook his head, willing the other man to silence, edging away to ward off what was coming. What he couldn’t hear. Because nothing could happen to her. She was all that was joy and genius, and his happiness and very existence were inextricably twined to hers. “Mm. Mm.” There was no world for him without her in it.
St. John nodded slowly, his expression pained. “Someone threw a brick through the Mismatch Society window.” No. Charles continued shaking his head, but St. John’s words continued anyway. “Emma was struck.”
A keening wail better suited to a wounded beast spilled from Charles’s lips, and he caught his head in his hands, ripping at his hair. And he tried to breathe. To speak. And failed successfully at both, so that only a garbled combination of raspy, incoherent words left him. “Is she . . . is she . . . ?”
“Unconscious when I came here. Her brothers carried her home. I don’t know—”
Whatever the rest of those words his friend intended to utter, Charles didn’t stick around to listen.
He took off running.
Chapter 24
THE LONDONER
QUESTIONS CONTINUE!
Who was the father, brother, guardian, or worse . . . former betrothed responsible for the attack on Miss Gately?
M. FAIRPOINT
Emma’s parents had always been contrary.
When she’d wished to gallivant freely over the countryside, they’d insisted she attend her studies.
The moment she’d devoted herself to more scholarly pursuits, they’d insisted her interests were too rebellious.
It only made sense that the moment she discovered she was head over heels in love with Charles, they should resist her relationship with him.
It was also why, even with her head throbbing and the world still more than slightly unsteady, she burst into the drawing room to demand the meeting they’d refused.
Her parents, locked in one another’s arms, immediately broke apart, both of them flushed and more than slightly disheveled. “Really?” she demanded. “This is how you’re spending your time?” Emma locked her gaze on the mural overhead, ultimately knowing the image of her mother righting her neckline was one that would burn her eyes and sear her mind forevermore.
“Why are you out of bed?” her father asked in a display of his usual bluster and concern that would have warmed her heart if she weren’t outraged out of her damned mind with him and the traitorous woman beside him. “It is late, and you are unwell.”
“I am fine,” she gritted out. At least enough to take umbrage to everything Isla had shared the moment she’d awakened a short while ago. Emma stalked over, her strides too quick, and she made herself adjust them. “You are forbidding me from seeing Charles?” she demanded, ignoring the way her head pounded. The discomfort was easy to forget when presented with this . . . nonsense.
Her mother rushed forward and wrapped an arm about Emma’s waist. “Come.” She guided her over to the same seat where all that ugly sin had just been committed between Emma’s parents.
She’d burn that sofa herself before sitting in it again. Emma folded her arms. “Now?” she snapped. “Now is the time you opt to let Father have control of a situation?”
“I beg your pardon?” her papa grumbled.
Both women ignored him.
“Now is as good a time as any,” her mother said. “Given that you were nearly killed.”
Her father frowned.