innocent! I risked everything to aid you because I believed your cause to be just!’
Max opened his mouth and shut it. Then he tried again. ‘I—I beg your pardon, Miss Whitmore, but I—’
‘Oh, yes. You may well beg my pardon, sir. You may well beg my forgiveness!’
‘Miss Whitmore, please, I beg of you, I am quite at a loss—’
‘But it is not my forgiveness you should seek!’
‘Miss Whitmore—’
‘I found your letter, sir! I found it, and I read it!’
Oh.
Max took an involuntary step back.
‘You read it,’ he echoed.
‘Yes! I did!’ the lady cried. ‘And perhaps that was wrong of me, but the way you have deceived me—had I not taken such a liberty, I might never have known!’
Max blinked helplessly. ‘But—but you can’t mean that you believe it. It is a tapestry of falsehoods.’
‘Is it? Then why did you not tell me what it contained?’ Miss Whitmore demanded.
A strand of hair had come loose from her bonnet, Max noticed. Absurdly, he longed to brush it aside from her face.
‘I wished to spare you the scandalous nature of the details of my situation,’ Max said. ‘A lady such as yourself—’
‘Have you no shame?’ Miss Whitmore burst out. ‘How could you? To your own cousin, my lord? She was a girl—of no more than fifteen!’
Max rubbed his mouth and cheek with one hand, his heart racing. How had this come to pass? Everything was going horribly wrong. ‘Miss Whitmore, I assure you, there is not a modicum of truth in that entire letter, it is a fabrication from beginning to end!’
Her eyes were bright. Shining with tears, he realized with growing distress.
‘If that were true, how could they blackmail you? If the story is a fabrication, why did you leave?’
‘Miss Whitmore, you must understand—’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I have been far too understanding, it would seem.’
At a loss, Max tried to think of anything he might say to change her mind, to no avail.
‘Good day to you, Mr. Milton,’ the lady said with bitterness. ‘And farewell.’
Turning from him, she took her friend’s arm and made for the door.
‘Miss Whitmore!’ he called.
She stopped and turned back to fix him with her black-eyed glare.
‘Do not contact me,’ she said. ‘We shall never meet again.’
Chapter 15
As soon as Abraham closed the landau’s door, Emilia burst into tears.
She could hear Alice murmured to her but nothing her companion said penetrated the turmoil of Emilia’s thoughts.
‘The truth will be known of your detestable seduction of Miss Emery, sir. You shall not ruin a young lady’s virtue with such violence unpunished.’
The words of the letter had become embossed on the walls of Emilia’s mind. Memories of Charlotte as a girl, when Emilia was her tutor, rose unbidden. Her innocence. Her easy laughter. That Maximilian Emery had acted in such a foul way—that he had destroyed the young girl’s innocence so horribly—
Pressing one gloved hand to her eyes, Emilia wept even harder.
The carriage rolled through the loud London streets, and Emilia was glad of the noise to drown out the sound of her own grieving.
Alice sat beside her, holding Emilia’s other hand and petting it, her voice full of concern. ‘Emilia, you must quiet yourself, you shall make yourself ill,’ she said fretfully.
But Emilia could not quiet herself. The tears flowed from her eyes and her breathing came in gasps.
‘I thought him so noble,’ she sobbed.
‘As did I, my dear,’ Alice said. ‘You must not blame yourself.’
As they travelled on, Emilia attempted to regain some measure of composure, pressing a handkerchief to her nose. Alice produced another handkerchief and dabbed Emilia’s cheeks.
Needing air, Emilia pulled at the curtain and then began to struggle with the door's handle.
‘Emilia, you don’t mean to open the carriage whilst it is still going, surely!’
‘Air,’ Emilia said miserably. ‘I cannot breathe.’
Alice used the handle of her parasol to knock sharply on the ceiling of the carriage.
A moment later the vehicle stopped and Alice reached across Emilia to open the door. Abraham almost was not in time to assist Emilia as she hurled herself from the landau’s interior.
Breathing raggedly, with her hands pressed to her ribs, Emilia struggled to regain a sense of calm and equilibrium.
They had stopped one street down from Chesham Place and the Whitmore townhouse, she saw as she leaned against Alice. There was a man at the door.
‘Alice, look,’ Emilia managed.
‘Twas the debt collector from a few days before. Mr. Snell.
Dratted man, Emilia thought, although seeing him had the fortuitous benefit of causing her breathing to slow and thereby lessen her