With a hoarse oath Justin reached beneath her skirt and shoved aside the crinolines until only the sheer cotton of her pantaloons and the crisp linen of his trousers separated them. She gasped against his lips as he moved against her, coaxing, enticing, until she could feel every inch of him pressed to the damp valley between her legs. A helpless whimper, half fear, half need, caught in her throat.
"Sweet Christ, this is madness!" he exploded, dumping her out of his lap.
He rose and strode to the sideboard, raking a hand through his hair. As he sloshed wine into a glass,
filling it to the rim, Emily could see his hand was shaking violently.
She climbed to her feet, smoothing her skirts with her own trembling hands. "Why?" she said softly. "Why must it be madness?"
He cocked the glass up and drained it. "Aside from the fact that we were writhing around on the dining room floor with a kitchen of gossiping servants only a careless moan away?"
She nodded, refusing to make this easy for him. "Aside from that."
Justin slammed down the glass. He knew it wasn't enough to put physical distance between them. She could bridge that with just one yearning look. He had to put emotional distance between them as well.
He had to build walls so high she could never tear them down. Even if they imprisoned his heart forever.
"You're too young for me," he said.
Emily flinched at Justin's emotionless tone. "What of Cecille? Is she too young for you as well? Isn't she just the sort of wife your mother would choose for you?"
He swung around to face her. "Cecille is neither my ward nor my responsibility. You are. If I had an ounce of brains, I'd have declared for her tonight."
She tapped her pursed lips thoughtfully. "Now, would that make her my auntie or my stepmother?"
He caught her shoulders in a frantic grip, pulling her hard against him. "This isn't a game. Do you think this is why David entrusted you to my care? So I could compromise you like some aging lech without a thought for your reputation or future? Is that what your father would have wanted?"
She met his gaze squarely. "My father is dead. You should know that better than anyone."
His hands went limp. He laughed shakily. "Yes, I should, shouldn't I?"
"Justin!" she called after him, frightened by the glimpse of hopeless despair she'd seen in his eyes.
He walked out on her, his gait oddly uneven, like that of a wounded man. Emily sank down among the ruins of the dinner party and buried her head in her arms.
* * *
Emily Claire Scarborough was a very bad girl. She had heard it whispered for years, and in some small corner of her heart she had come to believe it. So when Justin again shut himself away from her behind
a wall of cool reserve, she set out to do the one thing she did best. Misbehave.
She swaggered around in an old pair of Justin's trousers and a discarded jacket from one of Edith's
riding habits, her curls an uncombed tangle.
But Justin's calm was imperturbable. When she began to sprinkle her speech with careless profanities,
he blithely retaliated by hiring a tutor, an art teacher, and a dancing master, all of whom resigned in hysterics within the week. When she shortened the legs of all of his trousers, he summoned a tailor and ordered new ones. When she stuffed the chimney in the study with her discarded petticoats, layering the room in coal dust and soot, he moved his work to the library until the room could be aired.
To both servants and family Justin was no longer caustic, but only distant. Music stopped flowing through the darkened rooms at night. The grand piano in the drawing room gathered a thin layer of dust. The servants attributed his brief burst of good cheer and subsequent mood change to a brain fever he had suffered during his exotic travels. No one knew what to attribute Miss Emily's behavior to, although Jimmie the stablemaster, a devout Roman Catholic, was the first to whisper of demon possession. He swore he had glanced up at her lighted window at night and seen objects flying about, spurred on by curses so uproarious, they made even his worldly ears burn.
The formal apology the duchess sent Cecille and her mama after the disastrous dinner party bought their stilted forgiveness but not their silence. Gossip spread through London that the Duke of Winthrop had a madwoman on his hands, a wild creature he'd do well to shuffle off to Bedlam before she harmed someone. People scrambled for invitations to the ball the duchess was throwing to introduce Emily to society, hoping to catch even a glimpse of the duke's eccentric ward.
It was a bitterly cold January morning when the door of the study burst open and Emily marched in on him and Penfeld, trailed by a shouting contingent of servants.
Justin barely glanced up from his ledger. "Good morning, Emily." His deep voice carried over the cacophony.
"Good morning, sir," she replied evenly.
Penfeld busied himself with straightening a perfectly aligned stack of papers. Emily stood stiffly, danger smoldering in her dark eyes as her domestic captors mobbed the desk.
"Sir, I must insist on a moment of your time-"
"-cannot be tolerated, Your Grace, not for another day-"
"Ye must take action, my lord, afor she burns the 'ouse down 'round our bloomin' heads!"
Justin lifted a hand in a plea for silence. "One at a time, please."
It was Gracie who stepped forward. The other servants subsided to murmurs in deference to her age
and years of loyal service to the Connors. "I'm not one to be stickin' me nose into family affairs, Yer Grace. I know the child has a good heart an' all, but . . ."
"Get on with it, Gracie. I'm listening."
The cook honked into her apron. "I left the pie on the windowsill only for a minute, sir, and now we've no rhubarb for lunch a'tall."
A horse-faced maid poked her long nose over Gracie's shoulder. "There won't be no need for the rhubarb, sir, for 'twas the curate who was to partake of it and the girl sent him packin' by tellin' him he could take his prayer book and put it-"
At a titter from one of the younger groomsmen, she cupped her hands around Justin's ear and whispered something that made his eyes widen with interest.
"Mmm. I didn't know that was possible."
Emily rolled her eyes and tapped her toe in obvious boredom.
The valet shared by Harold, Herbert, and Harvey shoved past her. "That's nothing, Your Grace, look what she did to the hat my master bought for the ball next week."
He thrust the top hat into Justin's hand. An odd squeaking and mewling rose from its silk confines.
When Justin lifted his head, he was smiling. "She had a litter of kittens in it?"
The valet sputtered. "Of course she didn't have a litter of kittens. She hid it in the stable, where the
mama cat would be sure to find it. Why, Master Harold will be livid!"
Justin's smile spread. "Master Harold, you say?" He handed the hat back. "Return it to the stable for
now. Perhaps when Master Harold finds a suitable position, he can buy a new one. As for now, you're