Chapter 5
Emily listened to Camden’s voice fade away, to the feminine giggles and male guffaws that accompanied his escape. Her shoulder ached where the pole had hit her. And yet that was the least of her immediate injuries. Sighing, she resisted the urge to run outside to follow her friends, who would not welcome her for a minute if they realized what she had done. Her heart wasn’t in attending the party, anyway. She knew she would recover. But not tonight. After all, she had just learned Camden loved another woman. Emily wasn’t sure why she didn’t feel worse.
Where had Michael disappeared to? She couldn’t drag the tent off by herself, but he wasn’t anywhere to be seen when she heard Lucy calling her from the bridge.
Cross, her shawl scant protection against the wind, she emerged from the collapsed tent to ask whether Lucy had seen where Michael had gone when the look on her friend’s face stopped her. “The reading was a disaster. Please spare me the humiliation of explaining how it went. Camden and I are a lost cause. I hope it rains basins of freezing water on his head. Or on mine. Obviously I need something to awaken me from my dreams.”
“Whatever happened here?” Lucy whispered with the wide-eyed shock of a person who had stumbled into a battlefield and not merely across a bridge.
“The wind blew everything over while I was inside. My brother was here one moment; in the next he abandoned me. Have you seen the rogue? Is he flirting with a lady in the garden?”
Lucy glanced over her shoulder. “He was talking to a gentleman I’d never met before. I didn’t want to interrupt and get us all in trouble, but I’m afraid it’s too late. Your father is at the party, Emily. He was looking for you and Michael everywhere. He’s swilling champagne like water, and even asking the footmen if you’d been seen.”
“You didn’t tell him anything?”
“I raced off across the ballroom before he could spot me. I heard him questioning my father, and he’s disappeared, too. There’s something unusual about this evening, Emily, and I am not referring to our innocent deception.”
“The stars are misaligned tonight.”
Lucy’s voice lowered to a quaver. “My father’s new political allies are beginning frighten me.”
“All political men are frightening.” Emily shrugged, distracted as the wind whisked a tarot card through the grass and into the brook. “But why are they here tonight?” Dragging Lucy by the hand, she slipped down the embankment to catch the fleeting card. It sailed past her reach, the taunting image suspended in a cold moonbeam.
Passion
She would recover that card if it took an hour. It meant something, although exactly what was no longer clear. It could turn out to be a memento of the only kiss she would ever know. She released Lucy’s hand and snagged the corner of the card. Oh—and there, in an updraft, went Virtue.
She chased that one until she lost sight of it. Whether it was worth the price of her wet skirt and stockings, only Michael could decree.
She stood, at least twenty cards collected in her basket, but double that number escaping like prisoners determined to inflict the acts of fate to which they had been assigned. “I promised my brother I would return every single one of these cards intact.”
Lucy stared as one soared over her head. “Some of them are already sailing downstream. There are a few flying like butterflies toward the house. They look ever so enchanting. The guests are going to think we had trained cards unleashed for their entertainment. They’re like party favors. Besides, Michael will forgive you. Your father won’t.”
The Past flew beyond her grasp. She watched it go with no regrets; she had the most unexciting life in the annals of English history. But along with it went its reverse, the Future. And that indicated that Emily might be trapped in the tumultuous present she had created, a fate she was not about to settle for.
Another card tangled in her hair. Lucy plucked it free, her expression amused as she lifted it into the moonlight. “What is it?” Emily asked impatiently.
“‘Secrets.’”
Emily shrugged, snagged the card, and tucked it securely in her basket.
“You were looking at it upside down.”
“It still reads ‘Secrets,’ even in French.”
“For all the good it does.”
“I can’t argue that.” Emily sighed in surrender. “Is Iris still waiting for me at the tower?”
“I assume so. Emily, listen to me. I’ll walk you there in case anyone approaches you, and then I’m rushing back to the party. What shall I tell your father if he confronts me? I can’t hide from him all night. I thought you said he had passed out before you left your house.”
“I thought he had. Tell him the truth—that I was here and meant to attend the ball but felt unwell. Tell him Michael took me home.”
“But what if he encounters Michael first?”
“Michael will—”
“Who is it I have to encounter now?” Michael said, materializing from the other side of the bridge.
Emily wheeled around, her basket knocking her brother on the hand. “I’ve gathered up half of the cards, but the others escaped. Please don’t hate me. It was out of my control. Lucky seven turned out to be a rogue.”
“Don’t go on like a goose,” he said, backing away to dismantle what remained of the tent in quick, confident motions, as if he could do so in his sleep. Perhaps he had at war. “Why are you in the water?”
“I’m gathering up all the cards.”
“Never mind the cards.” He took a long look at her. “Are you all right?”
She bit her lip. “Honestly? My heart is shattered. Please don’t make me talk about it, or I’ll cry, and then the dye will wash off my skin if the rain doesn’t do it. I spilled the potion on the wrong man. Thank goodness it was only a few drops. It felt peculiar. The flush still hasn’t gone away—”
He was staring at her with a bewildered expression that touched a place inside her that felt as tender as a fresh wound. “I’m asking about the tent, actually. Did any of the poles hit you on the head when it collapsed?”
“No.”
“Go with Lucy, then. I’ll hide the tent in the bog in the woods.”
“The chairs and tables need to be returned to the house.”
“Never mind the furniture,” Lucy said, shivering in her thin green silk gown. “Nobody will ever miss it.”
“I’ll meet you and Iris in the woods behind the tower with the horses, as we planned,” Michael said, rolling the canvas onto the poles.
“If you see Father first—”
“I’ll deal with him, Emily. You stood up for me often enough in the past.”
She nodded uncertainly, letting Lucy drag her to the bridge.
“Camden is a horse’s bum,” he said under his breath. “And that’s an insult to the horse.”