Chapter Eight

Sebastian ushered her inside silently, shielding her frame with his body from the crowd of curious onlookers who had gathered about on the pavement outside Weatherly House. Emily did not heed his coaxing up to her private chambers and instead swerved to the left, resuming her vacant spot by the window. “Em,” he said mildly. “Perhaps you should rest.”

“It was my mother, Sebastian.” Emphatically, she perched her delightful little derriere on her floral lace cushion and turned her profile away from him. Sunlight immediately warmed the contours of her face. “She might come back.”

He was sceptical but refrained on telling her so. The surety in her own voice, of her own convictions, pricked his conscience and his soul. He was not the one to dash her hopes. Instead, he slipped his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers and leaned against the nearest wall, watching her quietly and speculatively, until he remembered that he wanted to send a servant after the woman Emily had chased down the street.  At present, he was loath to leave the dejected girl by the window but he owed her the promise he had made.

Casting her one last furtive glance, Sebastian strode down the hallway in the direction of the study he used to conduct business when he was in residence.

Sophie interjected him with as much force as a barrelling boulder hurtling towards him. In a blur of puce lace, she latched onto his arm and forcibly hauled him into an adjacent parlour room- one of the less frequented ones. This one, he fleetingly noticed, was rather pink. Garishly so- the walls were striped with it, the furniture dotted with it along with several faded flowery assemblages of tactless design. One could quite lose their accounts in such a room. “I say,” he grumbled disparagingly, ignoring the nauseatingly feminine parlour he was in and focusing instead on his injured pride at being physically manhandled by an aging woman half his size. “Unhand me, you veritable baggage.”

“Bah!” Having secured his presence within the wretchedly pink chamber, Sophie enunciated his entrapment with a heavy slam of the doors. “I am hardly assured of your availability these days for an audience. Why should I be sensitive to your physical wellbeing?”

“Because I am your grandson?”

She snorted dismissively and waved her gnarled hand about. “One can never be sure.”

“Sophie!”

“I am not, of course, saying your mother was a tramp.”

“Was she?”

She snorted again. “Who’s to know?”

“Sophie!”

The cane thumped imperatively against the thick rug lying dustily against the floor. Sebastian eyed it critically and wondered if the servants even avoided the tawdry room. “That is neither here nor there. Shall I call for some prunes?” she mused flightily.

“Gads, woman. You dragged me in here for a purpose. Spit it out- I’d like to send a man out for Emily.”

“Oh!” Sophie’s bejewelled cane thumped triumphantly again. “Emily, yes! I have to tell you something very important, my boy. First, do not bother with the prunes. I do not feel inclined for them any longer.”

Sebastian stifled the urge to curse. “I assume you were going to say something pertaining to Emily?”

“What’s that now?”

He ran his hand through the side of his dark hair, gritting his teeth in frustration. Besides the indubitable errand he had to run, he could not trust Emily not to run off again after some elusive brown-cloaked stranger. The girl was too volatile and distraught. Lord knew she could probably catch sight of a mongrel’s ragged tail and believe it to be the edge of a cloak. “Damnation, Sophie, but you are trying! I have to send men out in search of Emily’s mother-”

“Oh, posh. I’ve already done that.”

He blinked. “What?”

“What did you take me for, boy? Some dilly-minded henwit? Bah.” She swatted the air beside his elbow. “Why, I sent someone out to follow them the moment you told me what had transpired.”

“I see.”

Sophie perambulated towards an opulently pink armchair and flicked some dust from the back of it. “I suppose,” she cogitated, “it is time you knew about our Emily.”

“I know that you adopted her, took her off the streets.”

“You were young and stricken with grief. Cognitively, you were barely aware of her presence in our lives until much later and even then you only enquired about the basics of how her presence came to be.”

“There is more?” he asked, burying his hands in his pockets again. The extent of his knowledge about Emily’s early background was limited but he had never considered it lacking. Yes, she had been poor and the Weatherly’s had given her their wealth and the sanctity of their name. Beyond that there could be very little significance.

“Yes, there is more. There is much you haven’t been told and much I have not told Emily, which brings me to my next point.”

Sebastian looked at her dryly. “You may not call for prunes, Grandmother. I find myself rather interested in what you have to say.”

“The implication,” she retorted in an important voice, throwing him a disdainful glare, “that I am addle-brained is noted and ill-received. I am perfectly lucid.”

“Indeed. What were you saying?”

“Something about prunes.”

He sighed reproachfully. Truthfully, he was bringing it upon himself, taunting her so. He should know better by now not to provoke her maddening insolence. “We were discussing Emily,” he pointed out slowly. “Emily.”

“Ah, yes.” She sniffed the air curiously. “Do you smell cat urine?”

He did, but he was polite enough not to remark upon it. The creature in question was curled in a decidedly unperturbed ball of ginger fur under one repugnant settee. “Emily,” he pressed slowly.

Sophie warily stepped away from the offending odour and closer to him, wrinkling her nose. “I say, it is quite overwhelming.” At this, she squinted up at him. “Or is it you?”

God. “Sophie, I do not have all day. I am leaving for my bachelor lodgings-”

“You can’t go!” Said with such vehemence, Sebastian found himself taken aback. Sophie latched onto his arm, her fingers clawing into the folds of his immaculately groomed claret coat with an intensity that usually evaded her. “Not now! No, no. You cannot leave us, Sebastian. Not when… if what I suspect… it is unthinkable!”

“Sophie, what are you talking about?”

She shook her head. “Don’t distract me- I must tell you now and you must promise me that you never dispose of what you have learnt to Emily. Promise me, Sebastian!”

“Fine, fine, get on with it,” he muttered, disgruntled. It was most unlike Sophie to show great displays of emotion as she was now. The elderly woman seemed quite put out, remarkably disturbed, when usually she was as unflappable as a rock.

“As you know, I found Emily and her mother on the street. Emily was a pickpocket- that’s how I found her. I saw her and caught her stealing the purse of a particularly stupid man. Her mother, Joscelyn Rosse, reluctantly agreed to have tea with me that day. It was then that I learned about Emily’s father.”

“She is not an orphan, then.”

“No. Both of her parents are presumably still alive according to what happened today. Miss Rosse has never before come anywhere near Weatherly House. I believe that this is the first time she has tried to see her daughter.”

“If it was indeed her mother.”

Sophie gave him a haughty glower. “I am quite positive it was,” she told him snippily. “Their parting was a tragic one, Sebastian, one that Emily would likely never forget. It is the reason why she sat at that window for nigh two years and even now she still returns. When she thinks nobody is looking her eyes dart outside that window. Perhaps it is done merely out of habit now, but I say with all confidence that if Joscelyn Rosse was in the street today, then Emily would have seen her.”

“Very well, assuming it was her mother, what then?”

Sophie’s shoulders hunched marginally and a worried frown graced her brow. She shook her head, agitated and concerned. “I shouldn’t like to think, but one must take precautions against the worst. Emily’s father is one of those unsavoury types. Miss Rosse was under the impression that he longed to use his daughter as a monetary advantage by… placing her in a brothel.”

Sebastian felt his body twist with rage. “Is this true?”

Sophie nodded solemnly. “I believe it is. Emily does not know of this sordid fate her father had planned for her, nor do I intend for her to ever find out. The poor girl has enough strain on her already what with all the gossip. Even her friends are deceitful little strumpets. However, it is vital that this remains a secret between us, Sebastian.”

“Why are you telling me this?” he growled. He softened his tone and the spontaneous burst of fury that coagulated in his gut. He could not abide harm befalling her and it sickened him that a blood relation would utilize her body in that form. He longed to wrap his hands around whoever the unfortunate man was that sired such a wonderful creature and revel in the life that slowly dissipated from his eyes. “Surely no danger threatens her. Emily has a different last name. Even her status differs from mother.”

His grandmother pursed her lips making them resemble one of her beloved prunes. “I can only hope,” she murmured, “that this is indeed the case. However, if Miss Rosse was seen today outside the house, word could spread to the father and speculation could arise to why. It was her greatest fear that the man get his hands on Emily. It was the sole reason why she abandoned her beloved daughter into my care, I’m sure. I have all the reason to believe that Miss Rosse is fearful of something at present to have risked exposure. Once she departed Weatherly House all those years ago, she became impossible to find. It appeared that she had disappeared. I wanted to ensure that she was compensated for her grief with ample funding to secure her for life. However, she vanished. It does not bode well for us if she made an appearance again. I have a feeling, Sebastian.”

“Perhaps it is the prunes?”

Sophie gave him a dark look. “You know it is not.”

“Perhaps it is not as severe as you are making it out to be,” he sighed. He was, Sebastian realised, endeavouring to find truth in his own words. “For all we know, Emily’s father might very well be dead. Have you tried to find the man in the past?”

“Miss Rosse has been too slippery. She would not relinquish the fiend’s name so that I could put a stop to his villainy and she has been virtually invisible up until now.”

“Very well. The most I can suggest is hiring a private investigator to locate the whereabouts of this man and Miss Rosse, if she has not already been found. Until we can be certain that he is alive and still harbours nefarious intentions on Emily-”

Sophie interrupted his diatribe with a most unbecoming snort of dismissal. “I’ll not risk the chance,” she told him firmly. “We are going to leave London for a spell until we can ascertain the circumstances for Miss Rosse’s appearance.”

“I’ll not object to that notion.” The further away Emily was from his person, the better. It was torturous enduring her presence so close by. At least in the country she would be safe- from her father and from him.

“You will be joining us, of course.”

The implacability of her words made him narrow his eyes. “No. I have much to do in London-”

“Your whores can wait,” she snapped. “We need your protection. Your old chum, Sinclair, is having a sojourn in the country and has invited us to the event. Of course, it is under the pretence that he attempts to court our Emily. The invitation was extended to you. I believe the Colton chit means to take a husband this season, as well. So there. Plenty to do.”

“Absolutely not.”

“I’ve already replied in the affirmative. It’d be rude not to attend.”

“You’re mad. I am not going. You may say business called me away-”

“Good Lord, do you want that profligate rake to marry Emily?”

Sebastian almost groaned. “Sophie, I am a profligate rake.”

She thumped her cane and belligerently swung it around so that it almost collided with his skull. “No one refutes it!” Sophie bemoaned. “Regardless, you have spent little more that several hours with your family in the last two years. I am old, Sebastian. I shan’t last much longer on this earth. If you had any decency left in that filthy soul of yours, you’d allow yourself this respite to console your aging grandmother.”

“Ah, God.”

“Good boy. I knew you’d come round. We will leave tomorrow. That should give you enough time to contact that private investigator of yours.”

“And Emily? What will you say to her about our sudden departure for the country?”

Sophie wore a decidedly wolfish grin that boded great calamity for the future. “Don’t you worry about that. She knows my inclination towards hasty decisions and changes of heart. Where I go, Emily will devoutly follow.”

“She is far too trusting of you,” Sebastian remarked dryly.

“You used to be, too.” Sadly, Sophie added, “That was before your fool of a father decided to ruin all chances of your leading a happy childhood.”

The reminder of that particular ordeal served to darken his mood and make him brusque in his movements. Sebastian did not return to Emily after that. He resisted the urge to see her, to sit with her by that window and simply relish in her nearness that usually banished his shadows. It was an old habit, one he had adopted as a boy. His need of her extended as far as the shadows did. When he felt them lingering, he’d seek her out.

He didn’t now. Sebastian couldn’t trust himself not to pull her into his arms and bury himself in her warmth, her light. The temptation was too great, too overwhelming.

Jesus. It was going to be a long few days with Sinclair.