A Wager Of The Heart

59. Dinner demons

:::Kent:::

When Charity jumped I felt all of my muscles tense as I fought the urge to lunge across the distance and snuff out that weasel's life. I could tell he was doing something under the table. I assumed it was much the same as Emily was doing now. I knocked into her shoulder and caused her hand to fall off of me. It seemed Charity was coping well but fear was keeping her normally radiant smile controlled. 

"You watch her like a husband watches a cheating wife." Emily said as her eyes roamed to land on my angel. I grunted and turned my gaze away slightly so I could still see Charity from the corner of my eye. "In truth," Emily continued quietly, "your entire family seem to watch her closely."

Shocked, I looked and my mother and father as well as Brandan were all watching her clandestinely. Geraldine was sitting in polite anger as her vulgar companion did or said something else to prick her temper. Bastion, I noticed a little irritably, was enraptured with the woman sitting next to him. I caught Brandan's eye and indicated Charity as I heard her cry out yet again. Brandan focused his attention on the pair and frowned. I watched him formulate and execute a plan with perfection. A trick he learned as a boy, where he appeared to accidently fling a spoonful of food across the room. He was deadly accurate as the food plopped onto the top of the weasel's head. 

I held back a smile as Kesler and several servants tried frantically to clear his head. Brandan saw no issue with laughing loudly and explaining his blunder. I shook my leg to dislodge Emily's grasp as I focused on eating for a moment. 

"You seemed unsurprised by the news that there is a bastard among our company." Emily said, certain I would be hanging on her every word as I had when I was a younger, less experienced man. "It makes me wonder if there is such a connection between you and the bastard as there is between you and I?"

I snorted and offered my first true response to her barb, "Lies and deceit do not constitute a connection." I replied angrily.

Emily smiled and moved closer to me. "I mentioned before," she reached behind me and twirled the hair at the back of my neck, "I was mistaken by my own feelings. I've missed you." She leaned close to me and whispered in my ear.

I leaned away from her and she lost her balance. "The feeling is not mutual. I'm very glad you were mistaken because I was then given time to discover the fabrication in my own feelings."

Emily laughed and readjusted herself. "How many years have you lied to yourself?"

I snapped my head in her direction and locked gazes. "More than I'd like to admit but your memory has been wiped clean from my heart. I do not care now whether you live or die."

She looked skeptically at me and still moved closer. I rolled my eyes in annoyance but she ignored me. "Then why do you appear so tense whenever I am near? You hold your body rigid because you know if you flexed even a little you would come back to me."

Another yelp from my angel drew my attention to the end of the table. All color drained from Charity's face and she looked completely at a loss as Kesler smiled evilly at her. I clenched my fists for a measure of control. I would have my moment to ensure he never lays another finger on my angel but this was not the time. 

Emily laughed and it was the tone of her laugh that caught my attention. Her gaze was snapping from me to Charity and back again. I felt a fear like I had never felt before grip my gut as an understanding smile spread across her face. "Why do you watch the bastard so intently?"

I clenched my jaw and wished, not for the first time, that I could wipe that word from the English language. I shook my head, "I do not watch her," I said coolly, closing my voice from emotion, "I watch him." It wasn't a complete lie. 

Emily snorted, the first truly genuine reaction she gave. "You cannot lie to me." She said all knowingly as she watched Charity too closely once more. "Not about this anyway. You burn for her." I opened my mouth to deny it but Emily just laughed louder. "Your parents would hardly entertain the idea of me and you pine after a bastard? That is too far, even for you."

My nerves grated at the casual use of the word and Emily's dismissal that Charity could be anything more. That she was so much more. But I knew Emily, if she continued to assume that Charity was anything more than an acquaintance she would make a target of her just to secure my affection. That was absolutely something I would not allow. 

I cleared my throat and looked distinctly at Emily. "I'm sorry to inform you of this but you are wrong. The woman is the half-sister of my darling Geraldine, whom I will marry at the end of the summer. I care for her as I would any relative of my Lady." 

Emily's confidence fell and the corners of her mouth turned down in a frown. "I was not informed of that." Emily's gaze went to the head of the table and rested briefly on the Countess. Then she smiled and resumed her earlier tricks. "You do not watcher her as a brother might watch a sister."

I ground my teeth and looked away, my annoyance would be the last evidence Emily would require to cement her belief into reality. "You never met my sister." I said pointedly. 

"I saw enough of you to count for both of you. Mayhap I will seek an audience with your pretty sister and ask what she was doing those many years ago when you were too busy warming my bed to be around her."

I growled. "Leave Amelia alone."

"Whatever you say, lover." Emily laughed again in a too familiar way.