The Passions of Emma
The Outsider
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
THE PASSIONS OF EMMA . Copyright © 1997 by Penelope Williamson. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
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A Time Warner Company ISBN 0-7595-8102-9A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1997 by Warner Books.
First eBook edition: April 2001
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Thank you, Helene Tessler, of the Bristol Historical Society for your help in bringing the Bristol, Rhode Island, of 1890 to life.
And thank you, Lindsay Casablanca, for all your valuable research, and for being such a dear friend. It’s not often a gal can find a kindred spirit who shares a passion for Giants baseball, shopping at Saks, and expensive French restaurants all in one person.
And thank you, Kristin Hannah, Frances Jalet-Miller, and Claire Zion, for your insightful critiques of the manuscript. You not only showed me where I went wrong, but offered brilliant suggestions on how I could make it right. I truly, honestly, no-doubt-about-it couldn’t have done it without you.
And thank you, Tracy Grant and Catherine Coulter, for being there through countless lunches and coffees, listening to me whine endlessly about how
hard
this book was to write, and all the while politely refraining from telling me to shut up and just do it.
hard
this book was to write, and all the while politely refraining from telling me to shut up and just do it.
And, finally, thank you to Aaron Priest and Larry Kirshbaum for believing.
Bristol, Rhode Island
April 1890
April 1890
E
mma Tremayne felt their stares like slaps on bare skin. She was so shy that simply being looked at was a torment, although she ought to have been used to it. She was a Tremayne, after all, one of the wild and wicked and outrageously rich Tremaynes. And she was beautiful—or so she had been told all of her life.
mma Tremayne felt their stares like slaps on bare skin. She was so shy that simply being looked at was a torment, although she ought to have been used to it. She was a Tremayne, after all, one of the wild and wicked and outrageously rich Tremaynes. And she was beautiful—or so she had been told all of her life.
She had never liked being out in society, but she was a girl who knew her duty and usually tried her best to do it. She had come to this last fox hunt of the season because it was a tradition among the Great Folk of Bristol, and the Tremaynes tended to take special care of Great Folk traditions. “You are our last hope now,” her mother had reminded her only that morning.
So she had come, for Mama and the family. That and because she loved the hunt. Well, not actually the hunt—it was the riding she loved. Galloping full tilt across plowed fields, through red deer grass and woods of birch and pine. Over stone walls and brambled hedges, hurling herself head-on toward that one instant in time when her horse left the ground and she could be weightless with freedom.
At the moment, though, she was standing firmly on the gallery of her cousin’s farmhouse. Her wide-open gaze took in the restless horses and yelping dogs, the master’s scarlet coat and all the buff
breeches and black habits and black silk top hats. She had known these people all her life, yet she was reluctant to go out into the yard and join them. But when she thought about the wild ride to come, she felt a surge of giddy and shameless pleasure.
breeches and black habits and black silk top hats. She had known these people all her life, yet she was reluctant to go out into the yard and join them. But when she thought about the wild ride to come, she felt a surge of giddy and shameless pleasure.
She saw the Alcott brothers at the edge of the yard, near the gate, astride a pair of matching bay geldings. She had forgotten how alike in looks the brothers were. Both with those long narrow faces and long narrow noses, topped with shocks of light brown hair.
Geoffrey sat his horse easily but very upright, elegant in his black bowler hat and neatly tied white stock. Stuart slouched in his saddle, looking both dashing and decadent. But that had always been the way of Stu. He hadn’t been home in over seven years, and she was so pleased to see him that she imagined herself lifting her skirts and running down into the yard, shouting his name. Seven years ago she might have done such a thing, even with everyone watching, but it would hardly be proper now.
No, she would never have done such a thing, even as a child. The Emma Tremayne of her imaginings had always been a much braver, more daring girl.
Geoffrey lifted his hand to her, and she smiled, although she didn’t wave back. Geoffrey Alcott, whom she had seen only last Wednesday, and whom all the world, or at least all of Bristol, thought of as her beau. As the man she would marry, except that he hadn’t come around to asking her yet.
They had danced together twice at the Christmas Ball, though, and at midnight he had taken her arm and walked with her out onto the balcony—to see the stars, he’d said. When she’d laid her hand on the railing, he’d covered it with his own, and she’d thought she could feel the heat of his palm even through the silk of their dancing gloves. Their breaths wreathed their faces like veils, and they had looked at each other, not at the stars. She’d thought he would ask her then, but he hadn’t. Afterward she couldn’t decide if she was disappointed or relieved.
Now Geoffrey was staring at her with his mouth pulled tight, and she wondered what she had already done this morning to make him frown at her so.
She gathered up the heavy, trailing black kersey skirt of her riding habit and walked down into the yard. A man wearing a black pea coat and a slouch hat brought up her horse. The man’s hat concealed his face in shadow, but it didn’t matter, for she didn’t really look at him. Not even when she accepted his boost up onto the back of her skittish roan mare.
She wrapped her leg around the near pommel and adjusted her skirts. The saddle leather felt cold and slippery. The mare bucked and snorted, shaking her head, and that was when the man reached up and grabbed Emma’s ankle.
His fingers pressed hard into the soft leather of her boot. A strangeness and something breath-stopping, near to panic, swamped her. She stiffened, making a sound that was half cry, half gasp.
“Your girth is loose,” he said. “And splendid little miss though you are, surely, if some kind soul like myself doesn’t tighten it, it’s arse over teakettle you’ll be come meeting the first fence.”
His rough words shocked her less than did the roughness of his voice. It had an Irish lilt to it, but it was harsh and raspy, barely above a whisper. Menacing, somehow.
He had already let go of her ankle to lift the saddle flap and hitch up the girth straps. They were large and square, his hands, and battered.
She stared at the top of his slouch hat, at the way his hair hung long and ragged over the collar of his coat. Slowly, he lifted his head. For a moment longer the brim of his hat still shaded his face, and then she was looking into a pair of startling green eyes.
His face matched his hands. A white scar thin as a razor rip slashed from his right eye down across his cheekbone. His nose was crooked, bent slightly to the left. And he bore a scar on his throat as well. A thick purple welt.
I’m sorry
, she almost said, and then realized how foolish that would have sounded, since she had nothing to be sorry for. If anyone should be sorry it was he, for touching her without her leave. And for speaking so to her, accusing her of thinking of herself as a “splendid little miss.”
, she almost said, and then realized how foolish that would have sounded, since she had nothing to be sorry for. If anyone should be sorry it was he, for touching her without her leave. And for speaking so to her, accusing her of thinking of herself as a “splendid little miss.”
But he had already turned his back and was walking away from her.
Or rather, he swaggered, she thought, and she felt wistfully envious of his confidence. He with those tough black-Irish looks. He went right up to her cousin Aloysius, who as Master of the Hunt sat his horse amid his pack of hounds. The dogs were yelping and climbing all over one another in their excitement, but they quieted as soon as that man went among them. As if his mere presence commanded obedience.
She was aware of him after that. The Alcott brothers rode over to her and she was able to smile at Geoffrey and tease him some, and she only blushed a little, for of all the people in her world she’d always been most at ease around Geoffrey. She was even able to tell Stu how pleased she was that he’d come home after being so long away. But always her gaze came back to that man.
Once, he must have felt her eyes on him, for he turned around to stare right back at her. She looked quickly away, her fingers tightening around the whalebone stock of her whip.
Her cousin Aloysius took up the copper horn that hung around his neck and blew a wailing, warbling note up into the morning sky. He was serving as her cousin’s whipper-in, the Irishman, for she noticed that he had mounted a chestnut hack and was gathering the hounds. They all rode through the gate, then, hats bobbing, saddle leather creaking, and the road rang hollow under their horses’ hooves.
April morning mist rose from the road, pale blue and cold. Frost flaked the long, salt meadow grass. The Irishman struck his boot with a leather thong, and the pack trotted on ahead. And then he was no longer there for her to watch.
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