A Companion for the Count: A Regency Romance by Britton, Sally (open ebook TXT) 📕

I must leave today—though I do not understand the need for haste. Know that I regret leaving before we could speak. Emma, write to me. Please. There is much I must tell you. I hope these words will make a beginning. You must know, they describe you perfectly.

- Luca

“He mentions being a friend. That is not a declaration of love.” She handed the letter to Josephine. “And an ambassador’s wife? Josie, I couldn’t do that. Not without more than friendship.”

“First of all,” Josie said, reading through the letter, “you would make an excellent ambassador yourself. If women were permitted to be such things. So I think you are perfectly suited to be the wife of an ambassador. Second, he says there is more he wants to tell you. What else could it be but a declaration of love?”

Emma shook her head and closed her eyes. “In the garden, he said he wanted to discuss finding an English bride with me.”

Shaking the letter at Emma with some violence, Josie spoke sternly. “Did you ever stop to think that he meant you for his bride, you ninny?”

With alarm, Emma’s eyes popped open, and she reached for the letter, afraid her friend would harm it by shaking it about. “For a moment, I hoped he did. But I convinced myself it could not be so.”

Josephine released the paper into Emma’s hand. “You are behaving foolishly, which the poets and playwrights lead me to believe means you are very much in love with the ambassador. Because you are never foolish, Emma. You are the most clear-minded person I know.”

“I haven’t felt that way in a long while.” Emma put the paper down on the table near her bed, then took up a cushion to hug to her chest. She ought to get up. With Luca gone, there was no reason to feign illness. She had only done so to avoid answering him about helping him gain an English bride.

“Papa gave you permission to write to him.” Josephine rose and pointed one elegant finger at Emma’s writing desk. “You must begin at once. I imagine it will take you many drafts before you are happy with whatever it is you wish to say. I suggest you take him to task for misleading you, then forgive him, and tell him how you feel.”

Emma’s cheeks heated. “Certainly not.”

Josephine glowered. “What are you going to say then?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at the paper on her table, the single ragged edge that meant he’d torn it from a book where some other soul had carefully sewn it together. “I need to think about things. Perhaps wait for another letter from him explaining why he left in such haste.”

Although Josephine frowned in disapproval, she did not say anything else on the matter. She changed the subject instead, and rather abruptly. Perhaps she knew that the more she pushed Emma, the more Emma only wished to push back.

Matters of the heart could not be decided through letters. Luca hadn’t confessed his feelings to her. Indeed, he had provided a list of things he wished for in a wife and stated she fulfilled those qualifications. It wasn’t quite a declaration.

Perhaps his next letter would help her understand what he really wanted from her and if she was capable of giving it.

Chapter Twenty

A fortnight in London, and Luca had not received a letter from Emma. What he had received, in terms of mail, amounted to a large stack of papers locked in his temporary desk drawer. Temporary because the house he had leased to set up as the embassy was under minor construction. So he stayed in a hotel near St. James’s Court.

Eventually, he would move into Davies Street, where number 14 Three Kings Yard would host him and future ambassadors at a most reasonable rate, considering the fashionable address. But at the moment, it wasn’t livable, with men-of-all-work coming and going at all hours.

As it was, he only visited the site that day and stood in the room meant to be a reception hall and ballroom. It was large enough to host a fashionable number of couples, and the floors were in a fine state, but the walls were atrocious.

If only he could ask Emma about them. Her opinion on decor was the only opinion that mattered to him. Unfortunately, with no encouragement to write to her, there was no way to know what she would wish. Luca had chosen a silk paper with ivory pillars and curling vines that reminded him of his home.

Torlonia was at the hotel, too. Busier than ever with his letter writing, and gaining invitations for the both of them to fine homes. The man was in something of a frenzy about the work. Something Luca didn’t understand.

The pounding of hammers in another room made Luca’s head throb, but he walked through the house slowly anyway. His papers would keep, and he needed to make decisions about the house. And about Emma.

Did he dare write her a second time?

A young man dressed in the clothing of a well-paid servant appeared in front of Luca, his expression earnest. “Lord Atella? Your Excellency?”

Luca blinked back to the present and offered a brief nod. “I am he.”

The servant held out a piece of paper. “I tried to find you at your hotel, Your Excellency. This is an urgent letter that came to my master’s house by mistake. He apologizes for the misdirection.”

Luca looked down, seeing the laboriously beautiful script had left quite a few margins for error in delivery. The only clear thing in the looping, formal handwriting was his name. “Thank you.” Luca slipped a coin into the young man’s hand, then opened the letter.

As he read the words written by a firm, sweeping hand, and signed with a flourish and kingly seal, Luca’s stomach turned. It was worse than being in a closed carriage. He read the letter again, then put it in his coat and hurried out of the