“I don’t believe you.”
“The earl is a hardened soldier,” Mr. Mason pointed out. “What on earth were you thinking, involving yourself with someone like him? Did you imagine yourself clever? Did you imagine yourself discreet? How could you presume you would never be found out?”
Emeline began to shake. Her legs felt rubbery, as if they might give way, and she stumbled over to the chair she hadn’t wanted to use. She eased herself down.
What to do? What to do?
Vicar Blair riffled the papers again. “Apparently, you’ve been well paid for your whoring. So far, you’ve received a new wardrobe, both for yourself and your sisters. Next, you’re to receive a house and a stipend and a—”
“Stop it!” she cried. “I wasn’t like that!”
“Wasn’t it? When a female spreads her legs for a man, then is paid for her efforts, it is prostitution, Emeline. It’s no different than if you’d been lurking in the shadows at Covent Garden, and he’d tossed you a few pennies when he was through.”
The sheriff added, “Whores are hanged for less.”
Ashamed and mortified, she stared at the floor. She realized that she ought to be refuting the allegations, but Vicar Blair was so sure. She couldn’t guess how to temper his opinion. In his view, she’d already been tried and convicted.
And what purpose was to be gained by contradicting Mr. Mason’s version of events? Emeline had sinned with Nicholas Price. She had lain with him outside marriage. She had dishonored herself with immoral behavior. All of their claims were true, so how could she insist otherwise? It seemed futile.
“I would like to contact Lord Stafford,” she said. “I ask that I be allowed to write to him.”
The vicar scowled. “Write to him? What for?”
“He would tell you how it actually was between us.”
“We know how it was,” Vicar Blair sneered.
Mr. Mason inquired, “Have you seen the London paper?”
“No, when would I have?” she replied.
He had a copy of it, and he whipped through the pages, searching for the one he wanted. As he located it, he shoved it in her face.
She tried to skim the article he’d indicated, but as she noted the subject, her vision blurred, and she couldn’t make out the words.
“The earl has been called back to active duty,” Mr. Mason explained. “He won’t be able to return to London in August for his wedding as he’d planned.”
“So?” she mumbled. “How would that concern me?”
“He has moved up the date. It’s to be held next Friday.”
Vicar Blair snickered. “Do you really suppose, Emeline, that he’d care to hear from you just now?”
He’s moved up the date? He’ll be wed on Friday?
After Lady Veronica had visited Stafford, Emeline had understood that he was destined to marry the beautiful, rich girl, but she hadn’t truly believed it would ever transpire. In some silly feminine part of her brain, she’d assumed he wouldn’t proceed, that he would recognize his mistake and come back to her.
Instead, he’d flitted off to London and decided to wed earlier than previously scheduled. Much earlier than scheduled.
Her shaking increased, and she was trembling so violently that she could barely remain in her chair.
“I should like to see my sisters,” she said.
“That won’t be possible,” Vicar Blair responded. “Considering the gravity of your conduct, I have determined you to be an unfit guardian. They have been taken from you.”
“What? No!”
“Such young, impressionable children have no business being raised by you.”
“I want to see them! Where are they?”
“Currently, they’ve been conveyed to the poorhouse. Ultimately, they will be remanded to an orphanage in London.”
Emeline was so enraged that she jumped up and lunged at Blair, but this time, Sheriff Pratt was prepared for an outburst. For such a large man, he reacted very quickly. He grabbed her arms and forced her to her knees so she was prostrate in front of the vicar, as if begging his forgiveness.
“Harlot!” Vicar Blair charged. “Harlot be damned!”
Exuding wrath, he rose and loomed over her as Emeline hissed and wrestled against Sheriff Pratt’s tight grip.
“I demand to speak with my sisters!” she shouted. “I demand to contact Lord Stafford.”
“I am disgusted to the marrow of my bones,” the vicar shouted back. “Get her out of my sight.”
He stormed from the room, as Emeline struggled to break free and chase after him, but the sheriff was much too strong.
Though she scratched and fought, he bound her wrists with a rope, then he wrapped a bandana over her mouth to stifle any cries for help.
He hustled her out the rear door to a waiting carriage. He picked her up and tossed her into it, then he climbed in after her.
The driver had anticipated their arrival, and he cracked the whip, the horses lurching away at a fast clip.
In an instant, Emeline vanished from Stafford, and it just so happened that the stable yard and park were empty of onlookers so there were no witnesses to what had occurred. She might have been a ghost, disappeared into thin air.
Jo trudged to the vicarage, wishing she had somewhere else to go. She was so miserably unhappy, and in light of some of the awful moments she’d experienced in her life, she hadn’t imagined she would ever again be so dejected. Yet apparently, there was no end to the low points that could arrive.
Stephen Price had been gone for two weeks. He’d burst across the sky like a comet, and in the process, he’d wrecked everything.
After her husband’s death, when she’d moved to Stafford, she’d carefully constructed a world for herself so she could survive the humdrum years. That world was painted in boring shades of tan and gray. Nothing exciting was supposed to occur.
She was a woman who’d lusted after much, but who had never been able to grab hold of what she truly wanted. She’d learned to settle; she’d learned to do without.
Stephen had shaken up her staid existence, and she felt as if she’d been
