Never Land the First Fish

Chapter Thirty-One, Part 2

The interment took place immediately after the service, and Maddox left with his brothers and the other men of the family to carry the coffin out to the graveside. Lady Chirbury—the Dowager Lady Chirbury, now—led the women out to the carriages that would take them up to Longford Court.

Emily was one of those who elected to walk, and she was unsurprised when Maddox caught up with her halfway along the path between the village and the house.

They walked hand in hand for a while, until Maddox whisked Emily behind a tree and kissed her as if they had been separated for months. She lost herself in the kiss, her knees weakening until they both sank to their knees. Then she felt his tears wet on her cheeks, and leaned back against the trunk of the tree until she was sitting, and held him as he put his head on her chest and cried.

By the time the storm was over, the last laggards had passed along the path. "He is really gone," Maddox said. "I threw a clod of earth on his coffin and it hit me."

"You will miss him," Emily said, the words sounding inadequate even as she said them.

"It's more selfish than that," Maddox admitted. "I've wandered the world, but I've always been able to come home. And now my father is gone, and it won't be home any more. It will be my brother's house. Mother is going to move in with Daisy, and Longford Court won't be home any more. I'll be able to visit, I suppose, but it won't be the same."

Emily, who had been living in hired rooms for most of her adult life, thought about the Rookberry place in Brazil. It had been a haven when she was a child, but she had left it long ago.

"What would you say to a manor in the country somewhere, Emily? A small one. Somewhere here in Gloucester or maybe Somerset."

Emily gulped. "You mean stay here? In England?" Her heart quailed at the thought.

"Good God, no," Maddox replied. "No! Not to stay. Just somewhere of our own to come back to between trips. Somewhere we can leave a few trunks. Somewhere we can go to be by ourselves when visiting relatives gets too much."

He warmed to the theme. "It doesn't have to be in England. What do you say to France? Or Italy?"

"What do you say to Brazil?" she retorted.

Maddox surprised her. "Yes, to Brazil, my love, if that is what you want. As long as you are there. As long as we have a place of our own that we can return to between trips." He pulled her close as they walked, and slipped his arm around her. "We could have two; one in your family's part of the world and one in mine. Don't you ever get sick of living out of trunks? A place of our own, Emily."

The pang of yearning was unexpectedly strong. Before meeting Maddox, Emily had long since given up dreaming of a home, a husband, children. One of her first tutors had insisted that she must choose between music and love, and all her experience since had convinced her it was true. Until now. Almost, she told Maddox what she had decided, but his tears for his father were still drying on his cheeks.

She temporised. "This isn't a good time to talk about it, Maddox. You are grieving."

"This is an excellent time to talk about it. My family is not dragging you off all over the place, helping with this, supporting that." He stopped on the edge of the woods, looking up at the house and then stepping in front of Emily and grasping her forearms.

"Emily, dearest, my love. I want to marry you. If you insist, I shall go on being your lover. I love you so much, that I will have you on any conditions you care to set. But I want to be your husband. What do I have to do to convince you to say 'yes'? Promise to live in Brazil? I'll do it. Promise to follow you all over the world while you enchant audiences with your music? Absolutely. Just tell me what you want, darling."

The words rushed into her head. I want to be six years younger. I want to be of the same class as you. I want not to be afraid that you will abandon me.

As if he had heard her, Maddox said, "I don't care about the age difference. Your blood is as good as mine, and better, from what I can tell. Your grandmother was next best thing to royalty in India, and your grandfather may have been a rotten excuse for a human being, but he was an earl. And the man everyone knows as your father is a baron."

"That's not the way the English see things," Emily warned.

"Have my family treated you poorly, darling? Have you taken them in dislike?" Maddox sounded anxious.

Emily had to agree that—apart from his eldest brother's initial disdain—she had been well accepted by the Chirburys. She opened her mouth to say what she needed to, but he kept talking.

"Then no one else matters. And we don't have to spend any time with the English ton. I don't like them either. Will you think about it, at least?"

She had time to nod before one of Maddox's nephews shouted from the path up to the house. "Uncle Maddox!"

He raced down the hill towards them. "Mother told me to find you, Uncle Maddox. They need you at the house. They're going to read the Will."

"You go ahead," Emily told Maddox.

"I'll walk with Aunt Emily," the nephew said, and offered his arm.

Emily remembered the boy's name as she accepted it. "Thank you, Stephen."

Maddox gave her an abstracted smile. "I'll look foryou afterwards."