I don't want to have to kiss his objections away, she realized.
For the second time, he tested the lock at the door, and she sighed. "The servants won't come in; I've left instructions for them to let me sleep undisturbed."
He jiggled the handle again. "It would be unfortunate should one come in here and see me; I'm supposed to be dead, and most of your staff knows me well," he reminded her. "And I do not have Hugh's ability to go about undetected."
She rose from her chair, crossing the room and pulling back her bedding. "I wonder that I was allowed to see you," she said, and climbed into her bed. She sat, her arms curled around her knees.
"I'm not supposed to return while you, or anyone else I knew, still lives," he admitted. As if finally convinced that her room was as secure as it could be, he joined her at the bed and sat down on the edge. His hip was only inches from her feet, and she fought the urge to wriggle her toes beneath warm, firm muscle. "I have barely begun my training; I shouldn't have come back to Earth until another century had passed."
Her eyes widened. "Did you break the rules? Will you be tossed out like the demons, or a fallen angel?" The thought that he would be punished for helping her made her chest ache.
He grinned and dipped his head, and she could tell he was trying not to laugh. "No, Michael bade me to come. In any case, there is no punishment for a Guardian. Falling is simply making the choice to reverse the transformation. If a Guardian chooses to leave the corps before the first one hundred years, then he Ascends and waits for judgment. After the hundred years, he can either return to Earth and live out the remainder of his life or Ascend."
As a reward for service, it left much to be desired. "If you chose to come back, everyone you knew would be gone," she said sadly.
He gave a short nod. "From what I understand, most who choose to Fall decide not to return." He glanced up at her face, sucked in a breath as if she'd hit him. "Don't look like that—it's not worth your tears. I'm fortunate to be alive at all, and becoming a Guardian is an opportunity I never could have dreamed of," he said gently.
She buried her face in the cradle of her knees and waited until the burning behind her eyelids stopped. Finally, she raised her head and propped her chin on her fist. "You might like to know that your sister Elizabeth was married six months ago to Lord Ashcom."
"Oh?" He lifted an eyebrow, his tone bland. "My mother must have been pleased with such an advantageous match. They did not even wait to come out of mourning for me."
Death had apparently not softened his feelings toward his family. "I believe she will have a first advantageous grandchild very soon," Emily said with an arch smile and was rewarded as he feigned a scandalized expression.
"Hardly appropriate behavior for a lady!" he replied, and his sarcasm was not lost on Emily. His family had always insisted on respectability, had disapproved of Anthony for his profession, and yet it had likely been his sister's impropriety that had netted her a viscount. His family would never see the hypocrisy; Elizabeth's actions had gained a peer and access to a modest fortune. It mattered little to them that a physician was a respectable position in society; Anthony would have been paid for his services. His attempts to secure himself a comfortable living had relegated him to trade in their lofty view, no better than a merchant.
But it hardly signified now.
She opened her mouth to tell him so and was surprised to find his countenance overspread with a deep blush.
As if embarrassment had congealed on his tongue, he said stiffly, "Allow me to apologize, Lady Emily. I do not mean to suggest that your behavior has ever been less than appropriate, nor lowered your status in my eyes."
She stared at him, puzzled, until she recalled what he had just said of his sister. Then she burst into laughter.
"Oh, Anthony!" she said when she could manage the words. She wiped tears from her lashes with shaking fingers. "You of all people—" A giggle erupted, and she clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle the girlish laugh.
He watched her, his blush fading, replaced by the confident teasing of a long-time friend. "You were rather shameless."
Her giggles ceased as mortification struck, sobering and cold. She sighed. "You don't know the extent of my shamelessness, Anthony." She pleated the hem of her nightgown with nervous fingers, studying the wrinkles the folds left in the linen. She couldn't bear to look at him, to see the censure in his blue eyes as she admitted, "I didn't wait to mourn for you, either. I didn't even wait until I'd heard news of your death—within two weeks of your leaving for Spain I was in another man's bed."
She felt his stillness, his tension. She dared a glance at his face. He was looking blindly at his hands; a muscle in his jaw flexed, his chiseled lips held firmly together, as if he didn't trust himself to immediately speak. A flurry of emotions passed over his features, and those that she recognized twisted in her belly and made her regret her admission: hurt, jealousy, surprise.
His voice was hoarse. "Are you looking to me for absolution?"
"No." She took a deep, shuddering breath. "I'm at peace with the past; I don't know why I told you." But she did—he had always looked at her as if she was an untouchable romantic heroine with no faults, even after she had used him. She wanted him to know the woman, the whole woman, she'd become—blemishes and all.
He didn't reply. Silence stretched between them, and she was desperate to fill it. "Anthony." His name was a plea.
He finally turned to her. Her throat tightened with relief when she saw his lopsided grin, but the self-deprecation lurking in his gaze ripped at her heart.
"And all this time, I thought you'd fallen prey to my masculine charms and were wasting away in my absence," he said. "Who was this paragon for whom I was a substitute, and why isn't he married to you now?"
If her nightgown had been paper, it would have shredded beneath her anxiously working fingers. "They weren't—" She took a deep breath, tried to find a way to explain. "After that night—after you left—I was sick. A fever and infection. And when I recovered, I went out and sought the most unsuitable lovers I could find. I paid for their services and then their silence," she said in a low voice. She met his shocked gaze with her own, and added with force, "And you were not a substitute for anyone. They were… convenient."
"As I was?" The question was ripe with anger, but he quickly suppressed it. Though she wished she could deny it, he had the truth of it: he had been convenient.
He fell back against the mattress, staring at the ceiling. After a moment, he raked his hands through his hair and propped himself up on his elbow to look at her. She tore her gaze away from the collar of his shirt, the broad expanse of skin and muscle his new position afforded her.
His concern was as intense as his anger had been. "Whatever could have possessed you to risk your reputation, your future—your family? What happened that you would be so reckless? Were you in love with any of them?" The last seemed dragged out of him.
She shook her head, and a miserable smile pulled at her mouth. "I'd wanted that risk—with men with whom my father would not approve in alliance, so he might be as disillusioned as I was," she admitted.
"Why not tup the footman then?" he asked carelessly.
She could not keep the reproof from her voice. "Anthony."
He sighed. "I'm doing my best to reconcile the idealistic creature I knew with the woman who tells me that she not only used me out of convenience, but also a collection of prostitutes—in some plot against her father?" He reached forward and placed his hand over hers, stilling the agitated crumpling at her hem. "I knew you were not yourself that night—but frankly, whatever the cause, your reaction was ridiculous."