A/N: Please tell me what you think of this chapter!
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He was saddling up his horse in the stables of the Crown Inn when he heard it: the mention of Emma's name as two noisy stable-boys tended to a horse at the other end of the place. His ears pricked and he listened hard.
'Forget Miss Cox,' one of them was saying loudly, 'have you seen Miss Woodhouse?'
'Ay, Miss Prim-and-Proper from Hartfield?' The other boy's tone was dismissive. 'What are you on about, man? She'd be frigid.'
His lips compressed tightly over his teeth and his hands clenched themselves into fists.
'Are you mad? Imagine that in your bed – Miss High-and-Mighty begging for more, those lips of hers ready to do anything–'
Clearing his throat loudly, he stepped forward so that they were aware of his presence. Both boys stopped talking at once, looking rather frightened at his face which was like thunder, but after giving them a look of contempt, he managed to control the almost overwhelming urge to commit some act of physical violence and turned on his heel and left.
After warning Mrs. Stokes about the foul-mouthed boys she had the misfortune to call servants, he rode hard back to Donwell, still boiling with anger that anyone would dare speak of Emma in that way.
Try as he might to banish it, the matter lingered and weighed on his mind. His little Emma was a girl of only seventeen, still so young; and to hear her spoken of in such terms roused every protective instinct in him.
That evening at Hartfield, he found himself watching Emma with new eyes, trying to see what those boys had seen; and he was disturbed beyond measure to find himself admitting that his Emma was no longer a child, that a grown man could quite conceivably be attracted to her. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and averted his gaze from her.
It would not be long, he thought, before she would begin to attract suitors, young men vying for her affections, flattering and wooing her, one of them eventually fooling her into marrying him. Even the thought made him feel ill. He silently vowed then and there that he would watch over her, would protect her from any duplicitous young man, would never let anyone take advantage of her. After all, he was a partial old friend.
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