Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
“Marianne,” Rose said softly from her sister’s doorway. “May we talk?”
Her sister did not answer her in words. She was on her bed, her face shoved in her pillows, bawling her eyes out as if the world was ending.
She looked so frail in the way that she cried, and her body shook.
At twenty years of age, Rose still thought of her as a little girl: her golden hair, her big eyes, her puffy cheeks.
And the way she always managed to find the humor in a situation, so childlike and innocent It was one of the many things that Rose loved about her.
I cannot fail her. I will not fail her.
“I know that today did not go as you hoped,” Rose began as she crossed the room for her sister. “And that this decision might not be to your liking. But I want you to know that I am here for you.”
“Are you?” Marianne said thickly into her pillows. “Are you here for me, Rosalind?”
“Of course.”
“Then why did you not stop it?” She looked up from her pillows, her face a mass of red welts and tear stains. “You promised me that you would! You promised that you would not let father… that he wouldn’t… that you would do something!”
“I tried.”
“You didn’t try hard enough!”
Rose winced at the harshness of her sister’s words. They hurt her to hear, but they did not upset her as they might have. She knew that Marianne was hurting and that she was just looking for someone else to blame. That’s all it was.
And why should she not blame me? I blame myself, too.
Since Marianne was a little girl, Rose had looked out for her. In everything that she did, every mistake that she made, Rose was there for her. And always, she told her little sister, that so long as she was by her side, nothing would hurt her.
It was time that Rose proved this to be true.
“It is not just the Duke, is it?” Rose sat down on the bed.
“What?”
“The reason that you are so upset,” Rose continued softly. “This is about more than a marriage arrangement.”
“No!” Marianne wailed. “That is exactly why. I don’t want to marry him, Rose. I can’t!”
“Perhaps not,” Rose said. “But you have known that something like this was bound to happen. Given the way our father is, he was always going to try to arrange a marriage like this. And to a duke…” She let that sit between them. “Most girls would be thrilled.”
“Let them have him then,” she snapped, shoving her head back into the pillows.
Rose watched her sister cry for a moment. She looked at her, seeing how upset she was, how utterly shattered her world was. This was about more than what had happened today, and Rose knew well enough the reason.
While Rose had a plan to save her sister, before she enacted it, she needed to make sure it was worth the cost. Only then would she do as she promised.
“Who is he?” Rose asked gently.
“Wh—” Marianne lifted her head from the pillows. “Who? Who is who?”
Rose looked flatly at her sister. “The mystery man that you have been writing to for the last month. And do not lie to me, Marianne. Father might walk about with wool pulled over his eyes, but I do not.”
Marianne winced. “You—you knew?”
“I suspected.”
“It is not… I did not… I was not trying to hide him from you, Rose. I promise, I was not. I just… I was excited, that's all. And I did not want to risk ruining it.”
“So, there is someone else?”
“Does it even matter now?”
“It might,” Rose said. “But first, you must tell me everything.” She looked pointedly at her sister. “And then, if I can, I will help you.”
“But how?”
“Tell me about him,” Rose pressed.
Marianne sniffed back her tears and shuffled to her knees. There, Rose moved over and wrapped an arm around her so that she was holding her sister in comfort. She patted her hair, she stroked her face, and she showed Marianne that she was there for her.
“His name is Julian Ford,” Marianne began.
“We met at the Carroway Ball last month, by accident, and I still cannot believe it happened. But it did happen, and from the moment I saw him…” She sniffed back tears, and a smile found her puffy face.
“I knew, Rose. I knew then, like I have never known anything.”
“Ford?” Rose considered the name. “Who is his father?”
“The Baron of Westvale.”
Rose winced. “A baron, Marianne? No wonder you were so secretive.”
“That’s not why!” she cried. “I was secretive because I didn’t want to ruin it.”
“And because you knew father would not accept him,” Rose pointed out. “Father wants to match you above our station, and a baron is a step backwards, not forwards.”
“I don’t care what Father thinks! I love him.”
“And does he love you?”
“He does.” She looked at Rose with absolute certainty. “He loves me as I love him. And he will marry me, Rose. I know he will. He just needs more time. To make his fortune so that… so that Father…” She sniffed, and her chin began to wobble. “So that Father will say yes.”
“You believe that?”
Marianne buried her head in her knees. “It doesn’t matter now, does it? I am engaged and Julian… oh, what will I tell him, Rose? How will I explain it? My life is over!” The tears started to come again.
Rose knew already that her sister had found herself an admirer. What sort of sister would she be if she did not? What she had not known, however, was how serious it was.
Marianne had always been a romantic, and this was not the first time that she had become besotted by a man whom their father would rather have pulled off his own toenails than see Marianne wed.
On most occasions, these little flings fizzled out, and Marianne was always quick to realize how silly she had been.
This time, Rose sensed a difference in her younger sister.
“And you are certain that this Julian Ford feels the same way about you as you do about him?” she asked.
“He does!” Marianne pleaded. “I know he does.”
“You must be certain,” Rose pressed. “And not just that you love him and he loves you in return, for that is common. What I want to know is, do you think he is worth it? Is a life spent with him one worth fighting for?”
Marianne looked right at her, and in that hardened gaze, Rose saw the truth. “We are meant to be together, Rose. Julian and I, we are soulmates.”
Rose had known what she needed to do, but it wasn’t until Marianne’s words right now that she knew what she had to do. Such was the love she held for her younger sister.
“Marianne, listen to me.” She shuffled around and made sure that her sister was looking at her. “I am not trying to get your hopes up, but I want you to know that I will do whatever I must to stop this marriage.”
“What can you do?” Marianne sniffed.
“That does not concern you,” she said. “All that does is if this works, then you must promise me something. Can you do that?”
“Promise what?”
“That when you marry this Julian Ford, that you and he live a life of happiness and love. That you make it count. Can you do that for me?”
“What are you going to do?” Marianne looked quizzically at Rose, hope filtering behind her eyes because she knew that if there was one person who could save her, it was Rose, as it had always been.
“Leave that to me.”