Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Would you like to go in by yourself?” Christopher asked Rose, expecting her to say yes without hesitation.
Rose considered his question, biting into her lower lip the whole while. “I… no,” she offered him finally, even if she did not sound completely certain. “I would like for you to come.”
“Are you certain?”
She rolled her eyes. “Do you want me to say no?”
“Not at all,” Christopher assured her. “But she is your sister, and I don’t want to get in the way.”
“You already are in the way.” She laughed as she said it, confirming that she didn’t mean what she said. “I want you there, Christopher. And knowing my sister as well as I do, I might need you there too.”
“What does that mean?”
“I am sure that you will see soon enough.”
They arrived just moments ago at the inn where Lady Marianne said that she would be waiting for Rose. It was a small roadside inn, the type that someone from Christopher’s class would never ordinarily be caught dead in. But he supposed that was the point.
Lady Marianne was hiding, and she did not wish to be happened upon by accident. That she told Rose where she was, spoke to how much she trusted her sister… trust that was about to be broken by Christopher’s presence.
Christopher was still not sure why Rose had agreed so quickly to his joining her. He worried that she had done so because she did not feel like she had a choice. Or maybe she was worried about how he would react if she refused him? Mostly, he was concerned that she did not want him there at all.
Now, however, he was beginning to see the situation from a different point of view.
They stood outside the door of Lady Marianne’s room, preparing to knock and announce their arrival.
Rose was clearly nervous, as she had been for the last hour of the journey.
More than once, Christopher thought she was going to take his hand and hold it as a means to find calm.
More than once, he considered doing it for her.
She wants me here. More than that, she needs me here. Whatever we are, whatever this marriage has become, we are no longer strangers… and it is no longer a mere marriage of convenience.
Christopher could not say how he felt about this development. While he wanted to distance himself from Rose, he could not comprehend doing such a thing. Not anymore. Not after all they had been through.
It was time that he started to accept what this marriage was turning into. It was time he stopped running.
“Here we go.” Rose took a deep breath and knocked on the closed door of the inn’s bedroom. “Ready?”
“Too late now,” Christopher said simply.
The door flew open suddenly, and they were greeted by a smiling face… which very quickly turned to one of shock and then anger. “What is he doing here?” Lady Marianne gasped when she saw Christopher. “Rose? What is he doing here?”
“I asked him to come,” Rose said carefully. “Marianne, please, if we might –”
“I don’t want him here…” She looked desperately at her sister. “My letter, I asked you if you wanted to…” She glared at Christopher before turning to her sister and dropping her voice. “You were supposed to come alone, Rose. How can we…” She widened her eyes. “He will try to stop you.”
“Can we not do this out in the hall?” Rose said simply. “Please, Marianne. Let us come inside, and we can talk.”
Lady Marianne hesitated for quite some time. She looked desperately at her sister and then glared at Christopher for longer than was polite. He had known that she would not want him there, but the hate that spewed from that glare had him wondering if perhaps he was not so smart to come at all.
“Fine,” she sighed and took a step back. “You are just lucky that Julian is not here.”
“Where is he?” Rose stepped inside the room.
“He is arriving tomorrow,” Lady Marianne explained.
She did not wait by the door for Christopher to walk inside, but crossed the room, seemingly desperate to get away from him.
“At which point, we plan to leave. We were going to stay another night, just in case you came and…” She scoffed. “Clearly, there is no need.”
“It is not like that,” Rose said.
“And what is it like?” her sister snapped. She was angrier than Christopher expected, and he knew it had everything to do with him. “I sent you that letter in confidence, Rose. If I had known you were going to show it to… to him, I would not have bothered.”
“Marianne, there is no need for –”
“Why did you even come?” she started up, hysteria now touching at her tone and the way she waved her arms. “To try and drag me back? To change my mind? I am not going to change my mind, Rose. So, if that is what this is, you can go. And take your husband with you.”
“That is enough,” Rose said sharply, cutting through her sister’s exclamation.
The effect of the change in tone made Lady Marianne shrink back as if she had been slapped across the face.
“I will remind you, Marianne, that you sent me the letter. You asked me to be here. And were it not for me, you would not even be in a position where you needed to run away in the first place.” She folded her arms and raised her eyebrow. “You would be married already.”
Lady Marianne winced. “I… I did not mean…”
“And as for my husband? I would appreciate it if you did not speak to him as you are doing. You may not like that he is here, but seeing as he is, and seeing as he is here to help – as I am, I might add. Perhaps some respect and gratitude are in order?”
Lady Marianne’s initial hysteria was well and truly gone; utterly diminished in the face of Rose’s rebuttal. Rose stood tall and firm, a bulwark against which Lady Marianne’s anger faltered and died.
“I’m sorry,” Lady Marianne said softly, looking away with shame. “I did not mean… I just… I was surprised, Rose. That is all. I did not expect…” She sniffed back tears. “I thought that you were coming alone.”
“She meant to.” Christopher chose that moment to step in. “And she did, until I caught up with her down the road. My being here is my fault, not your sister’s.”
“No,” Rose said. “I asked him to be here.” She then smiled at Christopher, and he smiled back; not done on purpose, but a natural thing that caught him by surprise.
Once again, Christopher was reminded of how much had changed between himself and Rose.
She no longer hated him. She no longer despised the idea of them being married.
They were far from a perfect couple; they still had some ways to go, but that she was defending him against her sister, and that she so clearly needed him there, was enough.
She wants me here, and that should tell me everything that I need to know.
“I am not here to ambush you,” Christoper assured Lady Marianne. “I am here only to support my wife. Whatever decision she makes, I will support her.”
Lady Marianne looked between the two with confusion. “Rose, what is going on? Are you telling me that you are happy? I thought you hated being married to His Grace?”
“I am not here to speak of my marriage,” Rose said. She did not look at Christopher as she did, but the question certainly brought about an awkwardness. “I came here to talk about you and what you are doing.”
“I won’t go back,” Lady Marianne said. “And you can’t make me.”
“I am not here to force you to do anything,” Rose said. As she spoke, she walked across the room to where Lady Marianne stood in the corner. “I came here to make you see reason.”
“I am seeing reason,” she argued. “Father will never let me marry Julian. He told me as much himself. He wants me to marry some… some lord whom I do not know, who I will never love. He wants it because all he cares about is himself.”
“Let me talk to him,” Rose said. “Come home and I will –”
“No!” Lady Marianne shouted over her. “You can’t change his mind.”
“I did once, remember.”
Lady Marianne shook her head. “And look where that has gotten you. I am sorry, Rose, but there is nothing you can do. This is the only answer.”
“And then what? You and Julian are going to marry? Spend the rest of your lives living in squalor as you are forced to constantly look over your shoulders everywhere we go?”
“Maybe.” Lady Marianne stood tall as she said it, as if she needed to prove the point to herself. “We don’t need money. We don’t need things. We will have one another, and that is enough.”
Rose snorted. “I assure you, as romantic as that sounds, it is not practical.”
“It is!” Marianne cried. “And what would you know, anyway? It is not as if you have ever been in love! You know nothing of how I feel.”
It was subtle, but Rose glanced at Christopher. “I know more than you think.”
“I won’t come home,” Lady Marianne took a step back and shook her head. “I will not. And you cannot make me.”
“As I said, I don’t want to make you do anything. I came here to make you see how foolish this is.”
“It is not foolish.”
“It is the height of lunacy, Marianne. Why can you not see that?”
“Why can you not see that I don’t care!”
As the two sisters argued back and forth, Christopher stood awkwardly in the room.
He had come here to help Rose, but he sensed that his presence was only making things worse.
His marriage to Rose was clearly a contentious issue, and Lady Marriane was using it against them.
Worse, while he was in the room, Rose could not be truly honest with her sister.
Christopher might have liked to have stayed, to have stood by his wife and shown Lady Marianne how wrong she was. But he knew sometimes being supportive meant knowing when to step back, and this was one of those times.
“If I might…” Christopher stepped forward to take attention onto himself. “I have a feeling that we won’t be sorting this out tonight.”
Lady Marianne scoffed. “We already have. Because I am not changing my mind.”
“My meaning is that the two of you have much to speak of, and I fear that I am only getting in the way.”
“You aren’t,” Rose said immediately. “Christopher, I want you here.”
“And I am here…” He walked to Rose and, on instinct, he took her hand. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Lady Marianne start at the gesture, clearly confused by the showing of companionship. “How about I organize some rooms for us to stay in tonight, while you and your sister talk alone.”
“Are you…” Rose looked at his hand, still holding hers. “Are you certain?”
“If you need me, I’ll be right outside.” He squeezed her hand as he looked into her eyes, letting her know that he was there for her.
She nodded. “Yes, maybe you are right.”
He was quick to leave after that, taking note of how confused Lady Marianne suddenly looked. That single display of affection, clear proof that they were more than she had thought, was playing havoc with her sense of reality and what she thought she knew about marriage and love.
If Lady Marianne is confused, that is nothing compared to how I feel.
Nonetheless, Christopher did as he promised and went downstairs so that he might organize two rooms for them to stay in. At least that was the idea.
As he was quick to learn, only a single room was left to rent for the evening, meaning he and Rose would need to share it. For many, that would make little difference, for they were married, and sharing a room was not such a huge thing. For he and Rose, however…
Sharing a room together went beyond what Christopher thought he and Rose were ready for. Husband and wife, they might have been, but they were nowhere near comfortable enough with one another for this.
They also had no choice.
As Christopher was shown the room, he wondered how Rose was going to react. Rightly so, he got the sense that this right here would be a defining moment in their marriage, and that based on what she did and what she said when she found out, he would know once and for all how she felt about him.
And then, I might finally know how I truly feel about her. Or rather, I might be willing to finally accept it.