Chapter 5
Chapter Five
“Betsy, send to the florist that we want bridal party bouquets with the white narcissus, winter honeysuckle and evergreen sprigs,” Duchess Eugenia instructed a middle-aged maid, after examining the flower sample displays on the hall tables at Westvale Park with sharp eyes and quick, slender fingers.
“We want some color too, of course, but what? Nothing too dark.”
Standing in the drawing room doorway, Rose knew this question was really for her but said nothing.
It seemed nothing to do with her, like all the rest of the ongoing wedding preparations.
Maids were constantly coming and going with fabrics, clothing and jewels while footman carried folded trestles, ladders and boxes about the house.
Her mother fussed over details while her brothers brought solicitors, bank clarks and clergymen in and out of the study. Rose herself felt as though she was sitting in the still centre of a terrible storm.
“Pink and yellow,” suggested Lady Madeline Bennet helpfully, observing both the older woman’s indecision and Rose’s silence and coming forward to fill the gap. “They are the colors that suit Rose best, and there are usually at least primroses available in both, even at short notice and in winter.”
The duchess smiled gratefully and nodded, before adding a further clarification to Betsy.
“Tell the florist to add pink and yellow colors with the best of whatever flowers they can get at this time of year, maybe primroses. That will be all, thank you, Betsy.”
“Is there nothing in the Westvale Park glasshouses?” asked Josephine, Duchess of Ashbourne, as the maid hurried away on her errand. “We do have some flowers in Ashbourne Castle’s conservatories but I looked yesterday and they’re not the right colors.”
The Duchess of Westvale shook her head.
“We grow very little here beyond fruit these days. With Ambrose ill over the past year, we have done no entertaining and it seems frivolous to plant anything that the household would not use. I certainly did not foresee a sudden wedding…”
Rose sensed the reproach in her mother’s words and shrank from it all over again.
In three days time, she would become the Duchess of Ravenhill and her family’s reputation would be saved, along with her own.
Yet how joyless and cold this prospect seemed.
Would her family go back to treating her normally again once she was married, she wondered?
Tears pricked Rose’s eyes when she realized that nothing could ever be normal again.
In three days time, she would leave her family home entirely and go to live at Ravenhill House, or maybe the duke’s London residence.
She didn’t even know this much, not having seen Dorian Voss alone since the five minute conversation in which she agreed to marry him.
Rose would have backed away into the drawing room entirely to hide her emotional response, if her mother had not turned back to her with another sudden thought.
“Have you looked at the lace samples to add to your wedding gown yet, Rose?”
The young woman shook her head. She had not been able to bring herself to even pick up the sample book. At this admission, Eugenia made a frustrated noise.
“The dressmaker must have your choices this morning if the gown is to be adjusted in time, Rose. I explained this to you. You must pick out lace for nightgowns in your trousseau too, although only one need be ready by the wedding.”
“We will assist Rose,” Josephine said immediately, coming to Rose’s side and taking her arm. “Won’t we, Madeline? Which maid is dealing with your dressmaker?”
The Duchess of Westvale looked relieved at seeing her daughter flanked by her two friends and Rose assumed she understood why.
Her mother had always seemed to consider her incapable.
Rose supposed she would have preferred a daughter like Madeline, who always said and did the right thing and lived her life in the real world rather than dreams.
“Simmonds, my personal maid,” confirmed the older woman.
“Thank you so much, Josephine, and you too Madeline. If I can leave this in your hands, I shall go and speak to the housekeeper about the cakes. It is to be a small, private wedding, but we cannot have people saying it was anything less than fitting for the daughter and wife of a duke…”
A tear escaped Rose’s eye and rolled down her cheek as Josephine ushered her back in to the drawing room and closed the door. The small book of lace samples lay on the table beside a pencil and paper. Madeline picked them up and began to browse the lace.
“Oh Rose, do not cry,” urged Josephine, taking out a handkerchief and dabbing her friend’s face. “It is not all that bad, is it? It is certainly not as bad as it could have been. I was so very worried when Cassius first told me what had occurred.”
“I know,” Rose acknowledged, swallowing further tears and calming herself once more. “I could have been sent away in disgrace to Bath for years. Some families might even have disowned me. I’ve heard all this from Edwin.”
“Your family love you too much to ever send you away or disown you,” Josephine assured her, although Rose no longer felt such confidence after the events of recent days. “They must know it was all a misunderstanding really, even if their hands are tied by wider society’s views.”
Rose shrugged listlessly.
“I don’t know what they think or feel really. It’s as though no one listens to me. Almost no one.”
This last small correction came as Rose remembered Dorian Voss sending her family from the room in order to obtain her consent to the marriage.
He, at least, had listened, even if he did not care for her.
It was another small grace for which to be thankful, but could not recompense her for everything else.
“Madeline and I will always listen,” Josephine told her earnestly. “Remember that you always have friends, Rose.”
“This is not at all how I imagined my wedding,” Rose sobbed, encouraged by Josephine’s words and arm about her shoulder. “I dreamed of being so happy, so in love and now it is all lost. I will never love anyone and no one will ever love me.”
Josephine hugged Rose and patted her back with sympathetic noises under the short flood of tears abated.
“Dorian Voss is not a bad man, Rose,” the young duchess said when Rose finally raised her head.
“I’ve had several long conversations with Cassius about him and he has known Dorian for many years.
I do not believe you will find him a harsh or unreasonable husband.
It may be that your marriage will be happier than many others, in its own way. ”
“But I do not love him,” Rose said despondently. “He does not love me. How could either of us be happy? We are only marrying because we must.”
“The Duke of Ravenhill is charming and well-liked,” continued Josephine. “Nor can you deny that he is handsome and well-favored physically, can you? How much worse would it be to marry a man who was ill-tempered, cruel and ugly?”
“I know,” acknowledged Rose once more. “I am relieved and I am grateful and I am a fool to cry. My brothers have told me so every day.”
“The Duke of Ravenhill is handsome, charming and well-liked by every available young lady in London, and many older or unavailable ladies too,” Madeline put in tartly, pausing in her perusal of the lace samples.
“Once you have finished being sad about your good fortune, you must get used to being envied, Rose.”
“Madeline!” Josephine chided. “Rose is already distressed enough. She does not see the world as you do.”
“It is better that Rose goes into this marriage with her eyes open,” persisted Madeline.
“All the good things you say of Dorian Voss are no doubt true and we must respect your husband’s opinion, since he knows him best, Josephine.
At the same time, we cannot pretend that a man known as the ‘Wolf of West London’ is an ordinary bridegroom can we? Rose must know his nature.”
“Do not let Madeline upset you with all that ‘Wolf of West London’ nonsense,” urged Josephine when she saw the wide-eyed expression on Rose’s face.
“You know the kind of silly things that scandal sheets print. Remember what they said of Cassius and me after he proposed so publicly in Hyde Park. Most of it wasn’t true at all. ”
Rose swallowed and nodded. She was not upset.
She was only remembering her own sense of Dorian Voss as a wolf-like creature, something wild, keen-eyed and hungry, hunting in the darkness.
Thinking again of that touch of teeth at her throat, she inhaled deeply and touched her neck.
The mark was gone now and only two people knew it had ever been there.
Would he do that again after they were married, Rose wondered? Her belly quivered at the thought.
“The groom himself aside, in three days time, you will be a duchess, Rose,” said Madeline, trying to offer Rose a realistic comfort. “There are many advantages to high rank, Rose.
“Duchess…” Rose repeated, the word feeling foreign on her lips.
It was a word in a language that she didn’t want to learn but must since she would soon be a citizen of a new country where this was the native tongue.
“Perhaps you will like being so respected and running a grand house of your own like Ravenhill,” continued her friend. “I know that I shall, if I ever get the chance. What do you say, Josephine, Duchess of Ashbourne?”
Josephine laughed and nodded, touching her stomach as she spoke, the tiny bulge of the child she expected not yet visible through her clothes.
“I do like being mistress of Ashbourne Castle and running my own establishment,” she admitted. “I feel so free there, with only Cassius and myself to please. I suppose I may feel differently when this little one arrives and wish myself back home with older sisters to take care of everything.”