Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
“You’re going to London?” Rose repeated uneasily, putting down her coffee cup on the breakfast table the next day. “How long for?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Dorian in that casual tone that she now automatically distrusted. “Some weeks perhaps. I shall come back to visit, of course, but I don’t want to crowd you or get in your way.”
Rose shook her head in confusion. Crowd her? Dorian was her husband, and even living together at Ravenhill House it felt as though she barely saw him in recent days. How could he possibly be in her way?
“I don’t understand,” she told him. “Have I done something wrong?”
He buttered a slice of toast with very concentrated motions of the knife, not looking up to meet her eye.
“Certainly not. If there is any fault, it is all on my side. You don’t need me here fussing over you all the time and I know you’d like to get to know the ladies of the district better and bring your family and friends over more often. You will find all that easier in my absence.”
“No, I won’t,” Rose told Dorian honestly, but he only buttered another slice of toast. “I don’t find anything easier here without you.”
He breathed in and gave a long, slow sigh.
“I am sure I am at fault, Rose. I have said before that I do not know how to be a husband. Right now, I am convinced of it. We have tried, but marriage is perhaps not my vocation.”
“How can you talk like that, Dorian?” Rose demanded, a little anger creeping into her voice at his lightness of tone, even if forced. “Don’t you dare smile at me! I know that you’re not telling me the whole truth!”
Thankfully, her husband did not further attempt any of the charming acts which Rose felt she could now identify in a single glance. Dorian must know that she could see through them all. Still, he was hiding something from her.
“We are…friends, aren’t we, Rose? I want us to keep that friendship. I fear that if we are together here too much, that will not be possible.”
Rose stood up from the table, not wanting to hear anything further. There was one straightforward explanation for all this, wasn’t there?
“If you wish to be free to see Lady Lepford and your other lovers as often as you wish, why not just say that?” she snapped at him and went to the door. “Do what you will. I cannot stop you.”
“But I don’t want that…” Rose thought she heard her husband say rather plaintively as she closed the door behind her, but that made even less sense.
“Would you like anything special on the menu tomorrow when your family visit, Your Grace?” asked Mrs. Jennings, coming into the drawing room where Rose sat at the window, writing a long letter to Josephine. “Mr. Smithers is sending a man to town this afternoon.”
The Duchess of Ravenhill shook her head.
“No, the plans we already decided for this week are perfect, and the joint of beef need only be a little larger. My mother will not stay to dine, in any case. She can only leave my father for a short time.”
“Will His Grace be joining your party?” the housekeeper asked further and Rose gave another negative, although she herself had written to invite him and received a noncommittal response.
“I don’t believe so,” she said lightly. “His Grace still has business in London, as far as I know.”
Dorian had only been back to Ravenhill House once in the fortnight since he had announced his departure for London. Even then, they had only spoken for five minutes before he made his excuses and went to his study, leaving again before luncheon.
Did Rose catch a flash of sympathy now in the housekeeper’s eyes?
Were all the servants sorry for her, abandoned here by her husband?
Likely they imagined that the Duke of Ravenhill was up to his old tricks in London.
In her lowest moments, Rose suspected this too, but whenever she thought more deeply, she abandoned the notion.
It felt to her more as though Dorian had been driven from this house by something within himself, rather than drawn from it by something, or someone, outside. This idea fitted well what Rose had seen of his behavior.
Depressingly, however, it occurred to Rose that Dorian might still take comfort and distraction from a lover, even if not purposefully seeking one. It was what the handsome and charming Duke of Ravenhill did, wasn’t it? Habits might be hard to break.
Rose remembered Dorian seeking to distract her with erotic sketches in his studio in order to avoid talking of his childhood.
Painful memories and emotions could be so easily and effectively be overridden by physical desire and its fulfillment, at least temporarily.
Rose had learned this lesson well at Dorian’s skillful hands.
Who in London would distract him from whatever he had fled at Ravenhill House?
“Ravenhill House is a big place for one person, Your Grace,” remarked Mrs. Jennings, coming as close as she respectfully could to acknowledging Rose’s present situation.
“It is,” Rose answered with a sad smile. “Too big.”
Lonely and disconsolate, although determined to put on a brave face for her family, Rose embraced her mother and brothers with real warmth as Mrs. Jennings brought them through the house to find her.
The young duchess had been out on Clio and had ridden back quickly when a groom came out to tell her that the Westvale carriage was pulling up the drive. A moment of dizziness as she galloped made her wonder if Dorian was right and she ought not to ride out alone, but it soon passed.
“You are early!” Rose commented after initial greetings and enquiries as to her father’s health, unwrapping the scarf and veil from her riding habit and handing them off to a waiting maid. “But what a lovely surprise. I was counting the hours from when I woke up.”
Edwin frowned and remained standing at the mantelpiece although Rose and the others took seats. He took out his pocket watch and played with it rather than looking at the time.
“We’ve heard from Mrs. Jennings and others that the Duke of Ravenhill is not at home, and has not been at home for some time,” he remarked and Rose sighed.
“Yes, Dorian has business in London,” she said shortly, and hoped that would be an end to it.
“What kind of business?” her eldest brother asked, still with a slight scowl.
Rose’s heart fell and she looked down at the rug before the sofa.
“I cannot say,” she admitted, and glanced across to Magnus, hoping for rescue.
Today, however, she saw only the same sombre concern on her second brother’s usually cheerful blond-haired face that she read in Edwin’s expression. Rose’s eldest brother now muttered something and their mother met his eyes with a meaningful expression.
“I am sorry, Mother,” he said, shaking his head. “I cannot stay silent on the matter. Rose is my sister and the daughter of the Duke of Westvale as well as the Duchess of Ravenhill. I will not stand by and see her treated with so little respect.”
“Edwin, you do not know the facts of the matter,” pointed out Eugenia in a reasonable tone.
“Nor does Rose, by her own admission,” he retorted. “You know what a little daydreamer she is. A man like Dorian Voss could so easily pull the wool over Rose’s eyes and expose her to public ridicule and humiliation. I should speak to him, man to man.”
“No!” gasped Rose, confused and astonished. “What are you talking about Edwin? I don’t know what you mean.”
Solid, brown-haired Edwin rolled his eyes despairingly at his mother.
“You see?”
“Rose, dear,” the Duchess of Westvale stepped in now, seeing that her eldest son was not to be derailed and perhaps thinking to put his concerns more tactfully.
“We are very worried about you here alone by yourself. Everyone knows that the Duke of Ravenhill has been in London without you these past weeks. Edwin wants to speak to Dorian about this. It isn’t right. ”
Rose shook her head.
“I am lonely here without Dorian,” she admitted. “But I cannot complain if he wishes to spend some time by himself in London, can I? He does not grudge me the use of a carriage and the chance to visit my family and friends whenever I wish. I ride out around the estate every day by myself too.”
“I doubt he spends much time by himself in London,” put in Magnus. “I believe he has been seen at galleries, some rather risqué exhibitions and several artists’ studios in Chelsea.”
“Dorian is an artist himself,” Rose defended her husband. “He has a broad acquaintance. You know how well-liked he is. I thought you liked him too.”
“Well-liked?” repeated Edwin incredulously. “Oh Rose, you little naif! It does not matter if we like him. We still can’t allow Dorian Voss to make a fool of you.”
“He is not making a fool of me,” Rose insisted, feeling that Edwin was trying to make a point she had not yet grasped. “I only wish he would come home.”
“Rose, what do you imagine he is doing in these artists’ studios in Chelsea?” Edwin put to her bluntly and suddenly Rose understood his meaning.
“Talking about art,” she answered with equal bluntness. “Talking about art with other men and women who appreciate it as he does.”
“Is that what he told you?” her brother asked cynically.
“It’s who Dorian is,” Rose responded, feeling more confident in her view as she said the words aloud. “I don’t understand why he felt he had to be in London for so long now, but I do know him better than you, Edwin.”
“Mother, you must make Rose see!” pleaded her eldest brother. “What if he ends up in the scandal sheets with some model or other? Or an actress?”
“It needn’t even be a scandal,” noted Magnus. “If he only starts being invited to dinners as Lady Lepford’s regular escort again, Rose’s name would be on everyone’s lips.”
“And has he?” Rose now demanded of her brothers, her color heightening with displeasure at this last suggestion as well as some anger at Edwin’s high-handedness. “Has Dorian been linked to any woman but me since our marriage? Tell me!”
She looked each of them in the eye and was pleased and relieved that both had to shake their heads.
“No, it is only my brother-in-law’s general habits that give us cause for concern,” Edwin explained.
“My fear is that in returning to old haunts as he has done, and staying away from you for so long, he will be drawn to old acquaintance. I still feel I ought to speak with him before any sliding back can occur”
“No,” Rose said firmly. “I will not have it. I’ve told you already, I know Dorian. He would do nothing to hurt me, if he could help it.”
“Some men can’t help it, by all accounts,” Magnus remarked but Rose’s eyes flashed at him.
“Dorian is not such a man,” she told him. “Whatever people say. He is not!”
Eugenia nodded her head with a sympathetic expression.
“Enough now,” she said softly to her sons, surprising her daughter by this understanding and support. “You have heard what Rose has said.”
“But Mother,” Edwin complained, highly dissatisfied.
“You have never been in love, either of you,” the Duchess of Westvale said meaningfully. “You cannot understand what is happening here. Rose will call on us if she needs our help, won’t you, dear?”
“Thank you, Mother. I want Dorian to come home very much, but no one must interfere,” Rose said, grateful but uncertain why her mother should mention love, when she knew the marriage had been prompted by necessary duty. “I do not think it is as Edwin and Magnus believe.”
“Very well,” accepted the older woman, squeezing her daughter’s hand. “Edwin will not speak to Dorian on this matter yet, will you, Edwin?”
With bad grace, Edwin nodded his head.
“But perhaps you must speak to your husband, Rose,” continued Eugenia.
“A man must have some freedom, but the situation cannot be left like this forever, can it? You may be right in your judgement of Dorian’s character, for now.
But what about next week, next month, next year?
Will you be confident of your belief in him then? ”
Rose hesitated but then nodded as unwillingly as Edwin had done. Her mother was right and her words only echoed what had been in Rose’s own mind.
Dorian had not gone out to look for other women, but he might still find them if Rose could not solve the mystery of what had driven him from Ravenhill House in the first place.
How could she bring him home?