Chapter 15 Return to Fenmere Park
RETURN TO FENMERE PARK
When they arrived at Fenmere Park, it was just before dawn.
The sky was the color of old ash, the manor looming pale and solemn.
This house had always meant warmth to her. Safety. Noise. Her sisters’ laughter echoing down corridors.
This morning, it didn’t feel like home. It felt… wrong.
Without looking at her, Charles handed her down from the carriage and ordered her to her room. Felicia squeezed her hand and then whispered something encouraging. Rosamund couldn’t make out what.
It didn’t matter.
The steps up the staircase felt longer than she remembered.
Her hand slid along the banister, polished smooth by years of Harrington hands. As a child she had raced down these stairs. As a girl she had lingered on them.
She knew every nick in the wood, every shallow groove worn by time.
She let her palm rest there for a moment, pressing into the familiar curve, willing it to steady her.
And for the briefest instant, it did.
A flicker of warmth. Of belonging.
But it faded almost as quickly.
The house was unchanged, but she… was not.
In her chamber, she closed the door softly and then just stood there. The room was precisely as she had left it. Her books. Her writing desk. Her shawl, tossed carelessly across the chair days ago.
And yet she felt like an intruder.
In her own room.
Her fingers fumbled with the clasp of her cloak. She shrugged it off, tossing it onto the bed.
And then she caught a glimpse of herself in the looking glass.
The green silk clung to her, torn at the bodice where the seam had split. The delicate embroidery strained against the fullness of her breasts, which pushed stubbornly against even damaged stitching.
Her mother’s voice rose unbidden. “Too much. Too loud.”
Her freckles stood out against skin gone pale with shock. Her cheeks looked flushed and overly round. Her hair, once carefully arranged, had fallen loose in wild copper strands around her face.
Her arms were not slender.
Her waist not slight.
She was not delicate or ethereal.
She dropped her gaze and noticed a faint bruise darkened along her upper arm—the mark where Julian’s hand had gripped her.
Remembering how she’d justified the lies she’d told made the room seem to shrink around her.
Her lungs suddenly strained against the bodice. It was too tight.
Accusing.
In a sudden surge of panic, her hands flew to the hooks at her back. Her fingers slipped. Caught. Scraped.
When they didn’t give right away, her breaths came faster.
“Come off,” she whispered, tugging harder.
A hook snapped. Another tore free. Threads pulled loose until she could wrench her arms out of the puffed sleeves and drag the cursed thing from her body.
It landed in a twisted heap at her feet.
Green silk. Split seams.
Ruined.
For a moment she considered kicking it aside.
Instead, she only stared at it.
His gaze, when he’d looked at her in that dress… It had been warm, unguarded.
Tender.
Her breath trembled.
Slowly, almost without meaning to, she looked down at herself.
Her hands drifted to her thighs, fingers skimming over the curve of them beneath her shift. Strong from riding. Solid. Soft where they met at the center.
Not delicate. Never delicate.
He’d smoothed his hands over them, as though…
As though he could not quite believe she was there.
Her pulse fluttered painfully at the memory.
The way he had touched her had not been hurried. Not reluctant.
It had been hunger—yes—but also wonder.
And it had felt like a… beginning.
Only, it had been just the opposite. Why did Charles have to come along and ruin everything?
No… This mess wasn’t his fault. It was her own. Her lies. She was the one who’d ruined everything.
She pressed her palm briefly against her sternum, as if she could quiet the splintering beneath it.
Only… she knew.
Knew with a clarity that hurt. She didn’t regret it.
Because none of it—not the mornings at sunrise, not the conversations on horseback, not the feel of his hands steadying her reins, not the way he had looked at her in green silk—would have happened if she had told the truth from the start.
Not the fallout.
But not the wonder either.
If she had arrived as Lady Rosamund Harrington, daughter of a duke, she would have been received with politeness. But she’d have immediately been turned away.
She would never have been allowed to get close.
Never would have seen him unguarded in the workshop.
Never would have heard the catch in his voice by the river.
Never would have felt his mouth on her…
The lie had cost her dearly, but it had also given her something honesty wouldn’t have.
She straightened slowly.
Furthermore, it had still given her everything she needed to publish the article.
Slowly, she pulled her nightdress over her head and let the ruined green gown remain where it lay. When she looked at herself in the mirror once more, she saw herself—not as her mother would see her, not as society might judge her, but as she had been in the forest.
Alive.
Wanted.
Brave enough to leap.
Her chin lifted a fraction.
The consequences were here.
Very well, so was she.
She extinguished the candles and climbed into bed.