Chapter Five
Rose looked around the meager possessions she had managed to accumulate over the last nine years.
The fact that they all fit into one small trunk was in and of itself a small indictment.
Three gowns, a coat, two scarves. Enough underthings—just—to last her.
One heavy shawl, her mother’s. She probably should not have stolen it.
Three books, though no Shakespeare, as she knew the Bard by heart.
A small drawing of Rome on which she had spent far too much money.
A pair of pearl earbobs, borrowed from Annabelle and now, Rose thought somberly, never to be returned.
One pair of shoes, one bonnet, three hair ribbons, enough soap to last her a week, one glove—where the other had gone, she did not know… and that was all.
Her life. In a trunk.
Her eyes flittered around the room, which she had taken for a month and ended up staying in for six. She had always told herself that she would take somewhere better, once the play opened at the Grand Theatre and she was being feted.
But the play had been put off, and put off, and now she had been summarily shoved off the stage, for want of a better description.
And now…
Rose bit her lip as she glanced at the door. It had been the right decision, she knew. It had to be. There was no other option.
But in the minutes before he arrived, there was still the opportunity to run. To simply pick up her trunk, take the two shillings her landlady had given her back out of pity, which was the worst sort of coin, and take the stagecoach to…
And that was where her plan ran out. And that was why any moment now, a certain gentleman would be knocking on her door, ready to take her to her new life.
She wasn’t entirely happy about it. The man did not understand the ways of the stage, and he had offered her an agreement that in many ways was only just short of prostitution.
Not that she had anything against the women she met, waiting outside the stage door in the hope of picking up some custom.
But it was not the sort of life she would choose.
And now…
The knock at the door was polite, and respectful.
Rose sighed. He was an enigma, this man. Who hired a wife?
“You are late,” Rose snapped as she opened the door to glare up at Samuel Chance.
“And you,” he said lightly, “are beautiful. Do you need a hand with… a hand with…”
His voice faded away as his attention slipped past her face, over her shoulder, and to something which evidently had him transfixed.
Rose turned around and cringed so hard, it was a miracle she was still able to remain upright.
Of course, a gentleman like this Chance fellow had probably never seen squalor like this.
Not that she lived in squalor. Not exactly.
The room was clean, mostly, but it was bare.
Rose had grown accustomed to the wooden panels boarding up half the window because it had broken before she had arrived.
The fact that the mattress was not on a frame had never bothered her; she had always returned exhausted from the theater, and so what difference would it make whether it was on a cheap frame or on the floor?
Only now that she stood here, looking at the place with Samuel’s eyes, did she notice the lack of carpet, the paint that was peeling off the walls, the fact that other than her trunk, there appeared to be no other furniture.
She turned back to Samuel with blazing cheeks. “Yes? You have something to say?”
“You have been living like this?” he exhaled, as though unable to be polite.
Rose bristled. “I’ll have you know I once lived in a manor! I know what I am and I know where I am—and I am supposed to be in your coach!”
Samuel’s expression—that slight tilt of his head, the hitched breath—was more than pitying, it was disbelieving, which was the most irritating part.
I don’t know. You tell the truth and no one believes you…
“I am sorry.” And he truly sounded sorry, which was unusual. Rose was not accustomed to men actually meaning what they said. “I just—I thought—well. I would not wish my wife to live in such…such circumstances.”
And he meant it, too. Oh, Rose could see that the man was horrified, in a way, but he did not transfer his horror of her locale to herself. He did not judge her for living here. Perhaps he judged her landlady?
But no. There was no judgment in his eyes. Just pity.
“If I had my way, no one would have to live like this,” Samuel muttered, his ears pinking at the tips.
“Well, perhaps that is something you can put our stupendous fortune to,” Rose said in a bright attempt to lighten the mood. Yes, think Rosalind. Think Hermia—she was always able to transform the mood of a room. “I’ll have you know that plenty of people live in worse abodes than this one.”
Samuel’s expression was kind. Too kind. “My stupendous fortune, I think you’ll find.”
Ah. Yes. “Just getting into the spirit of the thing,” she said meekly.
The last thing she needed was the fool to change his mind.
Besides, did he not think the ten thousand pounds sum and thousand pound annuity was not a stupendous fortune to her?
How great his own fortune must have been in comparison.
“You have decided, then? You will marry me?”
If Rose had ever spent any great time thinking about her future husband, and she rarely had, the proposal itself would never have been quite like that.
A gentleman on bended knee, flowers—roses, for preference—a glass of champagne in her hand and a string quartet somewhere… She had visited Venice once and had been quite taken with the idea of being serenaded on a gondola. Not that her purse had stretched to it.
Not standing in a dank, almost-bare room with a man behind her tapping his foot in a very tangible reminder that she was, by not replying immediately, wasting his time.
Rose drew herself up. “I… I will marry you if—”
“There is simply no room, or time, in this matter for you to set conditions,” Samuel said, in a tone that told her quite clearly that this was not a man accustomed to negotiation.
She smiled, pouring as much prettiness into the motion as she could. “Would you deny me even the possibility of a request?”
That was when she saw it: the flare of the nostrils, the shifting of the feet to give enough space between his thighs. Yes, he was attracted to her. Interesting.
“A… A possibility?” The man’s voice was hoarse.
“Come on in,” Rose said sweetly. The last thing she needed was an audience for this. “It’s just one request. You can deny me, of course.”
There it was again, those hints of desire at the word ‘deny.’ Most interesting.
Samuel glanced over his shoulder, presumably at a man he had waiting in a coach, but evidently considered his own time more important, for he stepped into the room.
He even made to wipe his boots, Rose noticed with a grin, though to his evident surprise, there was no mat.
He settled for scraping them along the wooden floor, as if to cover his blunder.
“Well, then?”
Rose stepped around him and closed the door. Tempting as it were to lock it, she was not certain she would achieve much more by penning him in.
No, this had to be asked delicately—most delicately.
She inhaled deeply. “I need to know if there is any attraction between us.”
Perhaps she should not have been standing so close to him. Rose had not taken in that her position by the door meant that she was mere inches from the man, and when he whirled around with wide eyes, it was a mere coincidence that his hip did not bump into hers.
“‘Attraction’?”
Rose nodded. “If we are to pretend to be husband and wife—”
“No one will need to know about the—the lack of consummation,” Samuel said hurriedly, cheeks pinking as though this were simply not the right sort of conversation between a gentleman and a lady.
And perhaps it wasn’t. But Rose wasn’t a lady.
Not anymore.
The walls appeared to creep in as she looked up and said, “We are agreed this is no love match—”
“I sh-should think not!” Samuel choked. Then he grinned awkwardly. “No-No offense meant.”
It is always just when a man had given offense, Rose thought darkly, that he will inform a woman that she is not allowed to take offense.
Outwardly, she smiled sweetly. “Of course. So I repeat, this is no love match, and yet we will need to convince not only your family, but Society at large that this is a true marriage, and most of all, this solicitor of yours.”
Ah, that got his attention.
Samuel tried to step closer to her. As it was, there wasn’t a full step’s gap between them. So he shuffled. “I need Mr. Todd to believe this—and he will, because there will be a marriage certificate.”
Damnation. Rose had almost forgotten. His kind—his own phrasing—were accustomed to loveless marriages. Marriages made for convenience, for alliance, for wealth.
She should have remembered.
Though she wondered how such a supposedly whirlwind courtship and marriage he’d kept secret from his family would have occurred without a romance. Still, he was clearly embarrassed to even discuss the matter. The details of their supposedly weeks-old marriage’s origins would have to wait.
“Oh, well, that’s all right, then,” Rose said lightly, stepping around Samuel toward her trunk. “I will just merely pretend attraction should it ever become necessary.”
She picked up her trunk and turned to face him, ready to leave—at least, that was what she wanted him to believe. And damn Ted and the whole pack of them because this Samuel was obviously taken in.
Taken in by her acting genius, naturally.
“You cannot do that,” he said woodenly.
Rose raised an eyebrow. “Cannot do what? Carry my own trunk? I quite agree, it is beneath the new Marchioness of Aylesbury, but if you are not willing to carry it, I shall have to or you can summon your coachman.”
“I mean, you cannot just—just pretend attraction! It is either there or it is not,” spluttered Samuel, his eyes wide. “You cannot be in earnest!”