Chapter Six #2
For some reason, both his brother and Rose were staring at him. Only after a few moments did Samuel realize why.
“Rose,” he said brusquely. “Look, if Mama and Papa and Frank are waiting—”
“Oh, let them wait,” said Benjamin with a twinkle in his eye, turning back to the woman in the room and openly appreciating her curves. “Well, how did the two of you meet, then? I must say, Rose, your face, while beautiful, is unknown to me.”
Samuel glanced, fear clogging his veins, at Rose.
Blast. They hadn’t yet discussed the finer details and clearly they should have done.
He’d anticipated such questions, but he hadn’t expected the family to meet her yet.
He had thrown out the idea of using his brief trip to Bath to meet an Eton friend newly back in England in mid-December as the where and when, but they hadn’t gone over all the details.
She would panic, she would say something nonsensical, perhaps overdramatic like an actress might think of. She would—
“I was introduced by a good friend of mine, Lady Packham,” said Rose smoothly, as though she could not wait to tell the story. “We met at—now, was it a dinner or a dance?”
“Both,” Samuel said hoarsely.
Rose laughed merrily as she stepped around the agog Benjamin and took Samuel’s arm. “Oh, yes! You were seated by me at dinner and after an introduction by Lady Packham, you asked for the first country dance. You danced well, I thought.”
“He did?” Benjamin snorted.
“I did?” asked Samuel, his eyes blinking rapidly.
Rose flushed prettily and squeezed his arm with an intimacy that made a strange heat soar through his limbs. “I thought so. I was quite taken with him, Lord Benjamin, and so you can imagine my delight when he asked for my hand.”
“I can imagine his delight, certainly,” said Benjamin, leaning against the wall and continuing to admire Rose in, Samuel thought, a most unacceptable manner. “And so you wed? Without telling the family?”
“Well, we wanted to enjoy the first few weeks to ourselves, as I am sure you can imagine,” said Rose lightly.
“I know he had to get home for Christmas and New Year’s and then his cousin’s wedding.
My friend would have been lonely without me and I had promised to spend Christmas with her, so I kept Lady Packham company and stayed behind in Bath until he could come get me.
I made my way to Brighton as soon as he sent word to meet him here instead. ”
Samuel could not help but stare. It was masterful. She sounded sincere. There was nothing illicit in her words…and yet there was just enough of a suggestion of sensuality to make his spine stiffen and to make his brother laugh.
“You’ve found yourself a most promising wife, Samuel, I have to say—and I admit myself disappointed. Now I cannot come with you to strongarm old Todd and put you in my debt.”
“Putting myself in your debt is not something I ever had in mind,” Samuel said forebodingly. “Now, it is high time we went down to breakfast. All of us.”
He caught Rose’s eye and tried to tell her, without moving a single muscle as Benjamin strode past them toward the door, just how impressed he was.
How could he fail to be? She had been the consummate marchioness. Charming and elegant, but witty and flirtatious enough to match Benjamin’s nonsensical energy. How on earth had she known?
“Your brother is a rake,” Rose murmured as they stepped out of his hotel room to follow the very same man in question.
Samuel sighed. “I know—but how did you?”
“I am an actress,” she whispered, lowering her voice so only he could hear. The fact that in doing so, her breath blossomed against his neck and made him feel most peculiar was neither here nor there. “I can read people.”
She certainly could. She had read him as a complete fool, Samuel was starting to realize. The worst of it was, he couldn’t completely disagree with her.
Heads turned wherever Rose went. Had he just never noticed, or was it the gown he had borrowed—fine, stolen; it wasn’t as if she’d notice it gone, as she’d have never worn it—from Frank thanks to her obliging maid that was doing it?
As he and Rose walked down the corridor behind Benjamin, who appeared to be eager to get to their family so that he could see their faces when the supposed newly married arrived, every male eye turned to the elegant, petite woman in the fine, green gown that showed off her waist, her buttocks, her—
“Excuse me,” snapped Samuel at a particularly young man whose jaw had literally dropped as they passed him on the landing. “It’s rude to stare!”
“Hush, dear,” Rose said companionably, patting his arm as though she were accustomed to this spousal jealousy. “’Tis no crime to look.”
It certainly felt criminal, thought Samuel darkly as they slowly descended the stairs into the wide hotel hall. There were even more people here, all staring at Rose.
He glanced at her. She was markedly beautiful, but it wasn’t the beauty that was capturing their attention. It was the…the glow. Foolish though it was to think, he could not ascribe it to anything else.
Somehow, Rose had switched on something within her, and she just… Well, she looked like a duchess, not a woman he had quite literally picked up off the street.
Fine. Knocked down, then picked up, then selected. But still.
“Where have you b-been, Samuel?” clucked his mother as the pair approached the table in the hotel dining room. “And wh-who…who is…”
I should have known, Samuel thought wearily as his mother burst into tears.
“Now, now, Florence. The poor dear will make for the hills,” said her husband with a smile, placing his arm around her shoulders. “And she hasn’t yet, even after being married to your eldest son.”
Much to Samuel’s horror, his mother’s tears only increased in both flow and volume.
“You’re wearing my gown,” said Frank calmly, seated as she was behind a large drawing of a contraption Samuel hesitated to inquire about. Blast. She had noticed.
“I am?” Rose turned to Samuel.
“You are—sorry, Frank,” he said hastily, pulling out a chair for his supposed bride and flashing his sister a wink. “Rose had to rush from Bath and I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Mind? I’m delighted. She can keep it. It’ll be one less gown Mama tries to force me into,” Frank said vaguely before turning back to her drawing. Then she looked up again. “Wait. Is this your wife?”
“This is our Sammy’s wife,” Benjamin said with a grin as he nudged Rose with his elbow. “None of us can believe it. How on earth did he manage to land you?”
“Benjamin!” their father shot across the table.
Samuel looked helplessly at his mother, who was still sobbing but who had least been handed a handkerchief by a woman at a neighboring table who obviously thought some great bereavement had been announced, and then he glanced at Rose, who was clearly trying not to smile.
But she was greatly enjoying this, wasn’t she? This was the perfect role: a true test of her acting ability.
Well, if the last time she had practiced her acting ability had been anything to go by, this was going to be electric…
“Come now, Lady Aylesbury,” Rose said soothingly, stepping around the table and clasping his mother’s hand. “No tears! This is a happy occasion.”
“It’s a surprising occasion,” muttered Frank.
Samuel purposefully kicked her under the table as he sat down.
“Ouch!”
“It most certainly is, and we are delighted to finally meet you,” said their father. He grinned as he too sat down. “Though truth be told, we did not even know of your existence a week ago.”
“I know, and I am sure you are most shocked by his behavior,” Rose said, rubbing the dowager marchioness’s back with one hand and pulling out her own chair with another.
Samuel winced. That was his job, if not a footman’s.
But no one seemed to take note of that. “Come now, sit down—let’s get some tea inside you.
Yes, we simply could not wait to be married, but after eloping, we were waiting for the perfect moment to announce it, and then, though we had decided perhaps to do so at Christmas, I had to keep my friend company, and then at New Year’s, we did not want to steal any attention from your niece, whom we learned was marrying. But your son makes me so happy—”
Samuel’s mother burst into a fresh wave of happy tears and Samuel silently thanked Rose for remembering the details of Irene’s rushed nuptials. It would have been strange not to bring his new wife home for Christmas season and New Year’s otherwise.
Rose poured the dowager marchioness some tea and winked—winked!—at Benjamin. “You look like the sort of rascal who would have some whiskey about his person.”
“Why don’t you come over here,” said Benjamin with wiggling eyebrows, “and search me yourself?”
“Just hand it over, Benjamin,” snapped Samuel, his temper seething.
Dear God, she’s a master. A mistress? It was a small catastrophe that she had not taken over the London stage. Flirtatious with his brother, cordial with his sister, she was politeness itself to his father and supportive and soothing for his mother.
She was also pouring a large dollop of whiskey into his mother’s tea. “There now, something to calm the nerves—I suppose meeting me in person has been a great shock!”
A ripple of laughter moved about the table as Rose sat down not beside Samuel, as he had intended, but instead between his mother and sister.
Well, perhaps that was all to the good. It kept her away from Benjamin, at the very least, and that had to be worth something.
“Tell me,” said Frank suddenly, looking up from her blueprint and fixing her new temporary sister-in-law with a stern look. “What is your view on education? For the lesser sex, I mean?”
Samuel swallowed. It was always a point of contention, and a conversational topic that Frank frequently used as a test. Few passed it.
Rose nodded thoughtfully, then shrugged. “I suppose if we have to educate men, so be it.”
The table went quiet.
Frank grinned and turned to Samuel. “I like her. You may keep her.”
She disappeared back to her drawing as Samuel inhaled a laugh. “Thank you, Frank, that is most kind of you. Tea, Mi—my dear?”
The slipup was small, but it could have been caught. He cursed himself for making such a categorical error. If Benjamin had been paying attention…
Thankfully, Benjamin was not paying attention. At least, he was paying attention, but to the waitress from yesterday, who was most decidedly averting her eye.
Samuel sighed. It was the same old story.
“Yes, thank you, I would love a cup of tea.” Rose smiled prettily, fluttering her eyelashes. “He is the most attentive husband, Lady Aylesbury, you have no idea.”
“Oh, p-p-please, call me ‘M-Mother,’ now that w-we are f-family,” said Samuel’s mother, finally dry enough to put the handkerchief away. “I don’t know wh-what came over me. I’m all at s-sixes and sevens!”
“Quite understandable,” said Rose reassuringly. “Why, I have heard so many good things about you all and yet I have been most nervous to finally meet you. And there was no need! Although it is a shame that Lady Lilianna is not here.”
Samuel just managed to ensure that his eyebrows did not shoot up to his hairline.
Dear God, he had only mentioned his absent sister…what, once, in passing? And yet the woman had remembered. Remembered and managed to slip the fact into conversation as though they had discussed her at length.
She was a marvel.
“Oh, dear Lilianna, I cannot wait for you to meet her,” said the dowager marquess with a laugh. “She has quite a temper on her, though, I warn you.”
“I am sure I am up to the challenge,” Rose said with a beaming expression, directing her glance not at the man who had just spoken, but at Samuel himself.
He inclined his head as he raised his cup of tea as a toast. She most certainly was.