Chapter 7
Seven
After the ordeal, which was the only label fitting for that moment, Rosalie had been taken to a room so far away from the dining hall she couldn’t hear the other guests anymore.
It was small and cool—maybe a private room for moments of important intercourse—adjacent to Lord Peachey’s office.
A single candle burned on a small table between two chairs, emitting a snaking tendril of smoke.
They had laid her on a decorative chaise by the window and left her there with Lady Peachey’s housekeeper.
The gentlewoman kept pressing a damp terrycloth to Rosalie’s head as though her brain had been the offending organ and not her windpipe—or her foolish heart.
“Really, Mrs. French, I am... perfectly well,” Rosalie said for what felt like the tenth time. “It was only a grape, and it came up whole. I feel mostly all right.”
“Mostly all right, mostly all right...” the housekeeper repeated with a little more derision than Rosalie’s pride could handle at that moment.
“You sit here a while longer, Miss Winthrop, and let the color come back to your face. Her ladyship will not abide you swooning on the way home. Lady Winthrop begged us to take the best care of you, and that’s what I will do. ”
Rosalie did not dare to argue any more. She stared at the candle until her eyes burned, trying in vain not to think about the last quarter of an hour.
A bead of cold water cut a path down the side of her face.
She had choked in front of all the guests, in front of her parents and Mr. Edmund Sinclair, and worse still, in front of the Duke of Hartmere himself.
Infinitely worse, he had wrapped his arm beneath her ribs and pulled her against him as though he had done it a hundred times before with a hundred different women; as though her body, the feminine body, belonged in the shape of his arms and always had.
She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and made herself stop thinking about the heat that had rushed through her. Her efforts lasted the length of a sigh before she was thinking about it again.
Not thirty seconds before it happened, he had asked her whether she had kissed Mr. Sinclair.
She could still feel the deliberate warmth of his voice in her ear, the volume of his words coming low enough that no one else at the table could have caught them.
The memory made her stomach tighten even now, sitting alone with a housekeeper and a damp rag on her face.
You are meant to be grateful that he did not let you die at the dinner table, she told herself sternly.
No matter the measures he took to get there.
What else was he supposed to do? Not touch you and hope the grape dislodged itself?
His embrace was medical and sterile. It is your interpretation of the moment which has cast a disgraceful light on it.
A knock came at the door, and Rosalie’s body went rigid with dread—or something close to dread that felt a little more pleasant, but no less distressing.
She guessed who was on the other side of the door and began composing what she meant to say to him: something tepid that would put the necessary distance back between them.
The housekeeper waited for Rosalie to admit their visitor.
“Come in,” she said, her voice hoarse. She was already halfway out of the chaise when the door opened.
It was not the duke who appeared but Mr. Sinclair.
“Miss Winthrop, forgive the intrusion. I wished to see for myself that you were recovering. Your mother is occupied assuring Lady Peachey that her menu was not at fault, and your father is similarly engaged with His Lordship, and I thought... Well, I thought someone ought to come and ask how you are faring. We are all concerned about your wellbeing.”
Mr. Sinclair hovered in the doorway, looking visibly uncertain about whether he ought to enter, a candle of his own in one hand.
His fine hair was messy, like he had just raked his hands through it.
It endeared him to Rosalie despite her surprise at seeing him instead of someone else.
An arrow of guilt loosed itself inside her at the goodness of his exercise and the fact that he had not come armed with questions or provocations, only a plume of light and a straightforward concern.
“Everything is all right,” she said, and this time the assurance came out steadier than it had with the housekeeper. “I am thoroughly embarrassed by everything that occurred at the table.... but I’m all right regardless.”
“There is no cause for embarrassment,” he stressed, his face a blank canvas. “None whatsoever, in so far as it concerns me.”
Mr. Sinclair came a few steps into the room, careful to leave the door open behind him. Rosalie acknowledged the gesture's correctness and was grateful. The housekeeper greeted the gentleman politely and handed Rosalie the damp cloth, stepping away to linger by the door.
“I have seen far worse happen at much more serious houses than this,” he said, turning to Mrs. French to add, “You shall not repeat that to the lord and lady of the house... My own aunt once set her sleeve on fire reaching over some candles at court. Nobody speaks of it now except our family, and we remember it only because she brings it up herself every year with considerable relish. I think it pleases her to have left her mark on the court. These moments are inevitable in life. One presses on, makes something of them.”
Despite everything, Rosalie felt her mouth curve into a smile as she leaned back in the chaise. “That is a very generous thing to invent, if you invented it, purely to make me feel less ridiculous about my predicament.”
“I assure you, I did not invent it. I wish I had invented it. It is a better story than most of the stories in my social arsenal. But I will confess I brought it out this evening because I suspected you needed to hear something to assuage your unnecessary embarrassment.”
He set his candle down on the small table beside him. Some of the easy humor went out of his face as he knelt in front of her.
“But I did come for another reason, other than simply ensuring myself of your welfare. I wanted you to know, Miss Winthrop, that whatever anyone chooses to make of tonight, you need not suffer it alone. If anyone thinks to make sport of this moment at your expense, I hope you will allow me to be the one to redirect them to the truth. We have only known each other for a short while, but I would like to think we could continue to share each other’s company.
This one moment has not deterred me. Has it deterred you? ”
The kindness of his words was undeserved, and Rosalie felt a fresh wave of shame roll over her—not for the choking, or even for the scene at the table—but for the truth she could not outrun no matter how much she turned her thoughts from it.
Even now, with a good man kneeling before her and offering to court her, some disloyal part of her mind kept drifting back to that solid arm locked beneath her breast and the fingers that had lodged themselves between her ribs the seconds after disaster had struck.
She looked into Mr. Sinclair’s kind eyes, as he offered her the sensible and natural devotion that she had spent four Seasons telling herself she wanted above all things.
It evoked nothing but grateful fondness in her, whereby every rule these things were meant to work something warmer should have stirred instead.
“Thank you,” she made herself say sincerely, even if it was not the whole of what she felt. “That is very good of you and reassures me greatly. Yes... I would like to continue to receive your company... and your support.”
“Good. And it is no trouble at all.” He smiled, and Rosalie had to look down at her hands, unable to bear being looked at so kindly while thinking of someone else.
“Shall I fetch your mother, then? I expect she has finished reassuring Lady Peachey by now and will want to see you for herself. Then we can all resume our meal as it was meant to be, before things took their funny turn.”
“Please,” Rosalie said, grateful for the excuse to be alone for another moment. She watched him and her throat went tight. He paused to say something quietly and gently to the housekeeper.
Rosalie wondered about the Duke of Hartmere, about what he was thinking, and about where he was, if he was not coming to check on her as Mr. Sinclair had. And why that was.
The next day, Rosalie’s mother suggested they go for a walk in the park.
The sky was growing more gray by the hour, and there was no telling when the rain would stop once it finally began.
The sunlight was thin but determined through the clouds.
There was the ordinary crunch of gravel underfoot, maternal and paternal voices drifting somewhere behind her.
Her parents were deep in conversation about something that was making them laugh.
They had not spoken about Rosalie’s episode since they had returned home early from the dinner the night prior.
She had not seen Mr. Sinclair or the duke after leaving her private room with Mrs. French.
They had herded her straight to a carriage and then home.
Emily, whom they had invited to join them at her mother’s insistence and who was unaware of what had transpired, had not mentioned anything related to the evening either.
The girls walked arm in arm past a pretty marble bandstand.
The park stretched out before them, mostly empty except for the chestnut trees.
The fashionable main promenade was far behind them.
They were closer to Rotten Row. Rosalie clutched Emily close to her, trying to listen to the birds and the sounds from the nearby lake.