Chapter 17
Seventeen
The next day, word reached Gabriel about a surprise visitor before he had even risen from bed.
He had not expected another Winthrop to appear on his doorstep with so little warning.
But there she was, once he went downstairs: a fourth, somewhat shorter but more assured version of the family, standing in his drawing room holding court with his aunt and her parents, while a footman hovered nearby with a tray of tea waiting to be put down.
Baron Winthrop turned at Gabriel’s arrival, beaming. “May I present our eldest daughter, Viscountess Annabelle Howard. Anna, this is His Grace, the Duke of Hartmere.”
“Lady Howard.” Gabriel bowed over her offered hand. “I had not heard you were expected.”
She was handsome in the way the eldest of a family sometimes was, with a face that had clearly been the template; Rosalie was the improvement, to his eye. The sister’s countenance was harder, more finished, and obviously certain of its own effect as she flashed him a brilliant smile.
“Neither had I expected to be here, not entirely, not until three days ago, when I decided Dumfries had exhausted its charms for now, and London had not yet exhausted mine,” Lady Howard explained.
“My parents’ staff in town were kind enough to redirect me here.
But, oh... I hope I have not imposed? Scotland has not changed me so much that I have forgotten how rude it is to drop by unannounced. ”
“On the contrary,” Gabriel said, though his eyes had already gone to Rosalie. She stood apart from the group near the fire, her back turned, and her face unreadable at this angle. “We are here celebrating a betrothal. The more the merrier.”
A shocked look passed across her face.
“The betrothal between my friend, Marquess Beaumont, and his intended, Miss Warwick,” Gabriel explained.
“Ah, yes.” Lady Howard’s eyes drifted to her stoic sister. “That makes much more sense.”
“Fear not, Your Grace,” the baron put in, rubbing his hands together.
“We were speaking with Lady Chipping and explained that Anna may take our room. We shall be gone a few days, as I am sure you have heard. There is a poetry salon by way of Horsham. Mr. Aster hosts it. Do you know Mr. Aster? Quite well-regarded in verse. Lady Winthrop and I shall go tonight and return within the week?”
“We will leave the girls behind, of course,” Lady Winthrop added, gathering her shawl around her shoulders. “Anna has only just arrived and could use the rest, and Rosalie is in excellent hands here, is she not? I would not tear her from the abbey while she is having such a fun time with you all.”
“Certainly, but...” Gabriel looked between the baron and baroness. They seemed dressed for travel. “Do you intend to go now?”
“The early bird catches the worm,” said the baron.
“The roads are much safer in the morning,” said Lady Winthrop at the same time, shooting her husband an exasperated look. “There is rain coming later, if the sky may be trusted.”
Following this, Gabriel spent a few minutes outside with the baron before the carriage was called, asking after the man’s latest collection, learning more than he had ever expected to know about the Irish Mr. Aster—who was a descendant of Jonathan Swift, supposedly—and about his preferred rhyme schemes.
Baron Winthrop was very unlike his daughter, who was more serious and private, but not unpleasant by any means. And he seemed to love his daughters unconditionally, which struck Gabriel as a rarer thing than it ought to be.
When the baron and baroness had departed, rattling off down the drive with a flurry of good wishes, it left Rosalie and her sister alone in the drawing room.
Gabriel, returning to the door and lingering there without reason to remain, watched something turn in Rosalie’s posture the moment their parents were out of sight.
Intending to find out what had stirred her, he asked, “Shall we walk before the weather turns, like your mother predicted it would?”
The question had been mostly addressed to Rosalie, though it was her sister who answered first.
“What a wonderful idea. I have heard so much about your fields, Your Grace, and I confess my legs are so very restless from my long journey south.”
Once they reached the corridor, Rosalie’s hand went briefly to her temple.
“I find I have... a migraine coming on,” she said.
“Anna’s arrival was a happy surprise, but a surprise all the same, and with the weather turning so suddenly...
I think I ought to rest rather than walk. But please, go ahead without me.”
Lady Howard’s eyes flicked to her sister, assessing perhaps, or simply concerned, before she smiled and let it go. “Rest then, Rosie. I shall report back when I return indoors.”
Rosalie excused herself with a small curtsy. Moments later, Gabriel found himself walking toward the garden with Annabelle Howard, watching Rosalie’s retreat through the window as she disappeared up the staircase.
“It is a funny little habit of hers,” Lady Howard said once they were outside, following his gaze to the abbey.
“Retreating into herself, I mean. She has done it her whole life. I used to think it was... Oh, what would you say? A natural timidity? When we were girls, she was even worse. But I have come to think it is something more deliberate than that. She does not like being alone with people. She prefers her own company much of the time.”
Gabriel was surprised by the sudden change of topic. “I have not found that to be true.”
“And you would know, would you not, being that you are courting her?” Lady Howard’s age was impossible to guess, not far from his own age, maybe.
But the way she spoke made Gabriel feel like a child.
“My mother has been writing to me tirelessly about your courtship. Of course, I am so very pleased about your interest in my sister, Your Grace. On her behalf, I may say it is an honor to be considered by you. My family is not what one might consider to be of the highest stock. We have good breeding, of course. But my parents... and their bohemian ways... And my sister, so reserved and bookish...”
Gabriel was not sure whether to be impressed by her candor or put out by it. He stopped at the base of the terrace. Lady Howard looked up at him, from two steps down.
“That is hardly a shining endorsement. Most elder sisters in your position would be lying to inflate the reputation of their family, rather than denigrate them,” he said with mirth. “Is this usual for you?”
“In that I have spoken the truth? Yes, it is entirely usual. What is the point in pretending that things are otherwise? I would not have anyone entering this courtship blindly, especially my sister, whom I love so much. Truly, I should have been here from the first to guide the thing.”
He raised a brow. “Am I to understand you have some expertise in these matters that would explain your position?”
The sister’s hair was a shade darker and duller than Rosalie’s, more typical of an English beauty, but less radiant in the sun. “I am successfully married. I wish the same for my sister. She is very dear to me, as I said.”
“And yet you speak of her as though she were not capable of attracting a husband on her own merit.”
“Do I really?” Lady Howard considered this, then retraced her steps until she met him on the terrace again.
“That was not my intention. I only mean that she has always been overlooked, and now I find someone from your station looking, and... Would you not feel the same in my shoes? Rosalie, tucked in a corner with a book while the rest of us danced. That is the image that sticks with me. I have spent a great deal of my life expecting her to never know the happiness she deserves.”
Gabriel bristled at that, though he could not immediately have said why. “I, for one, have not found her quiet. She has fascinated me and indulged me in conversation countless times since we have met.”
“I see,” said Lady Howard, looking mildly impressed. “Then perhaps she has changed. Something to be thrilled about... Or nervous? Time will tell. But let us keep walking, Your Grace. There is so much more to be discussed.”
Agreeing, Gabriel took her down to the river, where some of the other guests were promenading after breakfast. They joined them, and the pleasantries, if they could be called that, resumed.
The sky had been threatening all morning to burst open; eventually, the first fat drops of rain arrived.
Lady Howard cried out, gathered her skirts, and Gabriel offered his arm, hurrying her back to the house.
“This southern weather,” Lady Howard complained, shaking rain from her bonnet under the shelter of the back portico. “It’s warmer here than in Dumfries, I’ll admit. But the rain can at least make up its mind in Scotland. So decisive; a bit like the Scots.”
“If the weather were easier to predict, we would want for things to talk about,” Gabriel said, watching the rain sheet down across the lawn. “I hardly mind the inconsistency.”
“I am discovering that about you, Your Grace,” Anna said, nodding. “The weather, Rosalie... You like to be kept on your toes.”
Rosalie had barely settled onto her bed, slippers still on, when the door opened without a knock.
“I know you are not ill,” Anna said, coming in already and peeling off her damp gloves. “I have known you all your life, Rosie. You may be able to dupe His Grace, but you cannot lie to me.” She crossed over to the bed and laughed. “Why did you flee?”
“My head hurts,” Rosalie argued, kicking off her shoes. It was only half a lie. She did have a slight headache from lack of sleep, but it was not such a terrible ailment as to excuse her from a walk.
Anna sat on the edge of the bed without being invited.
Rosalie watched her sister remove her outer garments, feeling a familiar mix of ease and concern in her presence.
Her sister looked the same to her eye as the last time they had seen each other.
Her husband treated her kindly, but he had not yet made her a mother.
“I spoke with the Duke of Hartmere.”
Rosalie lay back on the bed and covered her eyes with the back of her hand. “I imagine you did, given that you promenaded with him.”
“We had a pleasant walk, until the rain arrived.” Anna sighed, slapping her gloves on Rosalie’s legs. “Are you not going to ask me what we discussed?”
“I fear I know already.”
“Oh, you have changed,” Anna said, sounding impressed. “You remind me of our grandmother.”
“She was a horrible woman.”
“Precisely my point.”
Rosalie opened an eye and found Anna smiling, unserious. “I have not yet met your Mr. Sinclair. I understand he is very steady, very respectable, exactly the sort of man Mother has been praying for since your first season...”
“Why are we speaking of Mr. Sinclair?”
“He was on my mind when I was speaking with the duke. I will tell you plainly, sister, because I think you are too deep in it to see it clearly yourself: that man admires you genuinely.”
Rosalie shot into a sitting position, going cold. “You have no idea what you are talking about. He could not possibly admire me.”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
“No,” Rosalie agreed, thinking but not saying, But you are often wrong about your assessment of people.
“I saw it, little things. I know the signs of infatuation in a man, and he displayed almost all of them. When I spoke to him about you—”
“Please tell me you did not test him.” That was one of Anna’s favorite pastimes, pushing people’s buttons to extract the truth from them.
“Be quiet,” Anna said. She reached over and took her hand. “This is a happy time, and I will not have you ruining it for us all.”
“It is not what you think,” Rosalie replied, and she heard how thin it sounded even as she said it.
“No?” Then you tell me what it is.”
Where on earth would Rosalie begin? The terrace, and the lie, and the arrangement?
The shame of it was a weight on her chest. The Duke of Hartmere was humoring her, using her, and she was using him.
Whatever Anna thought she had gleaned from their conversation was wrong.
Gabriel was only playing the part of an interested suitor.
Even though Rosalie thought part of me wished he was not pretending. And that is only natural, is it not? To genuinely want to be sought out? Like how Anna’s husband fought for her? Like how my father fights for my mother every day?
“Our acquaintance cannot be easily summarized,” Rosalie finally said, which was true enough to pass. “And I am not free to explain why. But I will tell you this much, Anna. It will end soon, or soon enough.”
“Because you prefer Mr. Sinclair?”
Rosalie did not reply.
Anna made a nose of disgust. “You are so sensible and boring. Look at William and me. Look how that turned out. Do you think we were being sensible when we fell in love? Love is never sensible. You must be strategic, yes, but also foolish if you want to make a true-love match.”
There was no point arguing with Anna. But every new thing she said made Rosalie’s heart ache over the lie they were living.
“You want him,” Anna stated. “I can see it in the way you avoid my eye. You despair and predict an early end because you are afraid of admitting your feelings to yourself. One cannot lose something they never gave themselves. You could not lose the Duke of Hartmere if you never accept your love for him fully.”
The word love sent a jolt through Rosalie, and she rose from the bed entirely. “It is not—”
“The only thing that matters, in the end, is your happiness.” Anna took her hand and squeezed it.
“I know you, sister, more than anyone else. And you reside in my heart, in a larger chamber than anyone else could ever occupy. And that is why I tell you this: be selfish now. Have you not spent your whole life thinking about others? Nurturing the romances of your friends to the detriment of your own?”
The question called Emily and Thomas to mind, and all her other friends who were married, grateful for Rosalie’s steadfast and unwavering friendship.
“You make it sound simple,” Rosalie murmured.
“If it were simple, it would not be worth the effort,” Anna replied. “But I did not suffer the scorn of the ton, the attacks from women like Beatrice Sinclair, and not learn a trick or two about how to catch a man.
Anna smiled, slowly and conspiratorially, an expression Rosalie remembered from childhood.
“If you wish the Duke of Hartmere to desire you in earnest rather than merely admire you from afar—if it is him you want above all others—I can help you. Just give me the word...”