Chapter 18 #2
He cleared his throat to announce his arrival, the rest of the guests far away on the floor below.
She startled and straightened, snapping back into place. “Your Grace... I did not think anyone would follow me out.”
“Your mistake, not mine.” He lingered in the open window, then stepped out. “I would like to know what has happened to you since this morning, Ros.”
He leaned on the railing beside her and waited.
“Nothing has happened to me,” she replied.
“You are not very good at lying. Strange, since I always considered it to be one of your finer qualities... Is that not how we ended up here in the first place?” He observed her profile in the dim light from the windows.
He had found his courage sometime during the poetry game.
“You were different with me tonight... I would like to know why.”
Her hand tightened against the railing. “Why can it not be that I have simply grown fonder of you?”
His heart flipped involuntarily, until he realized that she was still speaking in her new, practiced way. “Yes, that may have been plausible... but it is not the case.”
She winced slightly, and he knew he had caught her. She was quiet for a long moment, still turning the glove over in her hand.
“Alright,” she said through a sigh. “My sister offered to counsel me.”
“Counsel you?” he repeated, smiling.
“If you laugh, I will jump off the balcony.” He took her warning seriously, and she continued. “She said that I had been going about this all wrong, that if I wanted you to feel a certain way, she could teach me how to make you...”
She stopped herself and leaned over until her head was on her hands.
“How to make me what?” he asked, though he suspected he already knew, his voice going weak, his body tingling with nerves. Say it, he thought. Say you wanted to repulse me, to punish me for liking you as much as I do. Say you want to end this courtship and marry Sinclair.
“I cannot say it,” she said. “You would think so much less of me if I said it aloud.”
“A pity for us both,” he replied, crestfallen.
He gazed over the park, surprised at the intensity of his disappointment.
He knew he had no right to care what Rosalie thought about him.
They had not built their courtship on love, not even on respect.
But over time... Yes, maybe he had thought it was possible she could come to look at him with half of the admiration he held for her.
“I only wanted...” She stopped again, and he thought her stopping and starting would be the death of him. If she did not jump, he might. Rising, she sucked in a deep breath and looked out over the night. “I wanted you to see the truth.”
He nodded. “You have made your point clear.”
She fell silent and turned to look at him. “What did you say?” she asked.
“I said that you have made your point clear,” he repeated, meeting her eye. “But you need not have recruited Lady Howard in the art of how to crush a man. You are quite good at that all on your own.”
“Crush...? To crush a man? To crush you?”
Her breath caught audibly, and the air shifted.
The way she had said the word, with so much victory and surprise...
It was like the beginning of some confession she had been holding back too long, to tell him that she did not even think he could be crushed, that he could only want her like a rake could want her, and could be teased back without consequence.
“Well, damn us both,” he said.
And then he kissed her, before she could say another word. She made a small sound against his mouth, surprised and tense, before her gloved hand came up to fist in the front of his jacket, pounding only once against him before she kissed him deeply.
Finally, he kissed her the way he had wanted to kiss her since that first night, payment for every insufferable carriage ride and dance, every argument that had made him fall deeper and deeper under her spell.
He was still holding her, his hand at the curve of her jaw, wiping some of the unnecessary rouge away with his thumb as though he could restore her simply by touching her, when the certainty arrived in him fully formed.
What he felt for Miss Rosalie Winthrop was like nothing he had felt before.
Their courtship was a sham, but his heart, the way it yearned for her...
There was nothing artificial about that.
He drew back just far enough to tell her this, determined to have the last word before she could break his heart in two, to show her that he was capable of great feelings after all, and she would regret not giving him the chance to show her, to hold her, to lo—
A guttural cry cut through the night from somewhere below them, and they flinched.
“Anna?” Rosalie asked, staring into the house.
They broke apart at once, found the stairs together, and came down into the front hall. James was already there, breathless from running, standing with a mud-spattered messenger beside him.
Anna’s wails continued from the drawing room, growing wilder as Rosalie ran toward her. Gabriel tried to stop her, but he could not. He looked to James for answers.
“Baron Winthrop,” James said, holding up a note. “There has been word from Horsham. He has taken gravely ill. They’re bringing him back to London tonight. Lady Winthrop writes... that her daughters ought not to wait for morning to join them.”