Chapter 39
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
With All My Heart
Of course, I couldn’t let it all go. There were matters that needed to be dealt with. So I spent the next couple of hours making lists, stopping occasionally to pen a letter.
The first went to the housekeeper at Rosehaven Manor.
After informing her about the change in circumstances, I directed her to pack my fall and winter things, along with Chrissie's and Laurel's, and have the trunks shipped to Thornburn Abbey.
Petunia was another matter entirely. She'd grown so over the spring and summer that nothing remained that fit, and there'd be no time to remedy it before we left London.
That, I decided, would have to wait until we reached Thornburn Abbey.
Surely a village seamstress could be found there to take on the task.
My siblings’ teacher gave me the greatest pause.
She had friends at Rosehaven Manor, as well as a burgeoning romance with our local vicar.
So, more than likely, she would remain with Holly and Ivy.
That meant Petunia and Laurel would need someone new—someone, I underlined twice, willing to remove herself to the far edge of the moors and its harsh winter weather.
The other staff members presented fewer difficulties.
Tilly was a certainty, along with Chrissie’s and Laurel’s maid and Petunia’s minder.
Then there was the wedding itself. Grandmother might have very well put herself in charge of the venue and everything that accompanied it.
But a guest list had to be assembled. My preference ran to family and close friends only.
I would need to consult Warwick. The invitations would have to be delivered by messenger, there being no time to trust them to the post. And regardless of where the ceremony was held, food would have to be arranged for the wedding breakfast, and the flowers as well.
I wrote menu and flowers and confirm venue with W.
in a tidy column and felt, for one foolish moment, as though I had the whole affair well in hand.
A knock sounded at the door, interrupting my planning. Tilly, as it turned out.
"My lady. Supper will be in two hours. You'll want to bathe and dress."
I glanced at the clock on the mantel, which showed a quarter past five. "Is it that time already?"
I took my time with my bath and my dressing.
Warwick had proposed to me in all my dirt.
Tonight, I wanted to present the best version of myself.
Once Tilly was done with my toilette, I descended the stairs, reaching the drawing room but a few minutes before Warwick arrived, the Duchess of Steele and Lord Nicholas with him.
The children had been asked to delay their entrance until those greetings were done.
They waited all of five minutes to swarm the drawing room with their shrieks of laughter—sans Snowball, who had been confined to her cage.
Petunia was first, of course. Bypassing everyone, she rushed up to Warwick and hugged as much of him as she could. And then as if she’d suddenly remembered the correct etiquette, she stepped back and offered her finest curtsy. “Your Grace.”
He returned it with a deep bow. “Lady Petunia.”
Once the niceties had been observed, Warwick drew me aside to a quiet corner where we might talk.
"I applied for the wedding license. It should be granted within a day. We can marry any time after that."
"Friday." That was three days away. The word felt strange in my mouth, too soon and too late at once. "Grandmother suggested Steele House for the ceremony. Does that meet with your approval?"
He grinned. "Mother is already decided upon it.”
I blinked. "Has she?”
"Your grandmother and I have arranged it between us, dear Rosalynd,” the Duchess pronounced from the sofa, where she’d joined grandmother. "Steele House will make the perfect venue. Warwick agrees. Don’t you, dear?”
“Yes, Mother.”
"We'll need to plan the menu, order the food, and, of course, arrange for the flowers."
I thought of the tidy column on my list, penned not two hours past—menu, flowers, confirm venue—each item now struck through by the duchess and grandmother who had not consulted me on a single one of them. I decided to be profoundly grateful.
"I can suggest—" Cosmos began.
"Roses." Steele raised my hand to his lips and kissed it. "In every shade that can be managed."
"Yes, of course," the Duchess said.
For once, Cosmos had nothing further to offer, owing chiefly to Claire's elbow finding his ribs.
"As for our guests," I said, attempting to reclaim some small territory, "I'd just as soon have only family and friends."
Warwick brushed a thumb across my cheek. "Whatever you wish, Rosalynd.”
"For the ceremony, certainly," the Duchess said from her perch, “but for the wedding breakfast we'll want a hundred guests at least. It isn't every day the Duke of Steele marries."
I bit down on my lip to keep from laughing. "Congratulations, Warwick. Apparently, you are marrying yourself."
"So what will you wear, Rosie?" Chrissie asked.
"Um." In all the hours of letters and lists, the question of a wedding gown had not once crossed my mind. I had remembered the flowers and the menu and the guests. But not once had I thought of a wedding gown. "I shall have to—er—think about it."
"Come naked,” Steele murmured into my ear. "All I want is you."
My entire body flushed with heat. "Stop it."
"We're never going to get a sensible word out of either of them, Duchess," Grandmother declared. "We'll simply have to arrange it all by ourselves."
"I quite agree." Warwick's mother folded her hands.
"The ceremony will be held Friday at eleven, at Steele House.
The wedding breakfast to follow immediately.
The dowager countess and I will see to the whole of it.
" She nodded toward the two of us as though bestowing a great kindness. "All you need do is be present.”
I sighed as I thought of my poor lists now rendered entirely pointless. And then I glanced at Warwick, who was watching me with that warm, infuriating amusement of his. Bother the lists. I was marrying the man I loved.
"Well," I said. "That was easy."
Supper was anything but. The moment we were seated, the table erupted. The cause of the commotion was, for once, not Petunia.
"William," Chrissie announced, leveling her fork at our brother, "has said perhaps four words since he came home, and I won't stand for it another minute. You've been gone half a year. Talk."
William, who had spent the meal attending very closely to his food, looked up. He was browner than when he'd left, leaner, and there was something about the set of his mouth that hadn't been there before—some weather he'd come through that he hadn't yet seen fit to describe.
"There's little to tell," he said.
“Nonsense. There must be a great deal to tell," Grandmother said. "You've been to Paris.”
"Paris. Then south." He turned his wine glass by its stem. "Lyon, and down to the Mediterranean. I crossed into Italy in the spring—Turin, Florence. I meant to see Rome and didn't."
“You didn’t?” Cosmos exclaimed. "A man goes all that way and skips Rome?"
"I was diverted." Something flickered across his face and was gone. "Vienna, after. Then the lakes. I spent the better part of June walking in the Alps with a guide who spoke no English and a German who spoke no sense. I have never in my life slept so well or eaten so badly."
That got a laugh, and he allowed it to carry the moment past whatever it was he hadn't said.
"Were there ladies?" Chrissie demanded.
"Chrissie,” I murmured.
"It's a perfectly reasonable question. He's gone six months and comes home looking like the hero of a novel. There were obviously ladies."
"There was a great deal of scenery," William said gravely. "I admired all of it."
Lord Nicholas, who had been watching my brother with the frank interest of one young man taking the measure of another, lifted his glass. "A diplomatic answer. You'd do well in my line." Lord Nicholas had settled upon diplomacy and was due to sit the examination in September.
"God forbid," said William. For the first time tonight, he smiled like himself.
It was Petunia, of course, who got nearest the truth. She had been studying him across the table with that unnerving, unblinking attention of hers. "You're sad about something."
The table went quiet.
William looked at her for a long moment. "I'm tired, poppet. That's all. It was a long journey.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t explain all of it.” Having delivered her verdict, Petunia returned to the meal.
He neither argued nor provided further explanation.
I caught Cosmos's eye down the length of the table and saw my own thought reflected there.
Whatever William had carried home from the Continent, we would not hear it tonight, and perhaps not for some time.
Eventually, there would be a reckoning of it.
There always was, in this family. But not over the pudding, and not with Warwick and his family there.
I steered us back to safer water—Florence and the lakes and the German who spoke no sense. He slowly thawed as the meal wore on, until by the time the cloth was drawn he was almost the boy who'd left us.
It was late when the party finally broke up, the children herded protesting to their bedchambers, the Duchess and Grandmother departing arm in arm in a haze of mutual contentment, already plotting Friday between them like two generals dividing a conquered country.
Warwick remained.
"A moment, if you will, Rosalynd,” he said quietly, and drew me back toward the morning room, where my lists lay scattered across the desk in the lamplight.
He took my hand. “This morning, I asked you to marry me with my bare hands and a great deal of poor reasoning. Taking pity on me, you said yes.”
“That’s not why I said yes, Warwick.”
“Let me do it properly, please.”
Why, he was nervous. I’d never seen him like this. “Very well.”
From his coat he drew a small box and opened it.
Within, a ring caught the lamplight and held it.
A sapphire nestled within, deep and dark as the moors at dusk, round it a circle of diamonds reflected the light in soft, candle-warm sparks.
The whole of it was set in platinum, the shoulders worked with a fine scrolling.
It was the most beautiful piece of jewelry I had ever seen.
"Warwick." It came out unsteadily. I had managed an entire afternoon of lists and letters and the wholesale rearrangement of my life without once growing teary, and now a single ring had undone me in the space of a breath.
"I'd hoped for an answer somewhat warmer than my name."
"You'll have a better one." I held out my hand, and found it was not quite steady either. "Put it on me, you ridiculous man, before I disgrace us both."
It fit as though it had been waiting for me, the sapphire settling cool against my finger, the diamonds warm with the light. He raised my hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to it just above the ring, and held it there a moment longer than the gesture strictly required.
"Constancy," I said softly, looking at it. "And you chose blue."
“To match your beautiful eyes.”
“Now I am crying.” A tear rolled down my cheek as he got down on one knee.
“Rosalynd Heliotrope Rosehaven, will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”
“With all my heart. Now, get up and kiss me.”
He kissed me—properly, passionately. And for a long lovely while, the world faded away and all that existed was us.