Chapter 12
Twelve
“You must try the raspberry lemonade before it warms too much to be enjoyable,” said Mr. Sinclair, settling a crystal glass in front of Rosalie with care and precision.
“My cook has been putting mint in it recently. I confess I did not request this myself, but I hardly have the heart to object either. Do you like it?”
“It is very good,” Rosalie said after taking a light sip.
It was refreshing. The mint was inoffensive. However, the sun was too warm even through her parasol. It was only halfway through March, but it felt like May. As she set down her glass, her attention caught on her mother, who sat in a chair near the terrace doors with her sketchbook.
She had not wanted to be in the way, she said, but obviously she had not wanted to leave them alone either. For the better part of an hour, she had not so much as glanced away from the two of them long enough to let a private sentence pass unheard.
It struck Rosalie how strange the arrangement was.
With Gabriel, Lady Winthrop could be counted upon to vanish at the first excuse, often with a friend and a beverage.
But while she was with Mr. Sinclair, who was hardly known for his rakish behavior, she sat like a sentry, always nearby and monitoring.
Rosalie did not know what to make of it, except to suspect that her mother trusted a duke’s intentions rather less than she trusted a widower’s, which seemed, on its face, completely backward.
“Oh,” Mr. Sinclair said. “Have I bored you with talk of herbs after all?”
“Not at all, Mr. Sinclair. I was thinking of something else, rather than mint.”
“I hope it was something pleasant at least.”
She managed a smile that she hoped passed for agreement and let him steer the conversation back toward safer ground: his garden, the sandwiches, a new studio he had recently built onto the east side of the house.
“I have taken up painting again,” he said somewhat sheepishly.
“It’s been watercolors, mostly. My wife painted, you know.
I gave it up entirely after she died, and I could not have told you why, except that it seemed disloyal somehow to enjoy something she had loved so much without her...
But I have come around to thinking she would have found that reasoning rather foolish. She liked when I was busy.”
“I do not think that is foolish at all,” Rosalie said, turning her parasol to block out more of the sun.
“I have never lost anyone so close to me. I do not know what the protocol is for that sort of thing, but resuming something which brought you joy seems more than fair. Tell me about your wife, please. I know so little about her.”
She felt more than saw her mother tense in her chair. Lady Winthrop raised a brow, but her eyes were fixed on the open page of her sketchbook, the graphite running over it in slow, sweeping motions.
“Her name was Rose.”
Rosalie started. “I see.”
“I wish it had not been so. I have no desire to make you uncomfortable.”
“There are many women with names similar to mine.”
“Yes, and yet... I find it somewhat unfortunate. You are like her in many ways. She, too, was gracious, well-spoken, and well-read. Very much so. She was always reading in her room. She read more than we spoke on the whole.”
He punctuated the confession with a laugh that betrayed how much this bothered him. For the first time, Rosalie began to consider that his marriage had not been completely happy.
“She was younger than me when we married. My parents, long may they rest in peace, made the match for me, and it was endorsed by many in the family. We had little in common at the start, but over three years of marriage, well... one does come to find something of themselves in another, and vice versa. We spent a lot of time in Kinsale.”
“My parents stop there often.”
“That is how I met them, of course.”
Rosalie opened her mouth to ask, Were you ever truly in love with her, because it does not sound like it. But she stopped herself. No one would have welcomed that sort of question. And she hardly knew what love felt like anyway.
“Her passing was unexpected. I suppose you know when and how...”
“I do,” she answered, sparing him from exhuming the past.
“A real tragedy. Likely the greatest tragedy of my life.” He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “This is why I am very glad your parents suggested this connection between us.”
“You are kind to say so,” Rosalie said, trying to hide her discomfort from him.
She took the glass and pressed it against her cheek, where it immediately soothed her.
That sort of gesture might have been acceptable in Gabriel’s company, where all the rules didn’t matter anyway.
Mr. Sinclair, however, gave an involuntary, almost soundless gasp that called Lady Winthrop’s attention away from her art.
“Is it a migraine, darling?” her mother asked, tapping her graphite on the page. “She does get them so often in the heat. She is too delicate for it.”
“I can see that,” Mr. Sinclair said.
“Perhaps you should go inside, dear, into the shade.” Lady Winthrop rose from her seat before anyone had agreed. “I will keep Mr. Sinclair company a time while you recover. May she borrow your drawing room?”
“Or the studio, if she wishes, whatever is cooler indoors.”
“Thank you.” Her mother crossed the terrace, her shoes clicking against the tile, and helped Rosalie out of her chair. She led her to the terrace doors and kissed her on the forehead, then closed the doors behind her.
How queer, Rosalie thought, turning to the rest of the house.
She quickly found a small staircase off the back hall, not having the energy to go any further. The carpeted stairs were comfortable enough for a quick reprieve, and she sat down on the third step with her hands folded in her lap.
Her breaths were coming in too quickly and not helping her pounding headache.
She had not thought of Gabriel once, she told herself, not until this very moment of trying not to think of him, which of course meant she had been thinking of him the entire time.
You are here with a good man, she told herself sternly, who has done nothing but be kind to you. Behave, Rosalie.
She sat long enough for the sun to move slightly across the floorboard before she rose and smoothed her skirts and made her way back toward the terrace doors. But she stopped just short of the doorway, at the sound of voices from the passage that led downstairs, she guessed, toward the kitchens.
“...and mind the good china is out for it, not the everyday service,” a woman’s voice was saying briskly, clearly mid-instruction to her junior. “The whole house wants turning out properly before the Lady and Miss Winthrop leave for the day. The master has been very clear on it.”
“Why so particular all of a sudden?” This was from a younger voice, curious rather than complaining. “We’ve had callers before without half this fuss.”
“Oh, you. No talking back, Clementine...”
“But why—”
“Because it’s an important visit, that’s why, and the master wants everything just so, so she’s pleased with what she sees when it comes time.
” A pause followed, and the clink of something being set down heavily.
“Now don’t dawdle. The silver won’t polish itself.
And don’t forget the linens in the bedroom by the—”
The voice drifted away, and the command went with it.
Rosalie stood still in the shadow of the doorway, her heart beating fast. She, they had said.
Not him, not they, not the family, but she.
That meant a single, particular woman, who the household staff seemed to understand without needing further explanation—someone whose good opinion mattered enough that Mr. Sinclair had apparently given very clear instructions on the matter.
It was likely nothing. He had not mentioned a sister or a female cousin outside Beatrice, but that did not mean one did not exist. An aunt, maybe, from abroad. Or one of his brother’s wives.
Despite the excuses, she returned to the terrace with a new resolve to learn more about Mr. Sinclair—who maybe was not as straightforward as he had first appeared to be.
In the end, Lady Winthrop had been a captain on the terrace, commandeering the conversation however she pleased. Rosalie discovered nothing new. And before she knew it, she was being whisked away from one suitor’s home to another, this time with her father for company.
Hartmere House, when she and her father arrived there just before sunset, was in a state of cheerful disarray that Rosalie recognized before she had even properly set foot in the front courtyard.
“My, what is all this?” her father said, peering out the carriage window at the small army of gardeners working in the area beneath the terrace. “Has His Grace decided to replant the entire estate? At this time of year? Your grandfather would have never...”
“It looks like...” Rosalie leaned over her father to inspect the scene. Her heart skipped a beat. “Those were the rose beds.”
Four or five servants, only one or two of them likely gardeners, were carefully unwinding and re-staking the old climbers exactly as she had described them to Gabriel.
She had not thought for a second he would genuinely remember her advice, let alone implement it immediately.
The scene disappeared as the carriage turned around the drive.
When they found him, Gabriel was standing at the edge of the beds, his coat off despite the company and his staff present.
His sleeves were pushed back, revealing the pale skin of a muscular but hairy forearm.
He gestured at something with authority, then laughed, shaking his head, and moved toward the beds.
Their approach must have been louder than Rosalie thought, because Gabriel soon turned from where he had been halfway bent over a planter.