Chapter 12 #3
“You would have me watch my wife suffer over a matter of pride.”
“No. I would have you manage your estate as an estate ought to be managed, rather than treat Hartmere as an inexhaustible fund you may draw from whenever it pleases you. Your father was a friend to my father, I know. But even they would not engage themselves in the loans you are asking from me.” A pause followed.
When Gabriel spoke again, he was gentler.
“I will send Retcher up to check on your wife. For the rest, you must find another way.”
There was a long silence, and then the sound of a chair scraping back and footsteps.
A man’s voice, low and stripped of its earlier urgency, said something too quiet for Rosalie to catch before the study door opened and a thin but not wholly unfamiliar-looking gentleman came out into the corridor.
His face was drawn tight with shame. Rosalie looked away before he could see her seeing it.
And then the duke came out and found her there.
He stopped at the threshold, stunned.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I was...” She gestured lamely toward the end of the hall. “I was only going to fetch my father as you asked.”
He scoffed. “Are you trying to plead a case of simple obedience when I have found you spying on me?”
“This was not spying,” Rosalie argued, trying to stop him when he began marching away. She succeeded long enough to say, “But I did hear what happened.”
Her hand hovered close to his arm, like she meant to grab him and drag him back into the office. He looked down at her hand, which she dropped immediately at her side. His nose was turned slightly in a snarl.
“And what did you make of it, hm? If you insisted on eavesdropping, you must have had some good reason for not proceeding on your merry way.”
“I thought...” She drew in a fortifying breath. Somewhere in the distance, a door closed harshly. “You sounded unreasonable.”
“What?” He laughed, the sound colored by disbelief. “Then you did not hear enough if you came to that conclusion.”
“He asked for your help. He was related to you, wasn’t he? A cousin—”
“Second cousin. Or third. I have lost track.”
“But a cousin nonetheless. You must be... Your income must be...”
He stepped closer toward her.
“What must my income be, Rosalie? So high as to finance the lives of my every blood relation, no matter how far removed they are from me in lineage, sentiment, or distance? Peter Ashcroft only ever appears in my life when he wants something from me. He dares to do this because he bears the same name as me. We did not meet until we were both adults. I scarcely know him or his wife. But I have offered them my aid time and time again. He is not the first of his kind and not the last. You would ask me to do more when you know nothing? Why?”
Under his gaze, she felt like a child. She didn’t think she had done anything wrong.
Her position was not unreasonable. Between his title, his many homes, the clothes he wore, the places he frequented, the stories he and his aunt had to tell...
there was no end to their riches. So why was he so sparing with them?
“If I were the Duke of Hartmere, I would help anyone who asked.”
“Then you would not be a duke for long,” he replied, stepping slightly back.
“Charity is not always a virtue. Helping ceaselessly is sometimes no help at all.” He looked her deep in the eyes.
“I wonder if that is not what has stopped you all this time from getting what you want. You cannot draw the line, Rosalie Winthrop. You cannot tell a friend from someone who is using you.”
Her mind flashed with Emily’s warning.
“Perhaps you are right,” she admitted. “But then I would rather be like me than be like you.”
“Oh? You said you did not hate me once.” His voice dropped to a whisper, and the hairs on her arms stood on end as he leaned in. “Has that changed? One additional afternoon with your Mr. Sinclair has had a tremendous effect on you.”
“Why do you care about Mr. Sinclair?”
“I do not.”
“You must, because you keep talking about him.”
“I must give my money away. I must care. I must replant the roses to your satisfaction. I must attend such and such gathering with you.” He laughed.
It wasn’t a happy sound, but it wasn't a mocking one either.
She swore the sun had managed to set between the time she had come inside and now.
He was all darkness. “You ask so much of me in this courtship of ours when I am receiving so little in return.”
“If I knew what you wanted,” she said, refusing to be scared by him, “I might be able to provide it, Your Grace.”
“You could not.” Finally, he leaned away from her and began to turn.
She should have asked what he meant, but he had gone too quickly for her to determine whether her assumption of what he thought of her was true.
You are beneath me. You could never give me what I want.
And why, she thought, did that notion make her want to try harder to seek his approval, when she should have been running the other way?