Annie Burrows (6 page)

And she was certainly rising to the challenge of having a room full of suitors vying for her attention. Rose managed them all with a dexterity that filled Lydia with admiration. If she felt a preference for any of them, she was taking such care not to show it that not even Lydia could attempt a guess.

Until Lord Rothersthorpe walked in.

Rose’s face lit up, then she actually stood up, crossed the room and held out her hand.

She hadn’t minded when the others paused only to shake her hand and utter the briefest of commonplaces, before making for Rose. But when he virtually ignored her, it really hurt.

She felt completely in tune with the men who glowered at Rothersthorpe as he bowed over Rose’s extended hand, though at least they had the freedom to leave when they couldn’t bear watching the pair admiring each other any longer.

As they began to drift away, in varying attitudes of despondency, it was left entirely to Lydia to bid them farewell, since Rose was engrossed in showing Lord Rothersthorpe what she had been doing with her corsage.

She supposed she ought to reprimand Rose for such lack of manners, but she was still striving to prove she was not a repressive ogress. Besides which, she knew exactly the effect Lord Rothersthorpe could have on a female. She had stretched her own chaperon’s tolerance to the limits, in order to snatch a few moments with him in private, even if it was only the limited privacy of the corner of a crowded room.

She could even excuse Lord Abergele for furtively stuffing the slice of cake he’d been eating into his pocket before shaking her hand in farewell. Lord Rothersthorpe had such an unsettling effect that there was no telling what madness he could provoke.

When the others had all gone, Lydia chose a chair as far from Rose’s work table as she could, sat down and smoothed out her skirts with hands that were not quite steady.

She was not eavesdropping. Absolutely not. It was just that it was quite impossible not to hear every word they were saying, now that they were the only ones left. She had no choice but to sit and listen to him flirting gently with her charge.

If he had
wanted
to humiliate her, he could not have chosen a better method.

‘Lord Chepstow? Yes, he is a friend of mine,’ Lord Rothersthorpe was saying. ‘And, yes, I do have an invitation to his musical evening.’

Just as she suspected. Rose was determined to find out where Lord Rothersthorpe was going, before making her own plans for the evening.

Her insides tightened and twisted into a knot as she watched the animation in Rose’s face. However would she cope if these two made a match of it?

She would just have to, that was all. It wasn’t as if she’d ever dared hope she might become...something, to him. This was nothing new. It was just...well, it was quite a different thing, knowing she had no chance, in her head, and seeing him courting another woman, right before her eyes.

Oh, why had their paths had to cross now, like this? Why could he not have been safely married to someone else?

If he really began to court Rose in earnest, whatever was she going to do?

Nothing. Nothing, of course.

She loved Rose. She wanted Rose to be happy.

So she would just have to stamp down hard on these pangs of jealousy, whenever they took hold of her.

He had
never
been hers. She had long since accepted that fact. She had. Once she’d married Colonel Morgan, she’d made a point of counting her blessings, daily, and refusing to allow herself to hanker after the impossible. In that way, she’d gradually schooled herself to be content with her lot.

Only now it was looking as though it might not have been impossible. If only Lord Rothersthorpe had changed into this pillar of society sooner...if only he’d cared enough for her to have become this man that people now admired...

But he hadn’t. That was what she had to remember. He hadn’t turned his fortunes around because he’d wanted to provide her with a home and security. On the contrary, his feelings for her had been so fleeting that he was standing here today, flirting with Rose whilst discounting her very presence in the room.

‘But no,’ he was saying with a laugh that sent a bitter pang shafting right through her. Once upon a time he had exerted himself to amuse her, as he was now attempting to amuse Rose.

Though it was utterly ludicrous to feel as though he was deliberately attempting to gouge her heart out of her chest with a teaspoon.

‘I shall not be attending the Chepstows’ musicale. It is Wednesday. Almack’s beckons.’

Rose’s face fell as dramatically as did her own stomach. In her own case it was because his determination to attend Almack’s meant that he really was serious about finding a wife.

She’d known it, deep down. His behaviour last night had told her, even before Robert had started to talk about how men of his class always settled down, eventually. He had not gone to the card room at all. And when he’d danced, he had done so with an eligible girl, not just one of the wallflowers.

Though in Rose’s case, the despondency was because of the impossibility of gaining vouchers.

‘As if I would want to attend such a stuffy club,’ said Rose with a toss of her head. ‘From what I hear, it is all rules and regulations, and people looking down their noses at everyone.’

‘Yet that is where a gentleman has to go when he is searching for a bride,’ he said to her with a meaningful look

‘Well, if a man wants to marry me,’ replied Rose mutinously, ‘he will have to come looking for me where I am.’

Lord Rothersthorpe finally turned towards Lydia and deigned to speak.

‘You have your hands full with your spirited young charge, do you not, Mrs Morgan?’

The words might have sounded as though he was expressing sympathy, but she could not forget what he’d said the night before, about preferring a girl who spoke her mind to one who became easily tongue-tied. Besides, there was a challenging glitter in his eyes which she was beginning to recognise. It gave her the distinct impression he had only brought her into the conversation in order to taunt her.

‘On the contrary,’ she said firmly. ‘I am in complete agreement with her. Rose has no need to go hunting for a husband. Any man who wishes to marry her must do her the courtesy of demonstrating that he values her enough to court her properly.’

‘Strange,’ he said, with a lift of one eyebrow. ‘Your attitude towards marriage appears to have undergone a complete reversal since you were having your own Season.’

How could he fling that in her face? How could he mock her for letting him treat her so contemptibly? Oh, how she wished she’d had the strength to turn him from her door when he’d come calling in those days. Instead of letting him...toy with her.

‘It is not my attitude that is in question here,’ she said coldly, looking him straight in the eyes. ‘But the attitude of any man who would aspire to the hand of my stepdaughter.’

He bowed his head. ‘I stand corrected,’ he said. Then he turned back to Rose. ‘And accept my apologies if I implied that you are not worthy of pursuit. When I spoke of your spirit, it was entirely from admiration, I do assure you. I dislike the kind of girls who put on die-away airs to make men feel they need a champion. A man needs a partner when he chooses a wife, not a woman so feeble she could never be anything but an encumbrance.’

Well, he could not have made his feelings plainer if he had walked up to her and slapped her face. He despised her for having been so weak and vulnerable, when he’d known her, did he? It was just as well she hadn’t told Mrs Westerly what he’d said as he’d carried her into the house, then, or she would have clapped him in matrimonial irons so fast he wouldn’t have known what hit him. And he would have been stuck with her and all her...
encumbrances.
If he was being this determined to let her know he regretted having almost proposed to her, then it was a good job she hadn’t taken him seriously.

Not for the first time, she thanked God Colonel Morgan had seen fit to marry her. He had never, ever looked upon her as an encumbrance. Oh, Rose might have said he made her work hard for her keep, but at least he made her feel as though she
could
play a valuable role within his household.

Lord Rothersthorpe had done himself no favours with Rose, either, to judge from the way she was looking at him as though she had never seen him before. The way
she
had felt last night, when she’d first begun to suspect she had been mistaken about his nature. Rose might be a little outspoken, but she was also a tender-hearted girl. She was bound to recoil from a man who could speak so callously of people who had some form of disadvantage.

Thank heaven Rose had spotted that in him now.
She
would not waste years pining for a man who turned out not to have been worth a single one of the tears she’d shed over him.

And even though he would still be out somewhere looking for a suitable wife, at least she wouldn’t have to watch him do it. She thought she could probably handle the news of his marriage to anyone, so long as it wasn’t Rose. It would have been extremely painful to have watched them making a life together, having children together, growing old together, when he had so neatly wriggled out of having to do any such thing with her.

As Rose made an appropriate reply, she deliberately looked away. And it was then Lydia noticed her hands had clenched until they’d formed fists.

Well, now she could unclench them. Rose had seen through him. Whoever Lord Rothersthorpe decided to marry, it was highly unlikely to be Rose. So she wouldn’t have to purchase Rose’s trousseau and write out invitations, and organise the wedding breakfast, all the while feeling as though she was being torn apart inside.

Before she had much time to wonder why she still felt as though Lord Rothersthorpe’s marriage was an issue that would cause her such grief, when she’d just decided he was not worth a single one of the tears she’d shed after he’d demonstrated that she didn’t mean enough to him to give up his bachelor freedoms for, the door burst open and Robert strode in.

‘Thought you had better see this, Mama Lyddy,’ he said, waving a letter he was clutching in his hand. ‘Oh,’ he said, coming to a halt when he spied Rothersthorpe. ‘I thought all Rose’s admirers had left.’

‘All but me,’ he replied, crossing the room with his hand extended.

Robert folded the letter swiftly before accepting his hand. ‘Have you had tea?’ Robert glanced at the detritus left behind by the pack of Rose’s younger suitors.

‘I do beg your pardon,’ said Lydia, aghast to discover that she’d spent the entire duration of his visit flailing around in a morass of negative emotions which had apparently robbed her of the ability to act as a competent hostess. ‘I shall ring for some more. If you are staying?’

‘Please do not trouble yourself
now,
’ he replied sarcastically. ‘I can see your stepson has some pressing business he wishes to discuss with you.’

‘Yes,’ said Robert, looking rather taken aback by Lord Rothersthorpe’s rudeness. ‘Very pressing business, as a matter of fact.’

‘And I have still to call upon Miss Hill.’

Of course. His other dance partner from the night before.

She did not miss the way Rose’s lips tightened in displeasure at his announcement that this had been a mere duty call.

Oh dear. That was two marks against him.

So it came as no surprise when, the moment he’d left, Rose informed her that she rather thought she would as soon go to the Lutterworths’ soirée, as anywhere.

The one place where they were certain
not
to encounter Lord Rothersthorpe, even if he did decide to take Rose’s hint and abandon his plans to attend Almack’s. Now that he was in the market, he would have so many invitations to choose from that he would be spoilt for choice. And he’d become so very top-lofty nowadays, to judge from their two brief meetings, that he would not deign to enter the house of a family that had made their fortune from pickles.

‘I am sorry,’ said Robert, ‘but I really do think you should read this.’ He pulled out the folded letter from the pocket where he’d tucked it earlier. ‘It is from Marigold.’

‘Oh. Is there some problem at Westdene?’

‘It is Cissy, I’m afraid.’

‘No!’ She snatched the letter from him with a trembling hand.

‘I did not want to worry you about her before,’ Robert confessed. ‘But all the reports I have received suggest she is growing worse by the day.’

Lydia sank down on to a chair to read the letter. Rose came up behind her, so she could read over her shoulder.

‘Robert,’ said Rose with a soft gasp, when she came to the middle of the page. ‘How could you have kept this from us?’

‘Because I thought she would improve! I thought at first, when Mrs Broome wrote that she was not doing very well, that it was only to be expected, but that after a reasonable period of time, she would settle down. And I did not want to worry you. I did not want any shadow to fall over your Season, Rose.’

He paced to the console table and began to fiddle with the flowers scattered across its surface.

‘Things have not always been between us as they should. I regret that now, and I wanted to...to make it up to you. I wanted this time in London to be perfect...’

‘And to think I was grateful for the way you took charge of the more tedious aspects of organising this trip to town,’ Lydia breathed. She’d actually told him that she could not have picked a finer house than this one he’d rented for them, nor staffed it with more suitable servants. She’d appreciated the fact that he’d seen to the provision of carriages and horses, and been incredibly impressed when he’d even managed, through the amazingly wide circle of acquaintances he had, to arrange for Rose to have a court presentation. And all the time, he’d been keeping...this from her.

She looked down at the letter which she’d crushed between her fingers.

‘But no more. This has gone too far. We must return to Westdene,’ she said, getting to her feet and moving towards the door. ‘And I am sorry, Rose, but this means the end of your Season—’