Lily was running towards her, her face shining with happiness, utterly unconcerned with the impropriety of calling out and running at a ball. Mr Hewlitt followed her, just as glowing. Together they hurried towards Rose’s mother, who was watching them avidly.
‘Mrs Parker,’ he said, trying so very hard to be solemn that it almost made Rose laugh. ‘May I have the privilege of speaking to you for a moment? I know such things are not usually done at a dance...’
‘Please, just follow me,’ Emma said. ‘You can use the library. It will surely be quiet there for a moment.’
As they hurried away, Lily held out her hand to Rose to display a small pearl ring. ‘Oh, Rose! Isn’t it the loveliest?’
Rose smiled, but she was afraid she might also start crying as well. The happiness of that moment, of her sister’s dreams coming true just as her own fledgling, girlish ideas were nipped in the bud, was almost overwhelming. But she did the only thing she knew how to do. She laughed and hugged her sister tight.
‘The loveliest, Lily. I know you will be so very happy.’
Over her sister’s shoulder as Lily hugged her back, Rose glimpsed Captain St George, withdrawing to a quiet corner with his brother and Miss Layton. He gave her a small smile and it was so sad, so full of commiseration and understanding, that Rose nearly burst into tears. How perfect that one dance had been! Rose liked her life, her independence, but just for that moment she seemed to glimpse, far in the distance, the glimmer of something—more. A real home.
Miss Layton whispered something in the Captain’s ear and the two of them turned away together, beautiful and perfect, leaving Rose in her ordinary world once more.
Oh, well, she thought, laughing at herself just a bit. Ordinary life was not so very bad after all.
‘You will be a lovely bride, Lily dearest,’ she said, squeezing her sister a little tighter before she let her go.
‘And then it will be your turn, Rose, I vow it,’ Lily said. ‘I will find you someone just as handsome and sweet as my own Hewlitt.’
Rose closed her eyes, and saw, in the darkness of her mind, far away from the colour and noise of the party, Captain St George’s all too brief smile. ‘Oh, Lily. I don’t think that would even be possible.’
* * *
The carriage was blessedly shadowed and silent as it jolted away from the lights of Barton Park and slid into the night. Harry leaned his head back against the leather cushions and closed his eyes, letting all the wondrous quiet wash over him.
Silence had become a precious commodity to him in the last few years. In Spain, and then at Waterloo, noise had been ever-present. The cacophony of military camps, drumbeats and shouted orders, and drunken laughter at night as men tried to forget their fears and loneliness around campfires. The explosion of shot and shell, the screams of people and horses as they fell, the sobbing afterward. No—quiet had no place in war.
Nor, it seemed, in a world after the war. Harry had returned to England thinking he was coming home to a world of green and rain and peace, the world he dreamed of in canvas tents at night. It had taken him years to return, but he had always been determined he would.
But it was not like that at all once he returned to London. There were parties all the time, dinners and teas and dances, with everyone clamouring for tales of the glorious heroics of war. He could hardly tell them the truth of it all, of the mud and blood and dying, so he said little at all. Charming social conversation had always been Charles’s forte, not his.
Yet his silence only seemed to make him more sought out. Made more invitations arrive at his lodgings, more ladies want to sit beside him in drawing rooms or ride in the park. ‘Like a corsair warrior in a poem,’ he had once heard a lady whisper to her friend as they watched him at a musicale.
The memory made him laugh all over again. Him—a poetic corsair. If only they knew. He was just a rough army man, riding behind the drum, ever since he was a lad with his first commission. An army man with dreams of being a country farmer one day, of sitting by his own hearth after a day of watching his fields ripen and his sheep grow fat. A house where there was quiet all the time, except perhaps for a toddler’s giggle or the sound of a lady playing at her pianoforte.
It was a dream that would have to be postponed again, at least for a time. His regiment had called on him once more, to go to sun-baked Sicily this time to put down a rebellion. There was only time for this one visit home, to his father’s house at Hilltop Grange near Barton Park.
He hadn’t wanted to go to the party at Barton. Yet more noise, more clamour, more stares. But Jane and Emma Bancroft were old neighbours, kind people, and he let Charles persuade him to attend. Now he was rather glad he had.
He closed his eyes and there he saw something most unexpected—the face of Miss Rose Parker. She had the sweetest smile he could remember ever seeing and even dancing, which he normally loathed, was a pleasure when he talked to her. She seemed almost like no lady, no person, he had ever met before. So calm, so serene—she made the very air seem to sigh with relief around her.
After so long in the rough world of war, he had almost given up ever glimpsing pure sweetness in anything again. Yet there it was, in Rose Parker’s smile.
Until Helen appeared. Helen—one of his oldest friends, the daughter of his late mother’s best friend, a lady of such beauty she was called in London The Incomparable. The lady everyone had always expected he would marry.
‘How changeable you are tonight, Harry,’ Charles said. ‘Laughing, then scowling—one hardly knows what to expect next.’
Harry opened his eyes to study his brother, who lolled on the opposite seat. His golden hair gleamed in the moonlight from the open window, the perfect aquiline features that had always made him their late mother’s copy, her darling, were outlined like a classical cameo. Charles was the perfect Apollo wherever he went to Harry’s Hephaestus, always laughing and easy-tempered, making everyone around him feel easy as well. But now that the party was behind him, even Charles looked almost—sad, as he had rather often since Harry returned to England. Harry couldn’t help but wonder what was plaguing his brother.
Perhaps it was because Charles had been left all those years to deal with Hilltop and their father while Harry was at war. And their father was not a kind man at the best of times. The house that had been their mother’s pride, the glowing name she had loved, had been tarnished by him.
‘I laugh because the party went better than I could have expected,’ he said.
‘Ha!’ Charles answered. ‘So you see I was right to make you attend. The Bancroft girls are always kindness itself.’
‘They are hardly girls now, are they? Jane a countess, Emma a widow.’
‘Poor Emma. Remember when Mother made us go to the children’s tea parties at Barton and we all ended up climbing trees instead?’ Charles said with a laugh. ‘Father was never happy at all when we came home with our best new coats torn and muddy. He said Mother was raising monkeys.’
‘And the switches would come out.’ The switches so often came out with their father, especially after their mother died. ‘But it was always worth it to visit Barton Park.’
‘Wasn’t it, though? Like a different world.’
Harry nodded. A different world. He thought of Miss Parker’s tales of searching for lost Royalist treasures there at Barton and wondered why they had never crossed paths as children. What would it have been like if they had?
‘La belle Helen was in fine looks tonight,’ Charles said. ‘If only we had a thousand ships that needed to be launched...’
Harry frowned at the reminder of Helen and her elegant face flashed in his mind, erasing Miss Parker’s gentle smile. The weight of expectation, the weight of what had been and what was expected in the future, fell once again. ‘Helen has always been lovely.’
‘Did Miss Lily Parker’s sweet l
ittle engagement not inspire you, Harry? No ring for Helen’s pretty finger yet?’
Harry wasn’t sure he liked something in Charles’s tone, something dark and hard beneath his smile. ‘Helen knows this is no time for an engagement. I am to re-join my regiment soon and I would not tie her down to someone like myself.’
‘You may think that, but does she? The betting books in the London clubs were full of speculation about when she would snap you into the parson’s mousetrap. Everyone’s expected it since we were children.’
Harry frowned as he stared out the window, at the summer moon shining on the silent hedgerows. ‘You have picked up some ridiculous slang in those clubs of yours, Charlie.’
‘Well, a man has to find distractions, you know. Hilltop Grange is not exactly a haven of merriment. And everyone says you and Helen were made for each other. Any man would give his right arm to be in your position.’
Something in his brother’s voice caught Harry’s strict attention, something sharp and jagged that was quite unlike Charles. He swung around to face him, but Charles’s face was hidden in the shadows.
‘Made for each other?’ Harry said. Perhaps it was so—they had been friends for so long, bound by the long ties of their families, by their mothers’ wishes. He had thought of her when he was gone, dreamed of her, carried her miniature with him to inspire him. She was like a dream, just as all that green English quiet had been a reason to come home.
And by Jove but she was beautiful. The most beautiful lady in London, just as all those silly, betting-book dandies declared. For some reason, though, she seemed to prefer Harry to all those other men, at least for now.
But would Helen ever like that farm life he so envisioned? The quiet evenings, the small community? He was not at all sure. Perhaps that was what really held him back now.
Again he saw Miss Parker’s sweet smile, felt her gentle touch on his hand, but he pushed such thoughts away.
‘She agrees we should wait until I can resign my commission and we can see what happens next,’ he said.
Charles shook his head, frowning. ‘You should be careful, then, Harry. While you are gone on your adventures, someone else could easily pluck up such a prize. They do say that the Duke of Hamley, now that his time of mourning is at an end, seeks a new duchess.’
Harry laughed. Duchess—now there was a role that would suit Helen well. ‘No one would make a better duchess than Helen.’
Charles was silent for a long, tense moment. ‘I would never have taken you for a fool, Harry.’
Before Harry could answer, their carriage turned through the gates of Hilltop Grange and jolted up the winding old drive, past the overgrown forest that had once been a manicured garden under the careful eye of their mother.
Now, Hilltop looked nothing like the golden welcome of Barton Park, which had seemed to float above the night like a cloud of light. Hilltop had no light at all, save the glow of one lamp in the window of the library. Harry knew that once daylight came, the overgrown ivy on the grey stone walls, the crumbling chimneys, the covered windows, would all be too apparent. He felt again that deep pang of sadness, of guilt for following a different duty.
But that one light meant their father was still awake, or more likely fallen asleep next to his empty brandy bottle. He seldom left the library now.
‘Our great inheritance,’ Charles said, his tone quiet and bitter.
Harry gave a grim nod. ‘I am sorry, Charles. I should have been here all along.’
Charles glanced at him, his expression startled. ‘Oh, no, Harry, never. You are doing what you have to—your duty to King and Country as you are called to do. No one has been more dutiful than you, ever since we were children.’
He thought again of what their home had once been, what it was now. ‘I don’t know about that.’
‘Well, I do. Whatever I face here with Father is as nothing compared to whatever you have faced all these years. Besides, I’m seldom here at Hilltop at all these days.’ He grinned and that strange, solemn, thoughtful Charles vanished. The rakish, fun-loving young man everyone knew was back. ‘London is much more diverting. Why would a man ever live anywhere else?’
‘Diverting—and expensive,’ Harry muttered, but he couldn’t help laughing at Charles’s devil-may-care smile. It was always thus with his younger brother, their mother’s golden boy. While Charles was the fun one, Harry had indeed always been the responsible one. The quiet one.
Charles shrugged. ‘What else can one do? I would be wretched in the army, worse than useless. The church would never have me.’
‘What of your painting?’ he asked, remembering the rare talent Charles once possessed with a brush, the way he could capture the mood of a landscape in a few deft strokes of paint.
Charles laughed. ‘A boy’s diversion. Not fit for a grown man, y’know.’
‘According to who? Our father?’ Harry asked quietly.
Rather than answer, Charles pushed open the carriage door as soon as they came to a full halt and jumped down. Harry followed him up the shallow stone steps into the echoing hall of Hilltop Grange. In the shadows, the portraits of their ancestors, including their golden-haired mother, watched them in silence. In the rooms beyond, the furniture was shrouded in canvas covers, like ghosts. Their mother’s cherished pianoforte was silent.
For just an instant, Harry had such a different vision of the house, light gleaming on polished wood. The warmth of the fire, the scent of flowers from the gardens, the rush of small feet down the stairs, music. But the lady who turned from the keyboard to welcome him with a smile—her eyes were the sweet, soft hazel of Rose Parker.
‘Father, wake up!’ Charles shouted, banging on the library door with his fist. The dream was shattered, like the dust of Hilltop itself.
Chapter One
Winter, three years later
‘Jouissons dans nos asiles, jouissons de biens tranquilles! Ah, peut-on être heureux, quand on forme d’autres vouex?’
‘That’s quite enough!’ Aunt Sylvia shouted from her armchair near the fire, where she was swathed in shawls and a fur blanket. Her three lapdogs shifted and barked. ‘What a wretched song by that horrid Rameau. Why would you play such a thing?’
Rose sighed and rested her wrists on the edge of the keyboard as the last notes died away in the overheated drawing room of Aunt Sylvia’s vast house. She would have laughed if she wasn’t quite so tired. She removed her spectacles and rubbed at her eyes. In her years of working as Aunt Sylvia’s companion, she had come to learn no moment was predictable. A favourite food one day, which had to be ordered from London and fetched from the village shop, a two-mile walk, by Rose every day, would not be wanted once it arrived. An expensive pelisse would be dismissed as too itchy, then needed again. The wheeled Bath chair would have to be fetched for a walk in the garden, only to be greeted with shouts of ‘What do you think I am, an old invalid? I shall walk! Give me your arm immediately, Rose. You cannot be rid of me so easily, you know, you silly girl.’
Rose did not want to be rid of Aunt Sylvia. She paid a wage that kept Rose’s mother in her cottage, now that Lily and Mr Hewlitt had two children to take care of in their small vicarage and Mama’s small income seemed even smaller than ever. Her mother deserved to stay in her own home and Rose had to work to make it so. But Rose did wish Aunt Sylvia would make up her mind for once.
‘I thought you always enjoyed the old French songs, Aunt,’ she said. ‘Because they reminded you of your time at Versailles.’
In her youth, Aunt Sylvia had once waited upon Queen Marie Antoinette, before she married the wealthy Mr Pemberton and returned to England. She spoke of it all the time and definitely never let anyone forget it, with her grey hair piled high and panniers strangely paired with newer, higher waists and puffed sleeves.
‘Why would I want to hear songs that remin
d me of such a terrible loss?’ Aunt Sylvia said, thumping her walking stick on the floor. One of the dogs barked. ‘You young people, you know nothing of such things. Nothing of how fortunate you all are.’
Rose suddenly remembered Captain St George and their dance at the midsummer party so long ago, the haunted look in his dark eyes as he mentioned battle and seemed to remember Waterloo. She had thought of him too often in the years since, especially in the long, quiet nights as she lay awake waiting for Aunt Sylvia to call her. Had he married the beautiful Miss Layton, had he come back from battle and found peace at last? She couldn’t help but hope so.
She glanced out the window, out the slim rectangle of thick glass revealed between the heavy brocade curtains Aunt Sylvia kept closed all the time. It had started snowing, a light, lacy, delicate pattern of white against the night sky. It reminded her that it was nearly December, nearly the Christmas season, and she wondered what her mother, what Lily and her little family, were doing now.
Lily and her babies were surely decorating their small sitting room with greenery, baking plum cakes to carry to Mr Hewlitt’s parishioners. Perhaps her mother was embroidering new little gowns to wrap up for her grandchildren’s gifts.
She felt the familiar pang of sadness of missing them and she had to remind herself why she had to work in the first place.
‘Perhaps I could play you a Christmas carol or two, Aunt Sylvia?’ she said. ‘It is nearly that season.’
‘Christmas!’ Aunt Sylvia cried. ‘Don’t even talk to me about the wretched thing. Play some Mozart. You know how I always like that.’
Except for when she called Mozart an overrated performing monkey of a boy. Rose smothered a laugh, and launched into the ‘Allegro’ from Marriage of Figaro. Just as she always could, she soon lost herself in the music, and the harsh world of Aunt Sylvia’s house, her loneliness for her family, vanished. She floated in her own realm, above everything else.
The Wallflower's Mistletoe Wedding Page 3