“I haven’t been away for six years. I don’t want you to be disappointed.”
I pushed my curls away from my forehead and wiped the dust from my cheeks. “How would I be disappointed?”
He looked ahead with a solemn expression, and I followed his gaze. We started walking again. Dread made a pool in my stomach, making each step heavier as we approached the corner. What did he mean?
I looked at him over my shoulder; he was lagging behind. “Are you afraid?” I asked in a quiet voice.
He caught up to me, taking large strides that I could hardly keep up with. “I’m not afraid.”
I smiled up at him, but he didn’t smile back. He looked slightly ill.
My stomach fluttered with excitement as we came around the curve of the path, and I momentarily forgot Nicholas’s foreboding words and his obvious discomfort. There it was. Rosewood. It looked precisely as I remembered it, perhaps even more beautiful.
The sky was clear today, bringing a brightness to the neatly trimmed lawns and making the copper brick of the estate’s facade radiate warmth and the gray stone around the windows shine like silver. My legs ached in exhaustion but I hardly felt it. I could only imagine the warm bath and clean clothing that likely awaited me upon my arrival. Perhaps a hot meal with my favorite roasted vegetables. And I positively could not wait to see Kitty and tell her every detail of the last several days. She would never believe that I had traveled so many miles with Nicholas Bancroft. I remembered the late evening gossip we always shared during my visits. There would be much to tell. My smile spread wide before I could stop it.
The leaves rustled at my feet and Nicholas stepped up beside me. His face was firm and taut, turned not toward the lumbering estate, but toward the quaint manor a short distance from it. He had grown up there. Something had driven him away. Without thinking, I reached over and touched his arm. My fingers made light contact, so light I wasn’t sure if he felt it. His eyes lowered to mine. He tried to hide the emotion in them. But I had seen it.
“Shall we go?” I gestured at the path ahead, the one leading to the wide gates and rose bushes.
Nicholas rubbed his jaw, turning his boot in circles in the dirt once again. “I would suggest that you take what remains of the walk alone. Enter the house, tell the family that you have traveled here alone. I will come back later tonight, seemingly by coincidence, but will stay in my home with my family. I will inform you in some way that I have arrived.”
I puzzled over his plan with suspicion. Was he trying to deceive me? Did he plan to leave instead and not stay the week he had promised? One of my eyebrows arched. “Why not come with me now?”
“As I said, there are a great many things that have changed here, of which you are unaware. If we were to arrive together, unchaperoned after an extensive journey, we may not be received so … affectionately.” His eyes cut into mine.
I was torn between staying and leaving. Part of me believed that if I left Nicholas here in the trees he would be gone. I would wait for hours and he wouldn’t arrive. I didn’t know what to believe. I trusted him. But I also did not trust him. My mind ached under the pressure of the contradiction.
“Please, Lucy.” His voice was a half-whisper.
I chewed my lip and wrung my hands. Why was this so difficult? Even if Nicholas could not be believed, I hadn’t come here for him. I had come for Rosewood. For Kitty and Mrs. Tattershall and her son, William. So why was it so difficult to walk to that path and through those gates if Nicholas wasn’t there too? The risk of losing him was more frightening than being away from the safety and security of a home and familiar people. The realization made my heart pound a little faster.
“Go on, Lucy. I will be there soon.”
“Do you promise?” I blurted.
He stood by a short tree, the branches brushing over his shoulder when he shifted to face me more fully. He hesitated. “I give you my word.”
I looked at him in panic, my legs rooted where they stood. Why couldn’t I turn around and walk to the gates? My feet refused to move. It was as if I faced him now like I did six years ago, begging him to understand something he couldn’t.
Begging him to love something he couldn’t.
He smiled down at me. “Why are you so concerned? I will come back, not to worry.”
It was the look that always set my heart racing—the look that made me burn and crumble inside and fill with strength all at once. It bothered me that he assumed I was so reliant on him. It might have been true, but I couldn’t let him think that.
“Only come back if you wish to. I don’t want you to feel as though I am forcing you to stay. It was never my intention to force you to do anything you did not wish to do.”
“I’m staying because of you,” he said.
My words spilled out. “Yes, I know. But truly, I don’t want to be any more of burden upon you, so you don’t need to stay simply because I asked you to, and—”
“No.” He stopped me by stepping closer, so close that I could see the gold in his eyes and the fine lines and deep smiling creases of his face. “I’m staying because of you.” His words were slower, as if he needed to emphasize his meaning. “I’m not ready to part from you just yet.”
Understanding dawned on me. Had Nicholas just confessed something? Were his feelings toward me as I suspected? I tried to speak, to say the same thing to him, but the words were lodged in my throat by the look on his face, the weight of his gaze, and the smile on his lips. So instead I clapped my hands together, sending a shock through the air and making him take a step back in amusement.
“Very well. I will see you tonight,” I said as I backed toward the path. “I will pretend it has been years rather than hours since my eyes have beheld you.”
He smiled, taking another step backward into the trees. “And I will pretend that I don’t think you are as lovely as I truly do.”
My eyes widened and my cheeks burned.
Nicholas laughed, likely at the shock in my expression, and gave me one more smile, the softness in his eyes enough to crush me. Did he mean it? Did he think I was lovely? I didn’t know what to say, so I turned on my heel to hide the redness on my face, said goodbye over my shoulder, and stepped out of the trees.
I thought I heard him laughing behind me, but I couldn’t be sure. All I knew was that if he didn’t come back, I would find him. I would find him and I would strike him firmly in the face, and I would kick him in the back of the knees for good measure. He simply could not call me lovely and disappear for the remainder of my life and get away with it. There were dozens of mysteries that involved Nicholas, but the mystery of that ‘lovely’ would haunt me the most.
My mind spun so quickly that I forgot exactly what was happening. I was here! I was at Rosewood. Exhaustion had yet to catch up to me, but I knew it would be coming soon. For now, my heart fluttered with long-awaited belonging. The gates were open in front of me, flanked by their signature rose bushes. I paused there, taking a breath and letting my gaze sweep over the property. It appeared the same as I remembered, but the trees and bushes seemed taller, and the air seemed a little colder. September was nearly complete, and soon the leaves would turn yellow and red and golden orange. I had never seen Rosewood in autumn.
My heart pounded as I took my first step through the gates. The Bancrofts’ small house was there, directly beside the property. But there were trees planted now that hadn’t been there before. Young, small trees, creating a curved line between the house and the rest of the Rossingtons’ property. As I came closer, there was the unmistakable line of a neat picket fence. The vegetable garden was on the inside of that fence.
As puzzling as it was, I couldn’t pause to think on it. The doors of the estate were coming closer, and I needed to plan my explanation for my lost belongings and haggard appearance as to not worry Kitty too greatly.
The sun beat down on my head, making my curls stick with perspiration to my forehead. Despite the chilled air, the sun was warm. When I
reached the door, I released the breath I had been holding and knocked three times.
It felt like an eternity before I could hear footfalls within the house. I strained my ears and tapped my foot partly with impatience and partly with worry. At last the door was swung open in front of me. An unfamiliar butler stood in the doorway. His slim face held perfectly straight while his eyes traveled down to look at me. I stared straight up at him, expending all my effort to not gaze into his alarmingly large nostrils as he greeted me.
I cleared my throat and forced myself to speak. “Good day, sir. I am here by invitation of the Rossingtons.” My voice shook.
His brow tightened. “I beg your pardon.”
I thought I had spoken clearly enough. “My uncle and his daughter, Kitty … they have invited me here.” Had my uncle refused my welcome? Had they forgotten that I would be coming to visit? Mr. Rossington had never seemed to like me. He had always been a quiet, mysterious sort of man.
With one more masked look of concern, the butler ushered me inside, where he seemed to take notice of my haggard appearance. His nostrils flared wider above me. “Please make yourself comfortable in the drawing room. If he is not otherwise engaged, Mr. Rossington will be with you shortly.”
I gave a nod, my lips closed tight. How strange. With the butler walking away, I paused to admire the interior decoration of the home. It had been redecorated since I had been here last. The paintings were still there, and the colors of the walls the same, but the furniture was now in the Greek style, and the bookshelves were much more sparse in the drawing room. It ached me to see it. Aunt Edith had always loved books.
I took a seat on the edge of a red sofa, keeping my spine straight and my knees pressed together. My eyes flicked to the doorway every two seconds. Mr. Rossington had never been a favored uncle of mine. He had certainly not been a contributing factor to my desire to visit Rosewood. My mother had never seemed to like him either. Or perhaps it was distrust that I had seen in her eyes each time she spoke of him.
A figure appeared in the doorway and I jerked my gaze away from my lap. I stood, turning to face Mr. Rossington and the butler, several paces behind him.
My uncle was a sight to behold. I had to blink twice to fully absorb the appearance he flaunted. He had always been a man of conservative dress, but now he was dressed in an intricately embroidered waistcoat, with a cravat so frilled I wondered if it would engulf his entire face should he move his neck more than one inch at a time. His breeches were pale ivory, flush with his plump form, creating a bulge at his knees.
I tore my eyes away at once.
“Miss Lucy, my niece! I did not know we should be expecting your arrival.” His voice was raspy and deep, edged with a friendliness that I couldn’t recall ever hearing before. It seemed false, hidden behind annoyance and anxiety at my presence in his home.
I squinted out the front window at the trees, wishing Nicholas were here with me. Surely he knew more than I did about this strange figure-flaunting man in front of me. I forced a smile to my face and willed my eyes not to travel to that awful lower half again.
“I thought Kitty had received your permission to host me. I’m sorry.”
“Do not apologize! You are quite welcome.” There was something in his voice that contradicted his choice of words.
“I am glad to hear it. Thank you. Where is Kitty?”
“Kitty is with her husband in town today but will be returning for dinner this evening. Kitty would never have taken the day trip should she have known you would be arriving at this moment.”
My eyes narrowed as I watched him speak, the buoyant tone of his voice too much for what I remembered of him. There was much about this new Mr. Rossington that unsettled me. I suspected he wore his friendliness like a mask, hiding something he didn’t wish to be seen. I studied the tile floors, lost in thought.
“Lucy, dear?”
I didn’t know what frightened me more—that my eyes landed directly on Mr. Rossington’s much-too-fitted breeches or that he called me ‘dear.’
He stopped as his eyes traveled to the window. “Where is your coach? Have my footmen already taken your trunk?”
He hadn’t the slightest idea just how strenuous the journey had been. “I’m afraid my belongings were stolen from me in my travels. I barely managed to make it here.”
Mr. Rossington exchanged a baffled look with his butler. “How did such a horrific event come to pass?”
“Highwaymen.”
“How unfortunate,” was all he said on the matter. “I will have a room prepared for you. My sister, Mrs. Tattershall, will assist you from here.”
I had met Mrs. Tattershall many times before. As Mr. Rossington’s sister, she had often visited during the summers the same weeks as my family. William was her son, and not related to me by blood, though I still fancied calling him my cousin. Though I had seen Mrs. Tattershall much over the years of my childhood, I couldn’t recall a time I had spoken to her alone. Mrs. Tattershall entered the room behind Mr. Rossington. She was tall and thin, with sharp cheekbones and warm brown eyes, just as I remembered her. Her hair was pulled back softly, with dark curls streaked in silver at her temples. She did not have the inviting countenance of Aunt Edith. I stood and followed her to the familiar guest hall, and tried to let the feelings of belonging and long-awaited excitement enfold me again. It didn’t work. Nicholas’s words echoed in my ears. Rosewood has changed.
Mrs. Tattershall was a woman of few words, I learned, as she quickly deposited me in my room and introduced me to my maid. My thoughts refused to slow down, so I hardly noticed her departure.
The maid assigned to me was short like me, but with bouncing blonde curls instead of brown. She appeared to be a bit older than I was, likely in her mid-twenties. Her smile did little to console me. Working quickly, she assisted me in changing into a clean dress-—likely an old one of Kitty’s, and brushed my hair and styled it in a simple knot. I could hardly speak enough to thank her.
When she left the room, I stood, walking from corner to corner. Dinner could not come soon enough. I wanted Kitty here. Surely once she arrived it would feel the same again. Perhaps Mama had been correct in her fear of the emptiness of the place without Aunt Edith here. But I was still happy to be at Rosewood. I was at Rosewood at last. I took a deep breath and tossed my misgivings aside.
To pass my time before dinner, I penned a letter to my mother and father.
Dearest Mama and Papa,
I am sorry for leaving. I should have listened to you. Although I regret working against your wishes, I am also glad I did.
As promised, I am writing to inform you of my safe arrival at Rosewood. The journey was quite interesting and invigorating. I am happy to be here. Please do not worry, and please write often.
With much love,
Lucy
When I was called down to dinner, my feet hardly touched the floor as I hurried to the drawing room. Kitty and her husband had arrived only moments before, and I was anxious to see her. My wild, dark curls had partially escaped the knot my maid had styled it in, and my cheeks were flushed by the time I reached the drawing room doorway. I could see Kitty’s face from around the barrier of the door, and when our eyes met around the footman’s shoulder, she screamed in delight.
“Lucy!” She ran forward and threw her slender arms around my shoulders, burying my face in muslin. She pushed me back by the shoulders and studied my face. “You have grown so beautiful! Oh, my! You look precisely like Aunt Helen!” I smiled, taking a moment to study her appearance as well. I had been told I looked like my mother before, but Kitty had never looked more like her mother than she did now. Aunt Edith was there in every blink, every shift of a feature.
“I’ve missed you,” I said, forcing my eyes to remain dry.
“You should have come sooner.” She raised a playful eyebrow before her face broke into a smile.
“Why must I always travel so very far? You might have visited Craster.”
S
he shook her head, scrunching her nose. “Not that blustery place. How did you describe it? Cold, dark, and depressing? Gray and wet? Besides, I despise long drives. I trust your journey suited you well?”
I choked back a laugh. My smile stretched wider.
“What is it?”
“I will tell you later this evening. I have much to tell you.”
She squealed again, a quiet, secretive sound. “I cannot wait to hear it.” Kitty moved back a step and took her husband’s arm, pulling him forward to greet me. “Might I make known to you my husband, John Turner. And this is my dearest cousin, Lucy Abbot.”
I gave him a polite nod that he returned. Mr. Turner gazed down at Kitty with such raw adoration it made my heart skip with joy. I wished Nicholas were here. Perhaps he would look at me in the same way. I quickly stopped my thoughts and clasped my hands together in front of me.
We were led to the dining room where William, the once little boy, was seated. He was much older now. The last time I had seen him he had been ten years old. Now he was hardly recognizable, a sturdy sixteen-year-old with raven black hair and sharp blue eyes. His face was smooth like a child, marked with pink cheeks and his familiar dented chin. He was shy and observant, like he had always been.
“William, how you have grown!” I stepped behind him and almost pinched his cheek before thinking better of it. He stood and gave a shy smile, dropping a nod.
“Come, now, William. I am not nearly so frightening as I appear.” I squeezed his arm and stepped around him to take my seat.
I was seated beside Mrs. Tattershall and across from the odd Mr. Rossington. Again, he seemed far too boisterous and loud. And he smiled far too much. There were many people in the world that smiling suited quite nicely, but when a face that one has never seen smile grins so constantly, it becomes worrisome rather than pleasant. And his laugh could flatten even the most postured woman to the ground in shock. I cringed as another booming laugh cut the air. It wouldn’t have been so disconcerting if I had ever heard him speak a word before. In social gatherings Aunt Edith had always donned a kind smile, gentle words, and soft laughter, much like my own mother. My uncle had sat beside her, dull, uninterested, and quiet. What I saw now shocked me so much that I didn’t hear him address me.
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