by Rosie Wynter
Rosalie felt a tear trickle down her cheek. Her lip quivered and she felt her whole body grow cold. Just as she was about to give up and take her leave, though, a thought entered her mind. “Please,” she begged, “may I say goodbye to Abigail properly? I do not wish her to think my leaving is her fault, or for her to blame you for it.”
Mr Farrell nodded. “I shall bring her to you momentarily for you to say your goodbyes. Once you have spoken to her, I think it would be best for you to leave.”
Rosalie gave the man a long look, committing his face to memory in case this truly was the last time she was to see him. She looked, too, at that picture on the wall, the one she felt so strongly was the key to this whole matter regarding the man and his supposed relations with a serving girl long ago.
CHAPTER 22
It was disheartening for Rosalie to reflect that she had come away from her visit with Mr Farrell with even more confusion and doubt besetting her than that with which she had entered his home. His declaration of love, in a moment of weakness, the suggestion that he was still withholding some vital secret from his past, coupled with Rosalie’s own conviction that the man was not capable of the crimes of which others accused him, all added to the concerns she already carried.
That night, she feigned a headache to avoid having to take dinner with her aunt. As Lady Lynch made no snide comment or remark on the matter, Rosalie felt confident that her visit to Mr Farrell had gone mercifully unnoticed, on this occasion, or else the channels of gossip had simply not brought the matter to her aunt’s ears. Only time would tell, but, for the present moment, Rosalie was simply relieved to have an evening to herself, sequestered in her room, to think through all the matters that jostled for her attention.
Two men flickered through her mind as she lay on her bed, staring blankly up at the ceiling. However, one took a far more dominant position in her thoughts than the other. Despite being engaged to Lord Wareham, Rosalie found her mind straying towards Peter Farrell far more often as she lay in quiet contemplation. When she did think of the Marquess, it was only to consider her fears about his character, or to hold the man up against Mr Farrell for comparison. In the eyes of society, and according to the accepted stories and reputations of both men, Lord Wareham was by far the superior man. However, when Rosalie put accepted reputation aside and concentrated on what she herself had seen and observed of the two men, she had to own that Peter seemed the more honourable. The only trouble was Mr Farrell seemed resigned to wearing the badge of shame that London society had handed to him and seemed stubbornly determined to keep Rosalie from the truth. Even if he said he did it to protect her, his decision irked her greatly, and she felt a new resolve to uncover whatever she could about his supposed servant wife.
Sitting upright, Rosalie took a deep breath. The night was once again warm and muggy, and she moved to the open window, leaning heavily on the windowsill as she looked out onto the streets below. As she idly watched a few shadowy figures coming and going across the square, a church bell tolled the hour of nine. It was still considerably early.
With her mind buzzing like a bee’s nest under attack, Rosalie reluctantly accepted that sleep would prove fruitless that night. To alleviate some of her annoyance, she counted the chimes of the bell, whispering the numbers one after the other as she tried to remember just which church’s bell she was hearing at that moment. As she thought on this, her mind seemed to pause. She was still concentrating on the bells and the names of the nearby churches, but now she was thinking, too, of the records kept within the halls of such buildings. The parish registries of births, deaths and marriages had all the information she could possibly wish to know.
She had been assured, already, that Mr Farrell was believed to have recorded a fake name in the registrar of marriages and deaths, to account for his mysterious wife, but that didn’t mean there were no other clues Rosalie could follow.
Her eyes narrowed as she thought back to that first time she had seen the portrait of the woman who bore such a striking resemblance to Abigail. Mr Farrell had not given Rosalie the lady’s name when he spoke of her. However, he had said one thing that might at last present some kind of clue to the identity of the woman in the portrait. He had said that she was born into serving his family. Though it was not a completely unheard-of practice, it was not exactly common for servants to work for generations for one family, and this made the woman just a little unusual. Conceivably, if Rosalie used just a little deduction and dug into the names in the parish records and maybe those of taxes, she could find the name of the woman who had grown up alongside Mr Farrell as a servant in his home.
Rosalie felt herself waking up, her mind sharpening and her body tensing as though readying for action. She could not congratulate herself on her plan just yet, however. The business of looking through the parish records could hardly be effected secretly and would likely take so much time that she was sure to be found out if she were to go searching through such archives herself. With this in mind, there were only two people she could conceivably ask to help her in discovering the identity of the woman in the portrait. Just how her two sisters would feel about being asked to undertake so secretive a task, Rosalie could not even say.
The morning Rosalie’s family were set to arrive in London was also the first day, in some time, when Rosalie found herself with almost exclusive access to her fiancé. It was the first time in days that she had been in Lord Wareham’s company for more than an hour, and she could not say the return to such close proximity to him was a natural thing. Lord Wareham himself seemed little altered from the last time she had seen him, but all she had learned of his curious affair with Mrs Porter left Rosalie suspicious. When he complimented her now, she could not help but wonder just how rehearsed and honed by practice his words were. When he daringly tried to kiss her, or wrap his arms about her in an intimate fashion, she found herself tensing as she remembered Mrs Porter’s confession concerning the kiss she had stolen from him in the hedge maze.
It did not take the Marquess long to see that something was amiss, and shortly before the hour of her family’s arrival, he made an excuse to steal a moment alone with his bride-to-be. Lady Lynch had gone to her room, to finish readying herself to meet her sister, and Lord Wareham was quick to draw close to Rosalie’s side.
He sat next to her, taking her hand and stroking it soothingly, while looking into her eyes searchingly. Rosalie found herself more afraid than comforted by that look. The Marquess was no fool, and she feared what he might learn or guess from a simple study of her features. “Something is troubling you, my dear Rosalie,” he said as a matter of fact. “I fear I can guess what it is that has you on edge, though I dearly hope I am wrong.”
Rosalie drew in a breath and tried to stop herself from showing any outward signs of concern. She attempted to adopt the kind of haughty quality her aunt was so good at displaying whenever she was annoyed or vexed. “Well, perhaps you could enlighten me, and I will, in turn, tell you if your assumption is correct, or false.”
Wareham grinned at this, perhaps mistaking her words for some flirtatious challenge. He let his fingers run along the back of her hand in a way that at once thrilled and concerned her, and Rosalie tried her best not to let herself be distracted by the man, nor to fall so easily for his charms as she had done in the past. “You are disappointed that since our engagement I have been noticeably absent from your side. You feel like I am taking you for granted now that we are engaged and are worried that I have lost interest in you now that I have won you.”
Rosalie took objection to having been “won” by the Marquess, not wishing to see herself as some trophy for him to display at his fireside. She tried to reason with herself that he was only using a figure of speech, but still, it irritated her. She bit her lip, trying to decide whether to confront the man about what she had learned from that other woman he had once known, or else let him believe what he liked about the state of their union. She was sorely tempted towards the latter, but she
could not overlook the fact that he was her fiancé. She owed him the opportunity, at least, to account for his actions.
“I will admit, your absence has been a sore point for me over the last days,” Rosalie began with some hesitation.
“Though they also say absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Wareham continued to smile his usual, easy smirk, but even this seemed to stiffen as he noticed the lack of humour in his betrothed’s face.
“Yes, I have heard that line before, though I do not pretend to understand how anyone can truly believe it. There is another matter, though, that has somewhat soured my mood of late. As you’re my fiancé, I will assume I can tell you anything and know that you will not begrudge me for being honest with you?”
Lord Wareham’s face seemed to drain a little of its colour, and he now looked to Rosalie with a seriousness she had never seen him display before. “Yes… Of course. I will hear whatever you have to say.”
Rosalie nodded, and her eyes looked slightly ahead of Wareham so as not to be intimidated by him as she spoke. “I entered into a conversation with a Mrs Porter, the other day, a woman who seemed to have had quite a deep and meaningful relationship with you, in the past.”
The muscles in Wareham’s jaw seemed to tighten, and his nostrils flared at the words. He was now very still and very serious, not at all the essence of frivolity and confidence he usually seemed. “I remember her well and very fondly. She was a woman not unlike yourself when I met her, new to London and somewhat overwhelmed by the city. It was an honour for me to help ease her into society and help her acclimatise to the nuances of London life.”
Rosalie felt disappointed that her husband-to-be seemed to so readily try to dismiss the matter. Surely, he had to have guessed she knew more of their relationship than what she had said. “In particular, Mrs Porter confided in me that she had once thought you in love with her, a belief born from the somewhat bold advances you made, in a garden, during one of your friend’s soirees.”
The Marquess had now relinquished his hand from Rosalie’s and stood up. He walked over to the mantelpiece and leaned heavily on it. His face was turned inward toward the unlit fire, so that his expression was hidden from Rosalie’s view. She could not help but suspect he did this deliberately. It would be harder for her to discern truth from lies if she could not see his face.
“I am surprised Mrs Porter would share such a story with you. I am bound to say it smacks of jealousy on her part and a desire to spoil what we have together, out of spite. I am inclined to believe that whatever story she has woven for you is likely exaggerated. I will admit that my desire to help integrate her into London life might have appeared to her as interest on my part, but it was never my intention to mislead her. It was that night when we took a walk in the gardens that she made an advance to me, perhaps believing I had taken her out into the quiet and seclusion of the garden for some kind of romantic tryst. I was frankly stunned by her actions and, to my shame, did not there and then admonish her. She was a friend to me, and I did not wish to embarrass her or cause her upset during a party, with so many people about. However, after that night, I realised that I needed to distance myself from the lady and let her find a man who could truly make her happy. I withdrew to my home in the country and wrote to her urging her to forget me and find a man who could love her as she deserved. I did not make any mention of my own feelings in that letter, as I did not wish for her to feel embarrassment at having misread our relationship so completely.”
Rosalie listened attentively. She felt extremely hot and uncomfortable in her seat as she tried to discern whether Wareham was telling her the absolute truth in this matter. Certainly, his version of events had a ring of plausibility to it, and Rosalie could not discount his testimony as a lie. She was conscious, too, that the time they had alone together was quickly running out and that her aunt would soon return. “Do you swear to me that is all there was to this? Mrs Porter was simply unfortunate to have mistaken your kind attention to her for love? Can you say that no other woman has been similarly confused by your attention?”
Wareham straightened up now and looked at Rosalie directly. His green eyes seemed to bore into her, as though trying to overpower her suspicions through sheer force of will. “I know I am a person of freer speech than most. I am more willing than most to compliment a woman, and indeed men too, when I feel the need to do so. I do not worry myself with how others might interpret such praises. This trait, as you seem to have observed, has won me a lot of respect and admiration from many quarters. I do not, however, make it my practice to abuse those friendships I enjoy. Besides, if you want any kind of proof that I am not a rake or rogue toying with the hearts of London’s fairer sex, you have only to look at yourself. If I were really only interested in illicit love affairs, or abusing my status as a bachelor, would I have so readily given myself to you?”
Rosalie had to admit the man had a point. She still did not understand just why the Marquess had asked for her hand as he had. The action was not in keeping with a man who looked only to enjoy the thrill of the chase when it came to romance. It showed a real desire to settle and start a family, and Rosalie could not ignore that. “I’ll believe you, Julian.” Rosalie rose to her feet and stood by his side. Though still somewhat uncertain of what to believe, she held his hand and offered him a kiss on the cheek. A touch of his usual smile returned to his face. It was good to see, as Rosalie did not wish to appear unhappy with Lord Wareham, or he dissatisfied with her, on the day her parents were due to meet him.
Before he could say anything further, the door opened, and Lady Lynch breezed in, a smug smile forming on her lips as she observed the two lovers stood so closely. “I would apologise for interrupting your tender moment together. However, as this is my house, I feel you are both at my pleasure, and so I can feel free to come and go as I please.”
Despite the awkwardness that still hung over them both, Rosalie and Lord Wareham smiled at Lady Lynch’s jest. The Marquess, being the more accomplished showman, was even able to laugh at it. “Your bold forthrightness does you great credit, and I certainly would not have you feeling unable to wander the rooms of your own home because of us.”
Lady Lynch gave an appreciative nod. “Well, thank you for indulging me so. There is, however, a serious reason for the interruption. A carriage has just pulled up outside the house, a dreadful hired thing. I do believe, Rosalie, it is your parents and sisters.”
CHAPTER 23
The meeting between Lord Wareham and Rosalie’s family went almost exactly as Rosalie had expected. Mr Curtis was very eager to meet and know his future son-in-law and wasted no time at all in making Lord Wareham intimately aware of his business in wool and in laying out for the man his exciting and bold plans for the industry’s future.
Mrs Curtis, for her part, seemed thoroughly enamoured of Wareham. It helped that the man made sure to shower her with compliments, praising her beauty and skill on having bought up three remarkable and enchanting daughters. They were the kind of compliments that the others in the room did not take too seriously, though Mrs Curtis seemed more than happy to believe them.
At times, the tension between Mrs Curtis and her sister seemed to threaten the proceedings, but both women seemed able to rein in their acrimony. Lady Lynch, although proud at having succeeded in finding Rosalie a husband, did not brag about her feats as openly and often as Rosalie had feared she would, and Mrs Curtis, for her part, did not confine herself to the corner to sulk over her sister’s triumph. A good first meeting, all told.
That night, after the Marquess had made his farewells and the family had gone to bed, Rosalie found herself at last in the company of her two sisters. As the house had only two guest bedrooms, both Grace and Claire were obliged to share Rosalie’s room and bed. It had been a long time since the three of them had slept together like this, and it reminded Rosalie very much of their childhood and the halcyon days when they would sneak across the corridor at night to play games in each other’s r
oom until finally sleep found them.
Claire lay on her back, luxuriating in the sensation of the soft bed beneath her. Rosalie had almost forgotten what her bed at home was like, and to hear her youngest sister praise the wonderful sensations of the soft mattress and sheets made her appreciate all she had been given by her aunt. However, while Claire seemed thoroughly enamoured with Rosalie’s room, Grace seemed to be the only one not enjoying herself.
Grace had spent considerable time sitting by the window, staring out of it into the blackness of the night. Rosalie could see her sister’s face reflected in the glass and noted the way she seemed to scowl. Sitting upright on the end of the bed, Rosalie stretched out a hand and poked her sister playfully in the side. “You seem awfully quiet. Please don’t tell me you are pining for a certain young man I advised you to stay clear of.”
Grace turned, her crystal-blue eyes narrowing as she heaved a sigh and shook her head. “No, it is nothing like that. That young man is now engaged, as a matter of fact. I guess I am just tired and agitated from the ride up here.”
Claire lifted her head, a grin evident on her face. “I find that unlikely. Grace was talking non-stop the entire way here, telling me exactly which shops and famous establishments she wished to visit while in the city and making guesses as to the kind of man your Lord Wareham might turn out to be.”
Rosalie frowned, not understanding Grace’s furtive avoidance of her. It was not in her nature to lie, and she had never shown any inclination towards hiding her thoughts from her sisters in the past. That she chose to do so now was concerning, indeed. “Is something wrong?” Rosalie stood up and moved over to the window wrapping her arms around her sister and resting her chin on her shoulder.
Rosalie could feel Grace’s body heave as she took a deep breath. “I don’t know if you want to hear it.”