“An affection?” Robert croaked. “You think I have an affection for you? Is that all? I told you that I love you.”
This was ridiculous. An affection? Who was the woman standing before him? She most certainly was not the Rose he had fallen for, picnicked with, left behind in Lincoln.
“I have no reason to believe the words you speak.”
Robert’s cold blood came to an instant boil at the cold emotion in her words.
Who did she think she was? What was this? Had this been her plan all along? Robert didn’t know what to believe.
He took a step forward, and Rose a step back, running herself into a hedge. “There was a time that I loathed you,” Robert said, a hiss softening to a whisper of pleading as he spoke. “I loathed even the idea of marrying Lady Rosalyn Hayes. I did it purely for the land. It is true, I do need that land, but that is not why I am marrying you now. I love you, Rose.”
She looked him hard in the eyes and not for a moment did she soften at his words.
“And you love me, too. I know you do,” he said.
She appeared to sway. Maybe it was just a slight shift in her eyes or in the tilt of one of those perfect lips, but he could see the impact he had made. With a few minutes of persuasion, her mind would be changed from this absurd notion that they would not marry. Of course they would marry.
Rose, however, had different plans and did not confirm what was in her heart—or that she even had one. She stood in front of him with less personality or care than a statue. Causing Robert to explode once more.
“You’re a fool for not admitting that you love me,” Robert declared. “You do. I know you do. I don’t know what all this is about—perhaps its cold feet—but we are to be married tomorrow. I love you Rose, and that is all that matters.”
Her mouth quite literally dropped open. Then she set her jaw and promised in tones that promised the same, “I’m not marrying you tomorrow. It is not cold feet. It is not nerves. I will not marry you because I do not wish to marry you. I have other things to consider other than myself. And for reasons you cannot understand, I cannot marry you.”
Bitterness and panic intertwined in a dizzying emotion that made Robert unsteady.
He had to do something. He had to stop her. He had to convince her.
Logic and responsibility would persuade her, surely.
“Your sisters, consider them,” Robert said, trying to force Rose to see reason. “You said you must marry me because of them. What has changed? What will become of them if you do not marry me?”
“Isabelle, Madeline and Beatrice will survive the scandal and make suitable matches when their times come.”
“Suitable? I thought you wanted more for them. Love?”
“Love isn’t the answer to everything. Sometimes, one must sacrifice for another.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?” Robert no less than demanded.
Rose held her silence.
“What is this? You love me. I can tell that you love me! Why must you sacrifice your happiness and mine?”
“It is about more than just us, Robert! Yes, I love you!” The words, the ones that should have brought joy, struck him in the chest like a bullet the way they were shot at him, followed by, “And I despise myself for it!”
Tears were draining down her cheeks, but when he lifted a gloved hand to brush them away, she jolted, and squeezed herself out from between him and the hedge.
“I’ve been traded by our parents. I know, it is done all the time, but not to me. I’ve had no say in anything my entire life.”
“So you’re choosing to do so now? So what if this was chosen for us? We love each other and that is all that matters. Neither of us had a choice in this, but that doesn’t mean we will not be happy.”
“I will not be happy with you, Robert,” Rose said, callously. “I will inform my father of my decision. Perhaps he will be kind and offer to let you keep the land in return for marrying one of my other sisters. Isabelle is hardly a year behind me in age and could make her debut this very season if you so desired.”
“I do not want to marry your sister. I want you,” he said, taking a step toward her, only to spark her into action, scurrying backwards and setting a small fountain between them.
“I don’t want land. I want you. I want for nothing, but you.”
“And I am the one thing that you cannot have. You cannot buy me, your Grace.” Robert nearly cringed for the second time with the use of the title. Rose ignored his feelings and continued, “Not even with your love. I beg you not to follow.” And then she hurried away through the starlight, disappearing from the garden, leaving him standing there with nothing but his tortured heart and bewildered mind as company.
It was a joke, a cruel joke. It had to be. There was no way that she could be serious. She would marry him tomorrow and they would be man and wife, till death do they part.
But, as his eyes betrayed his denial and flooded with tears, he could do the only thing a man in his situation could do.
He fled.
He did not flee far or forever—he barely moved a few paces—though in his mind he did both. Yet, after a quarter hour had passed, Robert still found himself standing in the garden, alone with his thoughts.
In his mind, he was on horseback ripping through the crowded streets, going dangerously fast. He felt the sting of the air slicing on his cheeks as he bit back the tears that threatened.
In his thoughts, he was far away and not looking back.
In reality, he couldn’t leave.
This wasn’t one of those moments that he could contribute to being cold feet. He couldn’t rely on Rose suddenly coming to her senses in the night, couldn’t assume that she would be there at Saint George’s in the morning. She needed her mind made up for her. She needed not to have a choice.
And then it became clear. Not why she couldn’t marry him. But how she would. He would have to force her hand.
He didn’t want to trap her, and he probably wouldn’t have. If she hadn’t come to the window and stood there staring out at places unknown. If he hadn’t been able to see her pain from two stories below, he might have left. But he did, and he couldn’t.
When Rose pulled her curtains shut, Robert scaled the trellis, knocked upon her window, and he forced her hand.
Though, that is not to say she did not give it freely.
Chapter 26
She fled from the house, flew down the steps like a vision.
No one would see her scandalous escape. No one, that was, other than the two in the waiting carriage. Her grey attire lent her cover in the murky morning light of early dawn, blending her into the air, the house, the ground beneath her feet. Anyone who might have happened to be awake at that hour would have been hard-pressed to see the flushed cheeks, the determined expression, or the fluttering of fabric flying down the front steps of Gordon House on the morning of her wedding.
It wouldn’t take long for her absence to be noticed, however. She hadn’t, after all, paused to close the door behind her in her flight. But that was of her concern no longer.
Today was the day that she grew up, found out what it meant to take life into her own hands, to stop leaving her decisions to be made by other people.
Today was the day she became a woman.
Well, technically, that had happened the night before, just hours ago, after Robert had skillfully scaled the wall to her second story room and then even more skillfully divested her of her clothing.
She knew she should have stopped him. She couldn’t marry him, she had already made it quite clear that they would not be wed—even if she did neglect to divulge the true details as to why. And yet, she couldn’t say no to his advances.
It was his eyes. They were full of need and pain and passion. She had hurt him, and he didn’t even understand why. He couldn’t, because she wouldn’t tell him.
She was hurting him. As she let him sweep her into his arms, as he murmured his love for her and she responded
in kind, she was hurting him. But he’d needed her, and she found that she needed him too.
Rose loved Robert, there was no denying that, and last night would be the last she ever saw of him, because today she was leaving. He was there, clinging to the trellis, rapping on her window, and she couldn’t send him away. Selfish as it was, she’d needed one last perfect memory of him.
And it had been perfect. It had been more than that. It had been glorious, magical. It was like a unicorn—it wasn’t supposed to exist, but somehow it did. Last night, alone in her chamber with him, she was consumed by a love that was so intense she instinctively knew it couldn’t live outside of a fairytale.
Theirs was a love that wasn’t meant to be forever. It was meant to burn hot and fizzle out. It could do nothing but cause pain of every sort.
Rose let it burn. For one night. For one moment, it burned hot and wicked.
She wasn’t running away from that—that’s what she told herself. She wasn’t running away from that love. She wasn’t scared of being in love, or even of being hurt. She was leaving to save her sister. That was it. It was for no other reason, she had convinced herself.
Rose was passed up into the waiting carriage by the coachman who, upon shutting her in, hopped back up on the block and set the carriage in motion, bouncing along the cobblestone streets of Mayfair. As she was pulled away from Gordon House, she did not turn back, for it might have been just enough to break her resolve.
She was doing the right thing. Of that, she was certain. But what was right did not always feel so. In fact, in this moment, it felt absolutely dreadful and totally wrong.
She clung to Jackie, her sister, her lifeline, her ray of sunshine in an ever-lasting storm.
She inhaled deep through her nose, controlling her breath as it made its way out, and settled back in her seat. Charles was seated across from her, watching her carefully with a pained expression that revealed that he knew exactly what she was thinking.
Rose closed her eyes. She was running from her parents, not Robert.
No, Rose wanted to marry Robert in spite of her fears.
She had been admittedly nervous, quite so. She had spent the last two weeks using Jackie as an excuse to avoid Robert’s company so that she wouldn’t have to face the fear of rejection.
And it was rejection that she feared, and that fear did strange things to her. It left her with the sensation of being off-balance to feel this twisting in her gut every time that she thought about Robert, and she hadn’t wanted to see him until she had the ability to control it. Or until the wedding ceremony, whichever came first.
As luck would have it, she had no need to worry, for when he greeted her at the ball thrown in their honor the night before, he had been the same person he was in Lincoln. He was still the same man that she’d fallen in love with. However, there was no time to relish in this because it was too late, everything had already been arranged. She was no longer the same person.
After Robert’s outburst that practically shook the house down to its foundation the day before, Lady Blythe had stormed the nursery, frightening the hell out of Jackie and, to be quite honest, Rose as well. She would no longer stand the stain on the family. She would no longer lie to a duke.
Having declared that she would not countenance angering a duke any longer, Lady Blythe sought to resolve the issue. The issue, she decided, was Jackie, and so Jackie was being sent away. Immediately and permanently.
There hadn’t been much time to formulate a plan, and Rose knew she would need help. There was only one person Rose knew she could trust beyond anyone else.
Before the guests arrived last night Rose had pushed and clawed and screamed as Jackie was packed into a carriage for parts unknown, Lady Blythe’s promise in her ear that her sister would never be seen again. Rose was not about to allow for that to happen.
And neither was Charles.
It was Charles who had come up with the plan and made all the arrangements at a moment’s notice. It was Charles who had intercepted the carriage. Charles who had saved Jackie. And it was Charles who helped Rose forsake their parents, forsake Society, and a duke, as she set out on an voyage from which she was not likely to return.
One would think that it would take longer to book passage on a ship, but there were certain perks to being the heir to a rather lofty title.
Rose had always done everything for her sisters. She would have easily laid down her life for any one of them, and luckily Charles felt the same.
Jackie could not stay, but nor could she leave on her own. So she was to have a companion. Rose. Together they would leave and would not look back.
Rose closed her eyes and exhaled. It was to be a long day. They were hying north to the Liverpool docks. As they were not stopping at an inn for the night, the journey would leave them in Liverpool when the early signs of dawn once again stretched across the sky.
She was supposed to be preparing for her wedding. In actuality, she was supposed to be sleeping so that she looked well-rested, with not a trace of the headache she had feigned last evening in order to escape the end of the ball. In a few short hours, she was supposed to be making her way to Saint George’s and pledging herself to the man she loved above all else.
Rose squeezed her eyes shut, even as they were already closed.
Not above all else…
She did not love Robert above all else. If she did, she would be going through with the marriage. As it was…
No, she would not go down that road. She would not allow herself to feel guilt.
She couldn’t quite believe that she was hurting Robert so. She loved him so much—causing him pain was the last thing she wished to do. But it could not be avoided. She had to leave and he had to stay. Perhaps if she told him about Jackie he would understand, but knowing the truth would serve him no purpose. He would heal quicker if he believed that she simply didn’t want to marry him, that she was running away from him.
Perhaps a part of her was, but she was too weary to uncover the truth that was entwined with everything else she was feeling.
The feelings, the guilt, the missing him—it was almost the same as looking back, as regretting. That, she was determined not to do.
Rose opened her eyes so that she could no longer see Robert on the backs of her lids, and stared intently forward.
This was where her life began. This was the moment that defined her. She could not regret it, and therefore she could not allow herself to feel.
She steeled her heart once more, refusing to acknowledge the shattering sensation that came deep from within her chest.
Rose did not look back.
Chapter 27
His hair was windblown, his clothes dusty from travel, and his cheeks were ruddy from both the wind that he was cutting a direct path through and the emotions he seemed unable to tame.
A package waited upon the top step of the front door of Clarence House, Robert’s Mayfair residence, though it was not immediately discovered. As he was to be married that morning, there was quite a bit of commotion throughout the house but, rather surprisingly, not once had the front door been opened.
Not, that is, until Lord Blythe called upon him. It was then that the cream envelopes tied together with red ribbon were finally noticed.
Robert’s morning went as such:
First, he was greeted in his office by the butler carrying the packet of letters—one addressed to each of Rose’s three sisters and one to him. He tore open the last with all the finesse of a rock and scanned down the lines so quickly that he was sure he had misinterpreted.
He had not.
He read it again. And again.
Robert’s eyes grew narrow as he lost his breath, staring down a tunnel with no white light at the end.
Rose had left. Run away.
It was absurd.
She had said she would not marry him, but after what happened between them last night she had to; no proper lady would even think to cry off now. He hadn’t even thought
it a possibility that she still planned to do just that.
Of course, she didn’t just cry off. She ran away. As in, was gone. Which had to be the most utterly insane thing that had ever happened. Of all the imprudent behavior she had engaged in recently, this had to be the dimmest by far.
What was she thinking? A woman—much less a lady—alone? Didn’t she know that the world was a dangerous place?
The worst of it was that he didn’t even know where she was. Along with not telling him why she was leaving, she did not see fit to disclose to him where it was she was going.
That was it. Clearly she couldn’t be trusted to make her own wise decisions. She obviously required a devoted keeper, and if it took tying her to the bed to save her from herself, well then, so be it.
He was going to find her—he would tear down every door in the country if that was what it took.
Alas, the hinges on doors across England remained firmly affixed.
Lord Blythe was deposited in Robert’s study minutes later, bearing the tragic news of his daughter’s disappearance—which, by now, was practically old news to Robert. All he wanted to do was run out into the street and search every face that he came across. It wasn’t much of a plan, but he needed to do something. He could not sit idly by whilst she slipped further away.
The last thing he wanted was to be trapped in conversation with Lord Blythe when he could be out there searching.
However, Lord Blythe also carried a much more troubling tidbit of information.
Rose hadn’t left alone. Her brother, Charles, appeared to be her cohort in this rash endeavor and, if his butler was to be believed, the two were traveling north to Liverpool.
With that, Robert was off, like a bullet from a barrel, Lord Blythe nipping at his heels.
Both men had the same goal—to return Rose safely to London so that Robert could marry her—but Robert could not shake the feeling of wanting to shake the man that was following him. It wasn’t a very nice thought, as Lord Blythe was to be his father-in-law, but his thoughts on the subject—on Lord Blythe—could rarely be termed nice.
Rose by Another Name Page 29