Page 40 of The Duke’s Masked Wallflower

“You could not.” Finally, he leaned away from her and began to turn.

She should have asked what he meant, but he had gone too quickly for her to determine whether her assumption of what he thought of her was true.

You are beneath me. You could never give me what I want.

And why, she thought, did that notion make her want to try harder to seek his approval, when she should have been running the other way?

Thirteen

Before meeting the Duke of Hartmere, Rosalie assumed she had a decent enough poker face—and a good head on her shoulders—because no one had ever suggested otherwise. She had never played poker, of course. She had barely played enough Whist or Faro to count it among her experiences. And when she had played, it had been with her mother and father, where the stakes were always low.

Arriving home, she left her belongings with the butler at the door and went into the art room, where her mother was waiting. When she entered, Lady Winthrop appeared startled, confirming the earlier assumption.

“Dear God...” Lady Winthrop gasped. “What has happened? You look like a cat whose tail was just caught in the door.”

Rosalie started at the threshold, blinking at her mother. “I only meant to come in and sit down,” she said. Her father arrived behind her then and tapped her on the shoulder, consolingly, which only made Rosalie more confused.

“What’s that got to do with your despairing expression?” Lady Winthrop set down her watercolor palette and stepped away from the easel. “Do you know what happened?”

Her father entered. “I only know Lady Chipping wants one hundred pounds for the painting of Neptune’s Fountain.”

Lady Winthrop gasped, wiping her hands on her apron. “No, she does not.”

“Yes, she does.” The baron lowered himself into his reading chair by the windows and began searching for his reading spectacles. The basket beside his chair was overflowing with last week’s broadsheets. A dog-eared Bible was on the table beside him. He reached for the basket. “But she wouldn’t lie to us about its value.”

“Of course, she wouldn’t. Lady Chipping is an upstanding woman. And she knows her art. If she believes it’s worth one hundred pounds, then—Where are you going, Rosalie? You never answered me.”

Rosalie had only crept back two paces from the door when she was caught retreating. She turned around. “I thought we were done with that conversation.”

“Really?” Lady Winthrop yanked the bell on the wall, and a maid appeared within seconds. “Tea and sandwiches, Mary.”

“And brandy,” the baron cried.

“And brandy for the baron,” Lady Winthrop repeated. “Though Lord knows he doesn’t need it. His overindulgence will be the death of him.”

Sighing, Lady Winthrop marched over and grabbed Rosalie’s hand. Her mother’s fingers were sticky with half-dried paint. She guided Rosalie down into the window seat and sat beside her.

“What did you do while your father was discussing art with Lady Chipping?”

Rosalie bit her lip. At least her father seemed distracted. “His Grace showed me the renovations he was making to his gardens.”

Lady Winthrop raised a brow. “Alone?”

“There were staff everywhere. And then he was called away by a visitor.”

“But it was a nice visit?”

“For the most part,” Rosalie answered mostly truthfully, hiding the rest, eavesdropping and arguing with Gabriel. In the carriage home, she had regretted speaking her mind about his cousin. He was right that she did not understand the situation or his motivations. That much had never been clearer. “We had a difference of opinion.”

Lady Winthrop scowled. “About what?”

“About...”

Before Rosalie could come up with a lie, two maids returned with trays of drinks and supper. Her mother rose to help serve the baron his brandy, while Rosalie stared out of the window. The evening light came in strong through the southeastern windows, which was why her mother had turned this room into her art studio. Most nights they convened here for reading and games instead of sketching. The air in the room always smelled acidic and earthy. Rosalie wished they would just use the drawing room like normal families.

Normal families wouldn’t eat ham-and-mustard sandwiches for supper while they wrote or read in silence. Normal families wouldn’t buy art from female artists on the recommendation of another female.

Normal families, she thought in conclusion, wouldn’t encourage a daughter like me to become a spinster so long as she was happy.