Page 45 of The Duke’s Masked Wallflower

“It was an error.”

“Oh, quite the error, I agree.”

“I had forgotten that I had agreed to attend tonight with both you... and him. And it shames me. But I doubt anyone noticed. You were gone so quickly from the venue.”

“A more suspicious fellow could assume you had invited us both on purpose to try and incite a public fight for you, or to make an exciting story for the rags to fight over.”

She scowled. The expression should not have pleased him as much as it did. He liked when she was angry. He liked knowing she was capable of feeling upset, rather than agreeing to things simply because that was easier.

Though I suppose, he thought, more aware of the limited space between them with every unspoken word, that she made that painfully clear when she spoke out in Peter Ashcroft’s defense. I wonder if that is why she insists on apologizing tonight, so her attacks against me do not accumulate until an insurmountable mountain of hurt stands between me and her.

“Does that seem likely to you? Do you really think I am that sort of woman?” she asked, drawing him from his thoughts.

He shrugged.

“Tell me honestly.” Her less-than-soothing tone made him flinch. “Are you upset with me about the scheduling error... or are you angry that you caught me speaking with Mr. Sinclair alone?”

A startled laugh erupted from his throat.

“It is not cause for laughter,” she scolded.

“I disagree. Why should I care about either circumstance?” The question came out harder than he intended, and he repositioned himself so he was facing her fully. “Do you believe I should be angry at you for whispering with a man who is not me in the darkness? Or for looking at him tenderly? Do you think I should be put out by the assignation, regardless of your comportment? That I should burn with jealousy for you, and curse the stars under which the meeting took place, and brood, and so on, like a poet, like a man who truly⁠—?”

He stopped himself before he said something stupid and honest, more stupid and honest than what he already had said.

“You are mocking me again,” she said bitterly, and leaned back from him, pressing her body against the opposite carriage door.

“No,” he said, “not at all.”

“Then what would you call it if not a mockery?”

“A fair description of your expectations. It should not matter to me one way or another. For in fact, it does not matter. I have no claim on your evenings, Miss Winthrop. I relinquished my right to command you, and to be upset when you disobeyed me, the moment I proposed this arrangement of ours, and proposed it to be fake. I have no right to mind who you sit beside in the dark, discussing whatever it is the two of you discuss. God, what could a man like Sinclair even want to discuss with you? The weather? Remedies for balding?”

“You think very little of him, and I do not know why. You are not even that different in age. And you still have not answered my question.”

“Which was?”

“Whether you are vexed by my error or vexed that you found us together.”

He looked at her rather than out the window behind her. He could have said something evasive again. It might have been easier to explain. “Both, I expect,” he said instead. “Though I could not tell you in what proportion.”

The crease between her brows eased slightly at his response. His grudging honesty had bought him a moment of grace. She was quiet for a beat, smoothing her glove over her knuckles. When she spoke again, her voice had lost its edge.

“My mother told me about your brother’s fate.”

The carriage seemed to grow smaller. He hoped she did not hear the way his breath caught in his throat. The mention of his brother always did something strange to him, making him feel faraway, locked in a cellar, words coming through the cellar door but not quite reaching him, like sunlight through the clouds.

“Did she now?”

“His name was Marcus,” Rosalie said the word carefully, but her voice had gone weak and strained. “I did not know... You never said a word about him.”

“Why would I have spoken about him? There was no occasion to speak about him.” His jaw ached again. “It has... had... no bearing on our arrangement.”

“Yes, but it has bearing on you.”

He considered what to say carefully. Usually, he avoided talking about Marcus altogether. The people who knew him most knew this. The distance between him and Rosalie had never felt wider. A veritable chasm of truth between them. He could have stepped back. He could have stepped closer and pushed her into the chasm instead, to hurt her. He wanted to leave the scene altogether. But he could not leave yet.

“Young Miss, I do not require an audit of my grief for you to hold up your end of a bargain. Have you forgotten the bounds of this pact? It is all for show. Whether you cast me off for Sinclair tonight or next week, it is not significant, as long as you do not embarrass me. And tonight... It was an embarrassment. That is what has vexed me. Nothing else.”