Page 47 of The Duke’s Masked Wallflower

“Oh, do not mistake me. I don’t suppose she means to. But you have spent so long believing yourself unbreakable that I wonder if you would even notice were she to break you a little.” She studied him over the rim of the glass. “You are not made of stone, Gabriel, whatever you have convinced yourself. I should hate to watch you learn that the hard way, with a broken heart.”

He had no answer for that, which was answer enough. His aunt, mercifully, did not press him to find an audible one.

“In any case,” she said instead, setting the glass aside entirely, “I have had a thought, and I should like you to indulge it before you dismiss it out of hand as you dismiss most of my thoughts...”

“Go on, then.”

“The Marquess of Beaumont is to be married soon. I think we ought to take the party to Wide River before the Season is over. The country air is fine, and it would be good to have a little celebration away from London eyes, before he belongs entirely to his wife and forgets the rest of us exist.”

“You are just bored of the gardens here.”

“And so what if I am? The matter still stands. You miss the abbey.”

“I do.”

“Then let us go there for a while.”

Gabriel considered it. Surrey, the green, the quiet, no London... no men like Sinclair. My aunt has certainly had worse ideas.

“Not a terrible suggestion,” he said.

His aunt smiled like a woman who had gotten precisely what she came for. Which, he supposed, she just had.

Fifteen

The invitation made its way around London like a happy little pox. It arrived at the Winthrop residence two days after the first letters had been sent out, almost like an afterthought, although it had been anything but an afterthought from its sender. Rosalie looked at it in the light of a window in the art room.

“Why would he want a house party?” Rosalie asked for the second time, as though repeating it might actually get a decent answer from her mother. “In the middle of the Season? It makes no sense.”

“When would you have His Grace organize the party instead, then?” Lady Winthrop sat in the baron’s usual chair, composing a list of places she wanted to visit in Surrey, her quill moving fast over the page. “Lady Chipping’s personal note said it was in honor of the Marquess of Beaumont’s coming wedding—close friends only. Are we not so lucky to be counted among them?”

“Close by whose accounting?” Rosalie folded the letter along the creases and stared down at the broken seal. “His Grace’s notion of close continues to elude me. I hope he has not invited many members of parliament. He must know so many of them.”

“I know your father says they are boors and big-mouths—all of them—but I’ve found many politicians to be perfectly tolerable. And if not them, then at least their wives are often pleasant.” Lady Winthrop sighed happily and set down her quill. “I am sure it will be a reasonable venture.”

“You say the same of every event.”

“And am I ever wrong?”

Rosalie did not dignify that question with an answer.

Lady Winthrop did not look up from her list. “Epsom Gallery on the way down to the abbey, and then Mr. Mooney’s collection in Guildford... What do you think about Woking?”

“I do not care a whit about Woking.”

“My, my...”

Rosalie sat down across from Lady Winthrop, forcing her mother’s eyes up from the page. “Does it not strike you as strange? We have been courting a matter of weeks, and now he wishes to remove me to his own house in the country for the better part of a fortnight, in front of an audience of his closest friends.”

“Remove you?” Lady Winthrop laughed, shaking her head. “You have been reading far too many novels. The decision strikes me as nice and sensible. But if this is where your mind has gone... We might expect he wants you all to himself for once, away from every eye in London. Your father did the same for me when we were courting. Our families went to Brighton.”

Rosalie pressed her lips together so hard they hurt. “I⁠—”

“You do not care a whit about Brighton either?” Lady Winthrop narrowed her gaze and leaned forward. “Did things right themselves between you two, after your nervous fit the other day?”

“They did,” she answered, crossing her arms.

“Then it stands to reason that he does wish to have some private time with you.” Lady Winthrop grinned from ear to ear. “How exciting!”