Page 49 of The Duke’s Masked Wallflower

The group of women cried and laughed further down the river. Rosalie watched them as she contemplated her answer. It looked so easy to be like them, to be naturally pleasant, to belong in large groups, to have the assurance that everything would be alright for them, and that love was on the way.

“He is much more than his good looks and title,” Rosalie concluded. “No one pressures me to think as highly about him as I do. I think he is very clever and very funny. I believe he has a great capacity for love and pain, though I do not know whether he has fully acknowledged that part of himself or ever will, whether I will ever see it, even.”

“And you believe a man like that would make a good husband to you?”

“No,” she answered freely, because Lottie gave her the impression that she could be honest. “I doubt he shall ever make a husband to me at all.”

Lottie made a sound as if she were about to protest, but at that moment, the giddy noises from the rest of the group intensified in volume and frequency. The two women turned. The other ladies were pointing in the distance, the ducklings long gone and forgotten.

A group of riders was coming up the park. Gabriel’s dark head of hair was easy to pick out among the rest. A small and unfamiliar warmth spread through her chest. She was excited to see him again—excited but nervous.

Sixteen

Maybe because of that feeling, or maybe because of the heavy rainfall that night, Rosalie could not fall asleep. The cause of her insomnia was nothing so dramatic as heartache, she told herself, curled at the foot of her bed in her room, with a candle burning low and a novel she had already read twice propped open on her knees.

By midnight she had abandoned the pretense of reading and gone down to the library instead, in search of something with fewer feelings than the book she had brought. The house was deathly quiet. She had just pulled a promising volume from the shelf when the door opened.

Rosalie dropped the book and gasped. It took a second to recognize James Edgeworth, the Marquess of Beaumont, looking equally surprised to find the room occupied. He was still dressed in his riding clothes, but Rosalie was in her night clothes and gown.

“Miss Winthrop?” He glanced at the book on the floor, then at the state of her. He had the good manners not to remark on either. “I thought I heard someone but suspected a footman. I only came for something to read...”

“The fault is mine,” Rosalie said, bending to pick over the book, aptly concealing her mortified blush. “I assumed that everyone else had gone to bed—especially the gentlemen.”

“After our riding expedition, you mean? We should have gone to bed, I agree.” He smiled and crossed the room, casting shadows in the fire as he walked. His hair was mussed, stubble growing on his face. He was an attractive gentleman, and very polite. But unlike Gabriel, he maintained a cold distance from others. “Unfortunately, His Grace and I have been drinking rather seriously downstairs. I came to find a book... to prove myself in an argument we were having.”

Rosalie nodded, returning her selected book to the shelf and letting her fingers linger on the wood. “What are you arguing about?”

“Nothing of consequence, which is to say the usual. Something about a breed of bird we saw yesterday evening. He says skylark, and I say...” He selected a book and did not look at its spine. “Never mind. You are up rather late yourself, Miss Winthrop.”

“The rain kept me awake. And I always have such trouble sleeping in houses that are unfamiliar to me. It is why I am a terrible traveling companion. When we were in Italy, Lady Chipping and I spent many sleepless nights reading and talking, the intercourse often lasting hours about topics ranging from the lightest to the most onerous...” She cleared her throat, embarrassed. “Forgive me. A lack of sleep always makes me ramble.”

Lord Beaumont smiled at that revelation, turning to examine a shelf closer to hers. She watched his profile in the firelight, surprised by how natural it felt to be around him. She wondered whether that was a product of his love for Tiffany; he loved her so much, and it was so evident to everyone, that he had stopped eliciting fear and excitement in other women.

“You and Gabriel are alike in that,” he said, reaching to examine the spines of a row of large leatherbound books. “Unfortunately, Gabriel does not sleep well as a rule.”

“Not even here?”

“No. Perhaps a little better.” He dropped his arm and turned to her. “You have sensed he is different here? You have not had the chance yet to spend much time with him.”

“His aunt mentioned I might notice a difference in him when I arrived.”

“And yet, I suspect you would have noticed it, even if she had not said anything.” The marquess crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the bookshelf. “He is always different here. Wide River was his mother’s favorite of all the houses. He spent most of his childhood summers running about these grounds before everything happened... his brother, his father... I was often here too.”

“I had not known your friendship went back so many years,” she said with a quiet gasp.

“Longer yet. I am older than him by six years. Gabriel was not my first friend.” He smiled in the darkness. “It was his brother, Marcus. We were thick as thieves in our childhoods. He was the other half of my soul. Children are that way when they are young, constructing their whole selves by leaning on another.”

“Heavens...” Rosalie placed a hand on her chest, where a dull ache had formed. “I am so sorry for your loss, my lord. I had no idea.”

“That does not surprise me. Gabriel is an apt and avid conversationalist, especially when he’s tired, like we said, but he does not often talk about the past.” James crouched to pick a book from a lower shelf, then rose. “But he is like a brother to me now. I love him like a brother. I would not see any harm done to him.”

Rosalie froze, unsure whether he had intended the words as a general warning or one specifically for her.

He turned the book over in his hands. “But with you, I doubt it will come to that,” he said. “You may make of that whatever you like. To put it candidly to you... I do not have the necessary facts to say anything more precise... And I have drunk too much wine to conduct a proper interrogation on you now, not that I would dare, even if I were sober.”

She felt it was appropriate to laugh, and it eased some of her anxiety. The marquess seemed pleased by her reaction and provided her with another genteel smile.

He bid her goodnight as he left, leaving the door open wider than it had been when he had arrived.