Withered Rose (Desperate And Daring Book 7)

by Dayna Quince

  She blinked. Was he asleep? She grinned in satisfaction. She slowly eased from the bed, trying not to disturb him. He said he needed release, and she gave it to him. Perhaps, sleeping on that small sofa had worn him out as well. She decided to let him rest. She straightened her dress, redid her hair, and then retreated to the drawing room to find something to read until he woke.

  She couldn’t deny that she was pleased with herself. Her experience was extremely limited, but she found that sensuality came naturally to her. Perhaps she was destined to be a mistress. No. As soon as she had the thought, she dismissed it. The only time she’d fallen prey to her base needs were strictly when her heart was involved. She’d naively thought she was in love with Peter. She would now call it infatuation. Infatuation was a powerful emotion.

  Chapter 14

  What she felt for Connor was equally powerful. She had no illusions of marriage with him, but she recognized her desires. She felt a little freer now that she’d indulged them. A weight had eased from her shoulders. But what more could she ask for? He thought she was a virgin, and the truth was something she could tell no one. What would he think of her if he knew otherwise? He had a very strong opinion about who she was. It shamed her to admit it, but she liked his version better, even if it was more pitiful than she wanted to be. She considered herself strong. She’d endured the loss of her mother, the betrayal of Peter, and the loss of her father rather well, in her opinion. She’d taken it all in stride. Yes, she was a bit morose at times, but God help her, she was still grieving. She couldn’t let go of her grief as easily as her morals. Her pain was deep and an infinite flame that would always burn. Sometimes it smoldered like coal, and other times it consumed her.

  The worst was spring when the world bloomed with scent and color. Her mother’s perfume was the scent of gardenia. Rose couldn’t tolerate the smell of it without tears pricking her eyes. Over time, her mother’s face had faded in her memory, but one thing she could not forget was the way she smelled. Rose had been eleven when her mother passed. That was almost eleven years ago, now. So much time had passed, but Rose had nothing to show for it. No husband, no family. Everything had slipped out of her reach. October was swiftly turning into November, and then December. She’d soon pass the day of her father’s death. If he were looking down on her from heaven, what would he see?

  Rose made herself a cup of tea and sat on the sofa. She pulled the blanket over her lap and a book from the table. The study of English Fowl. How very engrossing, Rose mused. She stood and walked toward the window. For a moment, she couldn’t hear the dull roar of the water, her hopes surged, but it still raged. Her ears had become accustomed to it. Her hopes were dashed as easily as twigs on those rocks. Was the bridge still there? She couldn’t see it anymore. What would they do if it were destroyed? Would they have to wait until the water completely receded and a new bridge built?

  She turned away from the window and returned to the sofa. It was raining again, and for the first time in her life, she loathed the rain. It was a cold, wet cage. She was stuck here, and beyond that window, the world moved on without her. Her friends were married and having children. That was all she truly wanted, wasn’t it? But now she was so far removed from that life. She was an outcast. To think that earlier that summer, when she had bumped into Rigsby and his new wife, she’d been so close to them. They had all come together for Rigsby’s wedding, all except Rose and Charlotte.

  Her heart pinched when she thought of Charlotte. Charlotte was the only friend she could confide in. She knew what Rose was going through because Charlotte’s father had just died this past spring. Their situations were similar, with one exception. Charlotte was engaged to be married.

  With bitter envy, Rose had congratulated Charlotte, but she was horrendously jealous. She couldn’t bear to write to Charlotte after her last letter. That was two months ago. She was going to grow old alone, while they carried on with their happy lives. Rose felt her sadness press down on her again, like a heavy bank of fog, it rolled over her. She huddled into the sofa, feeling cold and empty. Tears came to her eyes. Here she was again—sad, tragic Rose.

  “Rose?”

  She jerked up and looked over her shoulder. There he stood, smiling sheepishly and rubbing the back of his neck. The gloomy clouds receded, and with just the sight of him, the sun inside her broke through.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I fell asleep.”

  “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “Oh, you disturb me.” He walked forward with that slow saunter, like a stallion showing off in his paddock. He came around the sofa and sat beside her. He brought one hand to her face, his thumb stroking her cheek.

  “You’re upset,” he stated. His brow furrowed.

  Rose blinked. She was? Oh, yes, she was, until she saw him. She’d forgotten. “It’s nothing now.”

  “But it was something a moment ago. Is it because of what we did together?”

  Warmth filled her, pleasant and soothing. “No. I… enjoyed all of that.” She blushed.

  “Will you tell me what made you upset?”

  Rose thought about it. What could it hurt? He, more than anyone, would understand her grief.

  “I was thinking of my parents and my friends. I miss them.”

  He nodded slowly. “Anything more specific?”

  She chewed her lip and shrugged. “What do you wish to know?”

  He leaned back against the sofa, but he kept one arm around her. “I find it helps to talk about my parents with people. I speak more of the happy memories than the sad.”

  She considered that, but she didn’t know what to say. She barely remembered specific happy memories with her mother, only sensations and feelings. The strongest memories occurred after her death. Those were the moments that shaped her.

  “I don’t have any happy memories with my mother. I remember how she smelled, and how she made me feel, but everything else is so vague.”

  “How did she die?” He asked.

  Rose waited to feel a swell of sadness that usually accompanied that question, but it didn’t come. She took a deep breath. She hadn’t told anyone this story before, but suddenly, she wanted to. Here, now, with him.

  “She died of scarlet fever,” Rose murmured. “I didn’t even know she’d taken ill.” She looked down at her hands, pulling those horrible feelings to the surface. “I was taking lessons with a neighbor family, and when I returned, they sent me back for fear I’d become ill, as well. I was there for two weeks until my father summoned me home. She was already gone. I went to her room against my nanny’s order, and everything had been stripped. They’d already buried her. My father wouldn’t take me to see her grave. He was… distant. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how she could just be erased from our home.”

  “Erased?”

  Rose felt her throat thicken, but it wasn’t just sadness she felt. It was anger. “My father shut himself away for some time, and my nanny had no patience for tears. She told me that my mother had died, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it, so it was best to move on.”

  “Your nanny was a bitch. How old were you?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Eleven? And she wouldn’t let you cry over the death of your mother?”

  Rose enjoyed his outrage. She’d been numb to such an emotion for so long, until now, until the moment she saw Lady Belfrost step out of that carriage looking so contrite. Rose had been outraged then, but even then, she’d contained it. If she’d learned anything from Nanny Plum, it was how to contain one’s emotions.

  Rose couldn’t help but smile now. “Tell me about your parents. Something happy,” she pleaded.

  “I want to talk more of this nanny.”

  “Forget her. She was dismissed when I was thirteen and replaced with a flighty governess, Miss Trubecht.”

  He didn’t look ready to concede his anger, but he sighed and pulled her closer against his side anyway. “My parents were so in love it was sickening,
” he began.

  “Sickening? How is that sickening?”

  He raised a brow and looked down at her. “When you must step loudly or cough, or make any number of noises before entering a room they have both inhabited alone, it is sickening.”

  Rose’s mouth popped open to question him further, then enlightenment struck. “Oh.”

  “Now you understand me. I suppose it could be worse. I knew it wasn’t usual for one’s parents to be so enamored of each other, but it was better that than the stories I heard from boys at school whose parents couldn’t abide each other.”

  “So you had to learn to make noise before entering a room?”

  “Yes, but that was the worst of their offenses. My mother was full of joy. Nothing ever stuck in her craw. My father, Lord Belfrost’s second son, as you know, was a military man until he sold his commission and married my mother. He loved being outdoors. Once I was old enough to match his stride, he would take me on long walks. We’d talk about everything or nothing at all. Sometimes, we’d pack food and a tent, and make camp wherever we happened to be. It was a boy’s dream.”

  “It sounds lovely.”

  “It was. It was the happiest time of my life.” His eyes darkened.

  Rose waited. She could see his demeanor change as his thoughts turned to the darker parts of him, memories too painful to recall, but they always came so easily.

  “I was at school when it happened. They almost wouldn’t let me leave, but… my uncle… he came to fetch me, and I was allowed to attend the service.”

  He remained silent now. Rose ached for him. No one’s pain could be summed up against another’s, but surely, losing two parents was worse than one at a time spaced out by years. She hadn’t been able to grieve openly, not in sight of Nanny Plum, but she had grieved somewhat. Her father… he’d had his own way. He’d take her hand sometimes and wouldn’t say anything at all. He’d look away, and his shoulders would be so stiff. Rose liked to think it was in those moments his grief overcame him, and at those moments, he’d sought comfort in her.

  She cherished those moments. She was also glad to have been by his side through his illness. She was there for his last smiles, his last hugs. She was forever grateful for that.

  “I went back to school, and nothing felt the same.” He interrupted her thoughts.

  She put her hand on his knee to let him know she was there for him.

  “Nothing mattered anymore. I barely passed, and then, when it was time to go home, there was no home to go to.”

  “Your uncle…”

  “He tried. He tried to father me, but… I hated him for it. He wasn’t my father. No man could replace the man who God took. It made me angry to see him try, so I stayed away. I didn’t want to hate them for it, but I couldn’t stop it. I was his heir, he said. I had a duty. ‘One day, the title will be yours,”’ he said. It shouldn’t have been that way. He should have had his own children, or it should have gone to my father, and then me, but never like this.”

  Rose watched the lines of pain change his handsome face into a hard mask. She reached out and touched his jaw, startling herself and him. He looked down at her, and his eyes changed. They cleared of their darkness, somewhat.

  “You were both hurting.”

  “I didn’t want to hurt him,” he said gravely. “So I traveled. I convinced a drunken sea captain to take me as a deckhand, and from then on, I found any way I could to be away from here.”

  “Here?”

  “Belfrost. It was not my home, but neither was Morton, the home I grew up in. Without my parents, it wasn’t a home any longer. It only reminded me they were gone.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “It’s entailed to Belfrost. My uncle took over its management. He kept it ready for me, but I’ve never been back.”

  Rose hurt for him, her heart thudding painfully in her chest, and she longed to comfort him, to erase the pain from his eyes. She curled her hand around his nape and brought his head down to hers. He didn’t resist her as she kissed him softly. “I’m sorry.”

  “Let’s talk about something else now. You mentioned friends?”

  Rose leaned into his side and rested her head on his chest. It was strange, but it felt wonderful to lean on him like this like she had every right. “I used to have lots of friends. We even started a society to help each other navigate the woes of husband hunting. The Ivy Society, we called ourselves.”

  He looked baffled. “You created a society for husband hunting?”

  “It is not as easy as it seems.”

  “For whom? I can’t imagine any man not wanting to marry you.”

  She raised a brow. “You don’t want to marry me.”

  He scowled. “That’s different. We were tricked. Neither—” he paused and looked a bit panicked, “—no one wants to be tricked into marriage. I’d think you would agree, or was this Ivy Society a way to think up ideas for tricking unsuspecting men?” he accused.

  “It most certainly was not. Our singular goal was finding the right men for ourselves,” Rose defended. She pushed his arm away from her. How dare he accuse them of such a thing!

  “Don’t get angry.”

  “Don’t accuse my friends and me of trickery,” Rose returned.

  “I take it back. It was a thoughtless comment.”

  “Indeed it was.” She relaxed against him again. “Our methodology was simple. Determine which men were the right men for us.”

  “How does one go about doing that?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Rose admitted sheepishly. “None of us did.”

  “Have any of your friends married?”

  Rose was silent for a moment. Envy swamped her. “Almost all of them.”

  “And did these friends marry the right men for them or did they bow to conventional dictates.”

  “They all married for love.”

  “Eek. That is terrifying.”

  She looked up at him. “What is terrifying about love?”

  “Everything.”

  Rose rolled her eyes. “Well, they don’t sound terrified in their letters. They sound happy.” She sighed morosely. They were both quiet for a moment. She felt him take a deep breath and sensed he was going to speak.

  Chapter 15

  Gabriel thought carefully before asking his next question. She was relaxed against his side and the moment felt precious. He feared doing anything that might cause her to shutter her feelings. He took a deep breath before asking the question. It was too important not to ask.

  “What do you want from life?”

  “A home and family of my own.” She said.

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes, that’s it. It doesn’t sound like much, does it? But both those things have eluded me for some time. I could even live without love as long as my husband was a kind man, and we got along well enough.”

  Gabriel hid his grimace. A placid marriage of polite gentility? God forbid something so boring should happen to a woman as vibrant and passionate as Rose. Although she tried to hide it, he could see it, like a shell buried in the sand, easily overlooked. But if one took the time, a treasure trove of beauty could be found.

  He suspected she hid her true self just as she hid her emotions. Was that why she hadn’t married? No man had been allowed to see her true self, until now… until him. He mentally shook himself. Surely, that couldn’t be it. If he were the only man capable of recognizing her true worth, well, she was doomed. He tried to picture what sort of man would make an acceptable husband for her. The mental image was not attractive. He pictured a pale-faced lord with a weak chin and receding hair.

  No. He couldn’t imagine it. He didn’t want to.

  “Tell me about your friends,” he blurted.

  She rested her head against his chest again and sighed. “Miss Charlotte Anglewood is engaged to her neighbor, Heather is married to the Duke of Ablehill, and—”

  “You’re friends with a duchess?” he scoffed.


  “Well, yes.” Rose frowned. “You mustn’t say it like that. Heather is one of the nicest people I know and—”

  “I mean no insult. When you use the term friend, do you mean a true friend or an acquaintance you’d wave to while strolling on Bond Street?”

  She looked offended. “She is my true friend. We wrote weekly until my father passed, and I became a…” Her lips pressed together.

  “Until you became a companion and were too ashamed to write?”

  Her cheeks flagged with red. “Yes. Precisely so.”

  “Would she think less of you for having become a companion?”

  “No.”

  He didn’t press her further. She was already a bundle of tension at his side. “Tell me of your other friends. Is there a princess among them?”

  She smiled.

  “There is?!”

  “No,” she grinned. “Anabelle is as beautiful as any princess, as is her twin Hazel, but Anabelle is a viscountess, and her sister a countess.”

  He shuddered. “How common.”

  She playfully slapped his thigh. He was more aroused than chastised. He snaked his arm around her again and pulled her tightly to his side.

  “There is also Lady Lucy, Countess of Winchester.”

  “Another countess? You’re flush with countesses. Tell me, are they all as saintly as your duchess?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Do you still write to them?” he pressed.

  “No.” She chewed her lip.

  He suspected as much. She’d ceased communication because of her own feelings about her station, not theirs. “It occurs to me that if you didn’t want to be a companion, you’d have many friends who could help you.”

  She frowned at him. “I’m not the sort of person to hang on someone’s sleeve.”

  “Is the Duke of Ablehill as sweet as his duchess?”

  She laughed. “If not sweeter.”

  “Then I see a solution, dear Rose.”

  “I couldn’t.”