by Merry Farmer
“I’m not too young to understand when a man fancies a woman,” Marshall went on.
Isaac stared at him in disbelief. He opened his mouth, but couldn’t think of the right words to tell the young man off.
Marshall, however, stared at him and shook his head. “Just invite her to supper. You’ll be glad you did.” And before Isaac could begin to react to that, Marshall turned to the ladies, raised his hand, and said, “Miss Rawlins, Dr. Newsome has something he’d like to ask you.”
Everyone in the room shifted as though they were part of a perfectly staged drama. Lawrence and Jason grinned at Marshall as though they were impressed with his initiative. Anthony and Trevor’s eyes gleamed like they would get their show at last. Miss Bond looked as if Christmas had come early. And Rose herself looked as though she were holding her breath as she glanced hopefully at Isaac.
Hopefully. How could Isaac not take a chance with an expression like that?
He cleared his throat and stepped forward. It would just be supper. He couldn’t disappoint her with his incompetence with just supper. There was no reason it had to be anything more. “Miss Rawlins, would you do me the honor of dining with me this coming Friday evening?” His invitation rushed out with as much grace and clarity as raging floodwaters. All he could do was stand there and wait to see if he’d made a mess of things.
“I—” Rose didn’t know what to say. Her skin had been burning since Isaac held her arm for his demonstration. Her pulse hadn’t slowed since he’d had his hands around her waist. She’d come so far, committed so much to the Bonds, and there she was, longing to give everything away to a man. Again. She missed the contrast of hard and soft in a man’s body. She missed the tangy scent and taste of male skin. And Lord help her, she missed the heady sensation of being consumed by a man, possessed and filled and used by him.
But no, that wasn’t exactly right. She most certainly would not take any old man to bed now. She recoiled at the thought of entertaining Mr. Collison, the butcher, or Jack Harris, who owned the pub, even though both men were considered quite the catch by ladies in Brynthwaite. No, the only man she wanted to wrap herself around and lose herself with was the one standing in front of her, the one who had just issued an invitation to supper.
“Um—” she floundered, caught between what she wanted almost more than she wanted to breathe, and what felt like the right thing to do. “I don’t—”
“It’s all right if you say no.” Isaac took another hasty step toward her, hands lifted as though to reassure her. “I won’t be heartbroken.” He grinned, but his eyes told another story. They were filled with longing, with fire.
Rose’s blood felt like liquid fire in her veins.
And an entire audience of young men and Miss Bond watched them, waiting.
“Perhaps it’s not—”
“Hurry up and say yes,” Elaine blurted, her tone more than a little exasperated. “I want to pop into the bookshop before we head home, and you know how anxious Papa will be if we take too long.”
“We have other classes to get to,” the dark-haired, clever young man who had instigated Rose’s participation in the lesson said. He tugged on his more serious friend’s sleeve as the taller, handsome boy shuffled toward the door.
The sudden swirl of motion and pressure muddled Rose’s thinking. How was she supposed to formulate a rational refusal with so many people rushing around her?
“I’m not sure if I—” she began, only to have Elaine barge in with, “Of course you can.”
Rose snapped her lips shut and raised her brow at her friend.
“She’ll be there,” Elaine answered Isaac for her, wearing a broad, triumphant smile. “You’ll be there, won’t you, Rose?”
“Well, um, yes, I suppose I will?” Everything happened so fast that Rose couldn’t think of any way to turn down the invitation she’d secretly longed to receive.
Worse still, Isaac burst into a relieved smile. “Excellent.” He nodded. “I will be honored to see you—I mean, dine with you.” His face flushed red, and Rose could only imagine what he was thinking.
“Oh.” Rose blinked, startled that they had settled things so easily. It didn’t feel right. Isaac didn’t know who she was. She should find a way to explain, find a way to give him a chance to change his mind. “On second thought—”
“Hurry, hurry!” Elaine grabbed her arm, tugging her toward the clinic door, which two of the young men were holding open. “We need to visit the bookshop before it closes. Thank you for everything, Dr. Newsome. Have a lovely afternoon.”
Rose felt as though she’d been turned on her head and spun around by the time Elaine dragged her out to the street. The sun seemed a little too bright and her heart far happier than it should be. She wasn’t really sure what had happened, except that she was committed to having supper with Isaac on Friday evening.
“Wasn’t that grand?” Elaine asked, barely able to stand still as they started away from the clinic.
Rose blinked. “We didn’t fetch your father’s medicine.”
“I just knew that something fabulous like this would happen today.” Elaine ignored her, practically skipping as they headed on to the bookshop. Rose was fairly certain she would have danced down the street if given half a chance. “I knew it was just a matter of time before—”
Her words were cut off as the bookshop door opened, and a man stepped out, colliding with her. The paper that he carried fluttered to the ground as he used both hands to catch and steady Elaine after their impact.
“Oh!” Elaine exclaimed, teetering on the edge of balance.
“Careful,” the man said. He waited until Elaine had clearly regained her footing before letting go.
Rose stood by, as startled by the collision as both Elaine and the man appeared to be. The man was the one they had spotted inside of the shop when they’d passed earlier, the tall gentleman with white hair, the mysterious new owner. It was the first time Rose had seen the man up close, and she was intrigued to see the lines of tension in his face, as if he had made it through some hardship. But those lines weren’t nearly as interesting as the way he looked at Elaine. It was as if he were seeing a woman for the first time.
“Dear me,” Elaine said with a carefree laugh. She stepped away from the man and brushed her skirt as though she’d spilled to the ground. “How very clumsy of me. I should have been watching where I was going. It’s just that I’ve recently had some very good news.” She sent a teasing grin Rose’s way.
“I’m glad to hear it,” the man said in a clear tenor. His accent was refined, far more than would be expected from a bookseller in Brynthwaite.
Elaine spotted the piece of paper the man had dropped and bent to scoop it up. “It looks as though you dropped this.”
“Hmm?” The man continued to stare at her.
Elaine peeked at the paper. Her brow went up. “A boat race?”
The man finally dragged his eyes away from Elaine as he took the leaflet from her. “Yes. I was about to post this in my window.”
“A notice of a boat race?” Elaine blinked.
“Yes?”
“Why were you posting it on the outside of the window instead of the inside?”
“I….” The man looked at the leaflet, at the window, then at Elaine. “That’s not the way it’s done?”
Elaine pursed her lips and studied the man with a teasing frown. “Come now, Mr….”
“Wall,” the man answered, a little too quickly. “Basil Wall. My name is Basil Wall.”
Elaine blinked at him. Rose glanced suspiciously between the two. Something wasn’t quite right. But on the other hand, the way Mr. Wall looked at Elaine brought a grin to Rose’s lips. At last, she would be able to tease her friend as much as Elaine teased her about Isaac.
“How is it that, as a shopkeeper, you don’t know the proper way to post a leaflet in your window?” Elaine asked Mr. Wall.
Mr. Wall hesitated. For quite some time. “I haven’t owned a shop for
very long,” he answered.
“You haven’t been in Brynthwaite for very long either,” Elaine said, her eyes narrowed in thought.
“No, I haven’t.”
“But you opened a bookshop here,” Elaine said.
“Yes.”
A pregnant silence followed. Rose had a hard time not giggling at the way the tables had turned. She cleared her throat and boldly said, “Perhaps you should escort Mr. Wall on a walk around the town to get him familiar with his new surroundings.”
Elaine’s eyes widened, and she looked from Rose to Mr. Wall with a smile. “That sounds like an excellent—”
Before she could finish, Mr. Wall turned a distinct shade of pink and dashed back into his bookshop. The door slapped shut behind him.
Rose would have laughed out loud, if she didn’t feel so sorry for the poor man. “He certainly is shy,” she said.
“I should say so,” Elaine agreed. Her smile grew brighter, though, and as they continued down the street, she peeked over her shoulder into the bookshop. “How very curious.”
“Yes, very,” Rose agreed, lips twitching with the urge to laugh.
They continued on for a few more yards before Elaine said, “I wonder what that boat race is all about. Papa says there used to be regattas for prizes on the lake all the time. Wouldn’t it be grand if they revived the practice?”
As they walked, Elaine went on about rowing and races, but Rose wondered if that was simply her way of avoiding discussing the encounter with Mr. Wall. But even that strange meeting couldn’t banish Isaac from her thoughts altogether. She’d just agreed to go out to supper with him. How would she ever get through that?
CHAPTER 3
By Friday, Rose was second-guessing everything.
“You should wear the green,” Elaine advised her, glancing between two of Rose’s nicer dresses and several of Elaine’s that were being offered as suggestions for the big night. “The green will bring out your eyes.”
“I rather like the rose,” Mr. Bond said. He too had joined in the preparations, which was why the dresses had all been brought down to the parlor and draped across various pieces of furniture. “Rose is such a pretty color,” Mr. Bond went on. “Rose for our wild Rose, after all.” He chuckled and winked at Rose.
“I don’t know,” Elaine said, as though the decision were up to her. “I stopped wearing that pink dress years ago, when the shade went out of fashion.”
“Tush and nonsense.” Mr. Bond sniffed at being contradicted and straightened a bit from where he’d been leaning heavily on his cane. At least he’d managed to get out of his chair and walk around the room a bit. Rose was concerned over the way her employer’s energy had been fading since she arrived. What would happen if he had an emergency when she was out enjoying herself with Isaac?
“Perhaps I should just skip this whole thing,” she said with a sigh, fingering the expensive lace on one of Elaine’s dresses.
“Skip it?” Elaine balked, eyes wide. “But you’ve been looking forward to something like this for weeks.”
“I—” There was no point in denying she had fantasized about something happening between her and Isaac Newsome. But she’d counted on it staying a fantasy. “Dr. Newsome doesn’t really know anything about me.” She used her past as an excuse, biting her lip. “He was awfully hasty to invite me out the way he did.”
Mr. Bond snorted. “The two of you have met on several occasions. He’s dealt with you when he’s come to the house as much as he’s dealt with me or Elaine.”
“Yes, but that’s superficial,” Rose said. She let her hand drop from Elaine’s lacy dress and crossed the room to tidy up the remains of Mr. Bond’s luncheon, still waiting to be taken back to the kitchen. She was there in England to work, to care for Mr. Bond, after all. Not to socialize. Not to indulge in fantasies of romance.
“It should definitely be the green,” Elaine decided with a nod, then set about gathering up the other dresses. “Besides, you’re taller and more slender than I am, and we don’t have time to alter any of my dresses to suit.”
“In my day,” Mr. Bond began as Elaine swept out of the room, her arms full of dresses, “men and women barely made each other’s acquaintance before meeting at the altar.”
Rose pursed her lips as she continued tidying up. It was too late to stop Elaine, and Mr. Bond didn’t seem inclined to let her get a word in either.
“Our parents decided who we would marry as often as not,” Mr. Bond went on. “Young people barely had a say in the matter.”
“So you didn’t choose Mrs. Bond for yourself?” Rose asked, carrying the used breakfast tray to the table closest to the hall, leaving it, and returning to help Mr. Bond to his chair.
“Well, it was different for Bessie and I,” he said with an impatient wave of his hand. “We met at a ball in Windermere, and it was love at first sight.”
Rose grinned, lending her employer extra strength as he lowered himself into his chair with a sigh. “And you married right away, did you?”
“No,” Mr. Bond admitted. “At the end of the ball, we were sly and compared our schedules for the coming week. As it happened, we were attending quite a few of the same events.”
“So you did have time to get to know her before rushing to the altar.” Rose met his eyes with a teasing smile.
Mr. Bond hummed instead of answering, then acted as though she hadn’t said anything as he went on. “Bessie was an angel sent from heaven. Our parents weren’t so certain of the match, since my family had come down in the world while hers was on the rise. We exchanged letters secretly for a year. Courting by post, we called it.” His gaze shifted to the large, oval portrait of Elizabeth Bond that hung opposite Mr. Bond’s chair. “For a while there, it looked like her parents would force her to marry a distant cousin from London. But then came the day of the regatta.”
“Are you talking about the boat race?” Elaine said, marching back into the room. Without waiting for an answer, she went on with, “I’m ever so excited about the possibility of a race. I’ve hardly been able to think of anything else since that enigmatic Mr. Wall showed me that leaflet.”
“What boat race are you talking about, my dear?” Mr. Bond asked.
“Why, the one that is set to take place in Brynthwaite next week,” Elaine said. “The one Mr. Wall told us about.”
“And who is Mr. Wall?”
“He’s the mysterious man who opened the new bookshop in town.”
“Oh? So you finally met the new bookseller?”
Rose’s head spun with the lightning-fast change of subjects. She should have been used to the way Elaine and her father rattled through conversation topics as fast as carriages tore through the dangerous intersection in the heart of Brynthwaite, but it still startled her. She took the opportunity to gather up the last of the teacups that had been left in the parlor from breakfast—abandoned in favor of preparations for Rose’s dinner with Isaac—added them to the tray of lunch things, and carried the whole back to the kitchen.
By the time she returned, the discussion was still going strong.
“I’m not sure where he came from,” Elaine was saying. “He has a fine, London accent, though. And he carries himself like a gentleman. But he’s ever so shy.”
“If I were you, I would be cautious of any man who seeks to lure you into a boat, my dear,” Mr. Bond said.
Elaine burst into cheerful laughter as she measured out her father’s midday medicines. “He wasn’t trying to lure me anywhere, Papa. Not like Dr. Newsome was luring our Rose.” Elaine sent a teasing look across the room to where Rose was adjusting the curtains to block the blaze of the afternoon sun.
Just like that, the conversation had swung back around to Rose and her problems, like the Silver Dollar Saloon’s door smacking her in the back when she didn’t move fast enough.
“I’ve made up my mind that I shouldn’t go,” she said over her shoulder, fussing with the curtains longer than she needed to. “You need me here.�
��
“You can’t say that!”
“Bah!”
Elaine and Mr. Bond protested at the same time.
“Dr. Newsome would be heartbroken,” Elaine added, genuine shock making her eyes round.
“I’m certain he would get over it,” Rose said, finally turning away from the curtain to face the others.
“We wouldn’t get over it,” Mr. Bond protested. “I, for one, am living through you now.”
Rose’s heart squeezed with affection and worry in her chest, but before she could find the words to reply, Elaine said, “I would never turn down a gentleman’s offer for a night out.”
Guilt of a whole different kind piled on top of the guilt Rose already felt for wanting Isaac in spite of her duties. It was clear from the way Elaine’s shoulders sagged—and from the way she tried to hide her face from her father—that she would have loved to be asked to dinner by a man. Any man. Even, perhaps, the mysterious Mr. Wall. And it was also apparent from the sad look that came to Mr. Bond’s eyes that he knew he was holding his daughter back from living the normal, happy life of a pretty and vibrant young woman.
With that kind of pressure, Rose was doomed.
“I’ll go,” she said quietly, stepping forward to rest her hand on Mr. Bond’s arm. “I guess I shouldn’t be ungrateful when a man says he wants to treat me to dinner.”
Mr. Bond patted her hand. “Everyone deserves a second chance, my dear. Even if their prior mistakes feel too large to overcome.”
Rose felt her face heat and glanced down. It was the first time Mr. Bond had hinted that he knew every detail of her past. They’d never discussed who she’d been or what she’d done in Haskell, even though Rose had assumed he must know. She snuck a sideways glance at Elaine to see if she was suspicious, but Elaine had moved to the window seat, and glanced out to the front lane as though waiting for a miraculous suitor to wander by.
It hit Rose in that moment that, as cozy and quaint as Ivy Cottage was, it was a cage of sorts. Mr. Bond was trapped by his age and infirmity, Elaine was trapped by her love for her father, and Rose was trapped by the past that still had a hold on her. Well, not all of them had to remain trapped forever.
