Most of his anxiety concerning the presence of this man was that Robert’s goal of finding Rose and convincing her to return home with him was much more likely to be achieved without her father as his lackey. But there was nothing he could do about it now. He couldn’t force the man to stay behind without inflicting a substantial amount of physical pain, and he liked to think himself above such brutality.
Robert refused to stoop to the lower man’s level, picking on someone smaller.
They were almost to Liverpool, having ridden through the night, stopping only to change horses and for nothing more. Robert was cold and hungry and more exhausted than he’d ever been, but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t slow down. He needed to find Rose. Before it was too late.
They made good time, reaching Liverpool when morning was barely beginning to brighten into mid-day, the sun peaking out from behind a splattering of clouds across the sky.
According to the butler, Charles had booked passage on a ship, but going where, no one could say for certain.
It wasn’t even a certainty that they were there at all. The butler was Charles’ and could very well have been paid to send them on this wild goose chase, leading a duke and earl in the opposite of Rose’s actual destination.
Robert could have come all this way and Rose might not even be here.
But that was merely the exhaustion talking. It had to be.
Rose was here.
Because if she wasn’t, well, then, he didn’t know where else he could hope to find her. Where else would she have gone?
She was here. She had to be.
Of course, here was a rather broad location.
The Liverpool docks were… Well, he didn’t know quite how to explain them. They were crowded and large. Very large. They went on for forever. Boats and ships of every kind. Hundreds of them. And there were people everywhere.
It would take all week to search the manifest of every vessel set to depart, so Robert settled for searching faces.
The duo split then, at better odds of successfully completing their futile search as two separate units.
The sun rose and sweat built up on Robert’s brow, trickling down into his vision and making his eyes tear.
He would find her. He would.
A ship’s bell rung out over the crowd, the strikes indicating a last call for boarding. Robert pushed his way toward it.
He pushed himself into a sprint, or as close as he could come to it in the thickening crush of people that seemed to be swallowing him.
He knew he looked mad in the head, but he couldn’t stop himself. A boat was leaving and if Rose was on it and he didn’t stop her then he would never forgive himself.
He had to find her.
He held his breath as his heart seized in anticipation, in anxiety, hope. He craned his neck to see over the crowd as his feet carried him forward.
And then he saw her.
It was just a glimpse, and barely that.
It was her back, her straight shoulders, a bonnet. There were no telltale signs that it was she, but he knew. He knew the way she walked, the way she held herself, the curve of her neck. He had memorized it all. He would have recognized her anywhere, under any circumstance. She was engrained on his soul, branded.
And it stopped him dead in his tracks. People passed in front of him, obscuring his view, but he couldn’t move. She was there, right there. He had found her. Against all odds. It should have been a triumphant moment, a moment of pure joy. But Robert found himself unable to bridge the divide that separated them. Filled wholly with apprehension, he stared at the spot he’d last seen her.
Until she moved.
Her back was still towards him, but as the people between them thinned, he could see her proffering papers to a uniformed man, and watched in horror as she stepped forward to the gang plank.
“Rose!” Her name burst from deep within him, flying out over the crowd like the ring of the bell.
It received immediate response. Ignoring the curious stares of the people surrounding him, and in fact, pushing his way through them once more, he saw Rose stiffen, her head twist over her shoulder just enough for one eye to lock onto his. He was close enough now to see precisely when she turned deliberately forward and set a foot upon the platform.
“Rose!” he yelled again, only this time his voice had lost the panicked quality it had assumed just seconds ago and adopted an authoritarian air.
She did not halt in her progress, and by the time that Robert reached the place where she had been, she had already made it halfway up the plank.
“Rose!” he called after her, pushing against the restraining embrace of the uniformed man blocking his path. “Please! Rose!”
He strained to break through the barrier, when a second man approached and grabbed onto his arm. Robert shoved them both away as he gave up his futile struggle and stepped back, looking up to Rose’s back. Her steps had halted on the plank.
“Rose,” he repeated.
He couldn’t see her face but he knew that she’d closed her eyes. It was instinct. He hardly knew her, but he knew everything about her. And he knew that, in that moment, she had closed her eyes.
Did that not reaffirm that they were meant to be together?
It wasn’t merely by chance that someone came to know another person like this.
Their fates had been entwined.
His father’s gambling, their fathers’ trade, their own meeting upon that path, it was all leading up to what neither of them ever could have expected. Clearly she wasn’t prepared for it, wasn’t prepared for the intensity that was their love.
But this was fate, and she couldn’t run from it.
He had found her, against every odd set against his favor. If that wasn’t an indication of fate, that she was meant to stay, what was?
He needed to tell her that.
She turned, and Robert opened his mouth to speak, but the strained look in her eyes set him back a step and wouldn’t let the words form.
“Don’t do this, Robert.” Her voice did not beg or plead. It was resigned, like that of a weary traveler in need of a nap. It wasn’t a question or a command. It simply was.
Robert was beyond noticing the desperate pleading in the tenor of his own voice as he said, “You don’t do this. Don’t go, Rose.”
She hesitated, her eyes flicking from him to the boat she was boarding.
Rose hesitated, and it looked as though she might say something, might change her mind, but a barked order from below her set her mind back in place. In the wrong place. “On or off, miss. You’re holding up the line.”
“Rose. Please.”
Something in his tone or demeanor must have changed her mind because she finally turned entirely and edged her way around the few behind her, back down to the dock.
“Oh, thank God,” Robert muttered, taking her into his arms just as soon as she was within reach. “Thank God, you didn’t go. I cannot even fathom—”
Rose cut him off by pulling away. She shook her head as if to remove unpleasant thoughts, her expression almost pained as she did so. When she opened her eyes, Robert could see that she was trying to hide the emotions hidden within. For once, she was failing. “I am not staying. But you’re here now, and I suppose you deserve the truth.”
“The truth?” Robert couldn’t wrap his mind around the words.
“The truth,” Rose confirmed.
People bumped into them as they scurried to the boarding vessel, but neither seemed to notice nor mind.
“I lied to you before. I do not have three sisters. I have four.” She looked back up to the boat, to where a young woman, with hair the color of gold, stood along the edge, clinging to a servant girl. “Her name is Jackie and she is my twin, my other half, but she is not well and she never has been.”
“I—” Robert cut himself off, unsure as to what to say, but it was clear that he must say something by the expectant look in Rose’s eyes. And if Rose ever showed emotion, it was purposeful
. She needed him to speak. But what did she need him to say? “I don’t understand,” he finished, shaking his head slightly.
“I’ve been caring for her the last two weeks, instead of attending to you,” she said, and, if you had asked, Robert would have been inclined to tell you that the words sounded a bit bitter to his ears. Though, he didn’t believe for a moment the bitterness was aimed at her sister—but at him.
“My parents were going to send her away so that I never see her again, and I couldn’t let that happen. Leaving is the only way to protect her now.”
Robert held silent, the roar of the water and wind and commotion happening around him reduced to a dull vibration as he absorbed the words.
“No. Stay. I will protect you. Both of you,” Robert finally implored, and he meant it. Every word.
Looking up, he could see that Jackie was not quite right. Her eyes were spaced unnaturally distant from each other and, behind her thick spectacles, they looked rather aloof, cut off from reality. But that was of no matter. As Rose had said, she was a part of her, and Robert loved every part of her.
“You can’t,” Rose answered him, a small, self-deprecating smile playing out on her lips.
“I can. I am a duke. I can do whatever I want.”
Rose shook her head again, it bobbing back and forth. “You can’t. I must go.”
Which was completely absurd. Here he was not only happily willing to marry her but also offering to care for her sister, and she was turning him down? Still willing to leave?
It was more than absurd. It was insane.
As she turned to leave, he grabbed her arm, none to gently, and he pulled her back. “I will not let you go,” he ground out between clenched teeth, his hold on her far too tight but he was far past caring.
He could not let her board that boat or he would never see her again, and he would never forgive himself.
Chapter 28
“Let me go!” Rose shrieked, her voice splintering across the crowded dock. This was, after all, the third recitation of the phrase which had no effect whatsoever in the somber tones she was used to speaking in.
“No,” Robert answered. His voice wasn’t so much callous as it was hard, defiant. She’d hurt him and he was trying to cover it up. She understood the feeling well. She also understood that she needed to get on that boat. The bell had already rung for final boarding; she was about to miss her chance to leave.
“I’m not your problem!” she hissed.
“You cannot simply run away from your life, Rose!”
“I’m not running away.” But, she was. She merely wasn’t willing to admit it.
As if reading her thoughts, he asked, “And what do you call this? You’re running off to America with no intention of returning.”
“I’m not running away,” Rose muttered, feeling every bit the child she was never allowed to be. Then, making unsettling eye contact once more, she continued with “I’m not your wife. I may do as I wish, and you cannot make me stay.”
“Rose.” The pain in the word nearly undid her, nearly buckled her knees and threw her body into his arms. Luckily, she had more sensibility than that. She hadn’t swooned a day in her life. Well, maybe one day, then.
Robert shook his head when she braced her stare to that of cool detachment. He shook his head and laughed. Not a joyful laugh when one finds something humorous, but one of those I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening, self-deprecating laughs. Then the laughter subsided and was replaced by his serious gaze directly on hers, and Rose didn’t feel quite as in control as she had a moment ago.
Her eyes flicked to the ship to her right. She needed to be on it. Now.
“You cannot run away from it forever, Rose. Your life follows you wherever you go. Your father will follow you. I will follow you,” he promised.
Her father wouldn’t and she knew it. She didn’t know how—it was one of those things that a person just knows—but she knew that her father would not follow her to America.
And neither would Robert. She just knew.
With pity in her eyes, she prepared to give him the bad news, that nothing he could say could make her stay.
Then he said the words that could.
“I love you, Rose,” Robert said, taking her hands into his. “I love you like I love no other. I love you like I’ve never loved any other.” With each declaration his voice grew more and more hoarse. “I never imagined that I could love like this, that I would. I love you with all my heart and my soul and everything that I am. I will give you the world if I must, but don’t make me. Don’t leave me. I need you. You are the sun and the rain and the air I breathe, and without you I die.”
With an obvious welling of tears in his eyes, he finished, “Don’t leave me.”
The thing was, that Rose wanted to stay. Robert was hurting, and his pain hurt her more than she ever could have imagined it would. She had been hurting for the last day knowing what she was doing to him, but nothing compared to seeing it in his eyes. That made it all triple.
Rose didn’t want to go. She wanted to wrap Robert in her arms and promise to stay. With every fiber of her being she wanted to do just that. Every fiber, save one.
One tiny splice of her consciousness held onto the facts. Rose couldn’t stay because Jackie couldn’t. As long as Jackie was within their parents’ reach, she would not be safe. Rose would live her life looking over her shoulder, waiting for the shoe to drop, for her parents to attack. Jackie had been relatively safe from Lord and Lady Blythe for most of her life, but now they were determined have her be gone for good, determined to take the so-called smudge on the family seal and wipe it clean.
Jackie could not stay, and so neither could Rose.
It was not that love did not have a place in this situation—it was that love’s place was already aboard the ship.
*****
“On or off, miss?” came in clipped tones from just feet away.
Robert looked up from Rose’s eyes to find the line of passengers waiting to board had all but disappeared. The only people that remained were waving handkerchiefs, bidding farewells and safe journeys.
He focused back on Rose. She was staring up at him with a wide-eyed, apprehensive look, like she knew what she must do and what she wanted to do and couldn’t decide which decision to make. He stood there hoping that the one she chose coincided with what he wished she would do.
Robert let go of her hands, giving her the opportunity to choose for herself.
He could drag her back to a life she didn’t want. It could be easily done. But she needed to make this decision for herself. If she didn’t, she would never forgive him for making it for her. Making it for her would turn him into her father, and that, he did not want to be.
Robert wanted Rose, more than anything else. He loved her unlike anything he had ever imagined, and with that, finally came understanding.
Love was selfish. He wanted her, but he also wanted her to want him back.
Beyond that, he found that love could also be selfless.
As much as it pained him, Rose deserved everything she ever wanted. It was clear she wanted him. It was also clear that she wanted to leave. She wanted to take her sister as far away as she could, to protect her. She was trying to do what she believed was best. He understood that. If it was his sister, if he was in Rose’s shoes, he would do the same as she.
It wasn’t a competition that Robert could win. He could win her heart, but when it came between him and her sisters, he would always lose.
He loved her all the more for it. Even as he wouldn’t admit it amidst the pain.
That was what true love was. It was caring about a person so fully that you were willing to let them break your heart so they could love another.
He hadn’t realized it before. He hadn’t realized it the night before or even that morning. He couldn’t have understood, not until he was standing in front of her, the truth laid out between them, she on the platform, preparing to board a ship bound for forei
gn lands, and he on dry land.
He understood it now.
True love was loving someone else more than you could ever love yourself, putting that person’s hopes, dreams, wishes above your own. Enduring grueling pain so that they could find happiness.
Oh, he could follow her, broker passage and journey to America by her side. But he couldn’t. He had responsibilities here, a life, family. He could forsake it all and, for her, he would, but she needed to do this, and she wanted to do it alone. This was her choice to make.
And so, he would let her go. If that was what she chose, he would let her turn her back on him and walk away. It would kill him, his life would be meaningless without her, but he could find solace in knowing that she would have her sister, that she would be loved.
It would be far easier than forcing her to stay, to marry him.
Rose had thought this through and had come to the conclusion that she couldn’t stay, that Lord and Lady Blythe wouldn’t allow Jackie to remain on English soil and certainly not in Robert’s care. Rose had thought it all out and decided that staying wasn’t an option. If he forced her to and she lost Jackie, she would never forgive him and she would never be happy. And the guilt of positioning her in what she perceived to be a gilded cage would weigh him down until he finally succumbed to the pressure and dropped down dead.
If she wanted to leave, then he would let her.
And she did.
“I’m sorry,” her lips softly said, almost too quiet to hear as she turned her back on him. Rose’s shoulders sagged for barely a second before she pulled them straight and set one foot upon the platform. And then another. And before Robert knew it, she was boarded and gone from sight.
Robert gasped, unable to find air to fill his lungs. He might as well have jumped into the dark water because, the way he felt, he might as well have been drowning.
She had actually left.
Rose had left him.
He really should have expected it. He should have known that would have been her ultimate choice—he did know—but he still was not at all prepared for it.
Rose by Another Name (The Blythe Series Book 1) Page 30
