Rose of Ebony

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  It was even more of a relief to move through the big stone arch, and over to the waiting carriages. It put the other world behind her. The chitter of larks seemed natural and right once more. The clop of horses and whizz of carriage wheels on Brompton Road pulled her attention back to the normal day.

  Raymond straightened and seemed to grow even taller. He glanced at her. “I do apologize for not conversing. It didn’t seem right, to chat about the living, in there.”

  Natasha let out her breath. “Yes, exactly,” she admitted. “You were…visiting Rose?” She surreptitiously wiped her cheeks dry, then lifted the veil up and pinned it to the back of her bonnet.

  Raymond’s dark-eyed gaze slid away from her. “It will be a year in August. I felt it would be…delinquent to only visit on the anniversary, as if I had been neglecting her, I suppose.” He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “I thought if I went sooner than that, then it would demonstrate I was not…a bad man.”

  His confession, so awkwardly admitted, let something inside her relax. “I wish I had thought of that,” she said candidly. “I feel guilty because it has been a year since I last was here. I mean, I miss Seth. Dreadfully. Yet the days keep rolling past, faster and faster and then, suddenly, a year has gone by.” It didn’t seem wrong to speak of it to Raymond. He was Elisa’s oldest son, a part of the greater family. He had seen Natasha romping on the croquet court. He had lost his wife, too. And he had known Seth.

  Raymond drew in a breath that made his chest lift. “I know exactly what you mean,” he said quietly. He glanced at the two carriages. “This might seem…odd, but may I send your carriage away and take you home in mine? I would like to talk.”

  “It doesn’t seem odd at all,” Natasha admitted. “Besides,” she added. “We’re family. Inside the family--”

  “—we do as we please.” He smiled. It was a small expression. “I’ll talk to your driver. Stay right there.”

  He strode down the petunia-lined path, his long boots gleaming as he moved. He stopped at Barny’s side and spoke to him. Raymond was tall enough that he didn’t have to strain to speak to him as Natasha would have. He merely raised his chin.

  Barny tugged at his bowler brim, picked up the whip and tapped the back of the horses. The carriage moved off, sliding past Raymond’s smart cabriolet. Raymond’s driver soothed the grey with murmurs and clicks of his tongue.

  Raymond opened the little door for her and held out his hand. Natasha gripped her crinolines with her right and took his hand with her left, and stepped up into the carriage. She made sure to sit as far to the left as she could, so that Raymond would have room on the seat. She tucked the folds of grey and green plaid underneath her hip to make more room. These little cabriolets that the younger men favoured did not have the space of a full coach and four.

  Raymond stepped up into the carriage, his weight making it dip to one side, the springs compressing. He paused, looking at the bench. She had managed to take up only just over half of it with her skirts. She held them aside. “Twenty yards of plaid and linen. In my first season a dress with that much yardage would have been considered extravagant. Now, it is barely enough if one wants to be considered fashionable.”

  Raymond settled on the seat next to her and knocked on the roof. The grey stepped smartly forward, without jarring the carriage into motion. “Nevertheless, you have managed to leave me more than enough room. If my hips really are as wide as the bench you’ve supplied, I am badly in need of exercise.”

  Natasha could feel a smile pulling at her mouth. “I would advise filling in more dance cards, then. Three waltzes, back to back, will quickly reduce your waistline.”

  “And my wind,” Raymond replied dryly. “Is that why you dance so often?”

  “I like dancing,” Natasha admitted. “I always have. I met Seth at the Sweet Pea Ball…” She bit her lip.

  Raymond looked at her, his brow lifting just a little. “Why do you stop?”

  “I suppose…” She looked at her gloved hands, the chain of her reticule wrapped around the satin.

  “We’re family, remember?” Raymond said quietly. “Even though we’re not related, we’re closer than kin. You can speak your mind.” His mouth lifted a little. “That will leave me free to speak mine, too.”

  Natasha hesitated, then plunged. “I shouldn’t care to dance, anymore, but I do. I shouldn’t care to do a great many things, now that Seth has gone. I should care for nothing, I’m told. But I…still do.” She let out a shaky breath.

  Raymond nodded. “You’re still young. Of course you still care about things.”

  She laughed. It was a weak sound. But it was so odd hearing one of the children of the family dispense advice and opinions to one of the adults. “I’m not young by any definition, Raymond. I am your mother’s friend. I watched you grow up.”

  “I am thirty-three,” Raymond said, his voice low. “I won’t presume to guess how old you are, Natasha, but I know you are not that much older than me. You are my mother’s friend, yes, but friendship crosses all barriers and years.”

  Natasha fell silent, confused by the strange tightness in her chest and the uncomfortable sensations it was creating. It was true. She was only seven years older than him. How had she not noticed that before? Was it because she had always separated the family into two distinct strata? The adults and the children, and never the twain shall meet? Or had it been because Seth had been thirteen years older than her, and she had elevated her perspective to match his?

  “It is because of the closeness of our ages that I feel safe telling you what I am about to say,” Raymond added.

  Natasha rested her hand on his wrist, for a brief moment. “Are you about to tell me you didn’t love Rose? I can save you the agony of confession, Raymond. It is a secret only to very few of the family anymore.”

  Raymond hesitated. “I have never hid that the marriage was purely one of duty to me,” he said evenly. “My father’s family insisted. I could put it off no longer. I complied. The Devlin family have their heir. I have done my duty.” He shrugged.

  The harshness of his voice, the inflexibility of his jaw, surprised her. The depth of his feelings were also shocking. “You are angry,” she said. “I’m sorry, that was not my intention, to make you angry.”

  He shook his head, frowning. “I am not angry at you. If I am angry at all, it is at myself, for…oh, all manner of things. I didn’t love Rose. It has been nearly a year, and yet this morning, I still looked up expecting to see her sitting at the other end of the breakfast table, buttering her toast.” His gloved hand curled into a hard fist. “Why do I keep doing that?” He ground out the question, pain in his voice.

  “You may not have loved her in the way you think you ought to have, but there was affection there, Raymond. Respect, at the very least, or you would not have made an heir. You are not the sort to…to…” Natasha took a deep breath. “You are not the sort of man to bed a woman with whom you have no relationship whatsoever. I do not believe that is in your nature. So you cared for Rose on some level, and you lived with her for five years--”

  “Four,” he corrected softly.

  “It was long enough for the relationship to leave its mark on your heart, Raymond.”

  “Then why do I feel guilty all the time?” he asked flatly. “I feel guilty for not loving her enough, for not giving her all the affection I could. If I had known she would live so few years, I would have…” He shook his head.

  Natasha jumped. Guilt. Yes, that was it. That was the ache in the middle of her chest. “I don’t think it matters what the type or quality the relationship may have been,” she said slowly. “What matters is that they have gone and we remain and we feel guilty for that.”

  Raymond considered her, his gaze steady. The pain in his eyes faded. “Yes,” he said. “That’s it, exactly.” He sat back in the corner, almost relaxing into it. “We are a wretched pair, are we not?”

  The air of free confession still lingered, which allowed
Natasha to say, “I do not feel as wretched as I should, knowing that someone else feels as I do.”

  Raymond didn’t move or speak for a long moment. The carriage rounded the long curve into Knightsbridge. The tall trees of Hyde Park were visible over the buildings lining the wide road. They would be in Mayfair soon enough.

  “My marriage was doomed from the start,” Raymond said. “I knew that, but I married her anyway.” His gaze shifted from Natasha’s. “I loved someone else. I think I have loved her forever.”

  Natasha nodded.

  “You knew?” he asked, shock making his voice rise.

  “Not for certain, but everyone has wondered for years if there was a woman you could not speak of. You never seemed to get into mischief the way Benjamin does, or that other single men are supposed to.” Natasha hesitated, then threw caution away. This frankness was helping ease aches and torments that had lived in her for a long time. It must surely be helping Raymond, too. “Did she…is the woman you love still unavailable, Raymond? I mean, you are a widower. It has been nearly a year. You are free to pursue whomever you wish, now.”

  “If the woman would have me,” Raymond said in agreement. “Her name is Susanna.”

  Natasha cast about quickly, names of friends and relatives, the peerage of England and Scotland and Ireland running through her head. She didn’t know a Susanna. “Is she…a commoner? Is that why you’ve never spoken of her before?”

  He weighed his answer. Then he shook his head. “I can say no more. It would not be fair to her. It may even compromise her position.”

  The woman he loved, this Susanna, was married. Perhaps even happily married. Natasha could read between the lines as well as any other society matron navigating the twin shoals of finding a good match for her daughters, and warding off inappropriate matches for her sons. Marriages arranged with an eye toward securing titles and lands, with no regard for love and affection, were not unusual, alas. But society still maintained the pretense that every marriage was a love match. Raymond’s Susanna, if she was of the peerage, may have been forced to such a match by family pressure, just as Raymond had been forced to his…

  Raymond must have lingered for years, saying nothing, perhaps waiting for Susanna, who was then wed to another. After that, he had refused to consider anyone else, until his father’s family had insisted upon an heir, at which point, Raymond had acquiesced and married Rose.

  Natasha studied him, seeing him in this new light. He had always been a silent, introspective man. Now she knew why. “I’m glad you told me this much,” she said impulsively.

  Raymond lifted his hand, in a small gesture of caution. “I should not have spoken at all,” he said. “I only wanted you to know that I understand. You loved Seth very much. I saw it when he was alive and I know how you feel now, because I, too, can’t be with the one I love.”

  Her heart shifted. “Oh, Raymond…”

  “In the last year,” he went on, “I have learned that speaking your mind, that saying what is truly in your heart to a sympathetic listener, can ease the load.”

  “You have done that for me, this morning,” Natasha admitted. “I was utterly miserable, until we spoke.”

  His mouth turned up at the corners. Warm lit his eyes. “I am glad of that,” he said softly. He glanced over her shoulder. “Piccadilly. We’ll be there in a moment or two.” He sat up again and spoke of general things—the upcoming Henley Regatta of which he was a marshal this year, which was considered a great honour; of the racing at Ascot; and of family things, such as Annalies’ daughter, Sadie, and her latest ambition to join a circus when she grew up. It was delightful chatter, filled with people they had in common, which were many. Natasha felt relaxed and very nearly happy when the cabriolet eased to a stop outside the townhouse on Park Lane.

  Raymond stepped onto the pavement and turned to hand her out of the carriage.

  Natasha gripped his hand a little longer than was strictly necessary. “Thank you, Raymond. You truly have eased my heart a little.”

  His fingers pressed hers, then he let her hand go and stepped back, as was proper. “I, too, am glad we spoke.” His eyes met hers.

  Natasha dropped her gaze, aware of passers-by observing them. “I would ask you in, but there is no one at home. And besides,” she added hurriedly, “I have to take tea this afternoon at the London Orphans Society. There is a perfectly dreadful woman from Scotland who is to lecture us on how to raise money.”

  Raymond smiled. “Did your Orphans Society not raise nearly ten thousand pounds last year?” he asked curiously.

  “Yes!” Natasha said heatedly. “Yet now we are to be told we are not doing it properly.”

  “The cheek of her!” Raymond said. But his shoulders were shaking. He was laughing, and hiding it.

  Natasha realized how shrill and silly she sounded and smiled, too. “I was thinking I may send a letter to your mother and insist she invited me for afternoon tea before I received the invitation from the Society. Then I would simply have to decline the later invitation.”

  Raymond gave her a short bow. “Far be it for me to get in the way of social machinations. Good day, Lady Innesford.”

  “Lord Marblethorpe.” She picked up her hems. Corcoran was already standing at the door, waiting for her to enter. She slipped inside and heard the cabriolet roll away from the door as Corcoran closed it.

  “Was that Viscount Marblethorpe, my lady?” he asked.

  “It was,” Natasha said as she took off the veil and bonnet and dropped the hat pin inside. She handed it over to her maid, Mulloy, along with her gloves and the light shawl that was all that was needed in June. “Raymond was at the cemetery, too.”

  “Visiting his poor wife,” Corcoran guessed. “Such a tragedy. Lunch will be ready in the dining room at the hour, my lady.”

  She glanced at the grandfather clock ticking heavily in the corner of the front hall. Noon was barely fifty minutes away. “I need to send a letter to Lady Farleigh, Corcoran. Can Kip run the letter over to Grosvenor Square for me?”

  “Certainly, my lady. I’ll stir the lad up from the kitchen for you.”

  “Mulloy, would you set out my afternoon dress? I’ll be up as soon as I’ve written the letter.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Mulloy curtsied and hurried upstairs with Natasha’s things.

  Natasha went through to the library, where her desk was located. It had been Seth’s desk, of course. Now it was hers. It would be Cian’s soon enough. He could claim his full inheritance this very day if he chose to. It was his by right. He was as reluctant, though, to take up his father’s mantle as Natasha had been for him to do so.

  She had resisted using the desk. Usually, she used the lap secretary, even going so far as to sit at the dining table instead of here.

  Now she sat down and pulled out stationery from the central drawer and barely thought of the fact that Seth used to sit here, swearing over pilfering fingers and cargoes that were short, rotting or spoiled from sea water, or that reliable staff for Harrow Hall in Ireland were so difficult to find from his desk in London. He would grumble, but stay in London for the Season to make friends of the right people, just so their children would have the best opportunities when they came of age.

  She rested her hand on the leather inlay for a moment and realized she was smiling. Seth would have been just as happy as her to wriggle out of an unpleasant social engagement as she was doing now.

  Still smiling, she wrote her letter to Elisa. The afternoon suddenly seemed brighter.

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  About the Author

  Tracy Cooper-Posey is a #1 Best Selling Author. She writes romantic suspense, historical, paranormal and science fiction romance. She has published over 100 novels since 1999, been nominated for five CAPAs including Favourite Author, and won the Emma Darcy Award.

  She turned to indie publishing in 2011. Her indie titles have been nominated four times for Book Of The Year. Tracy won the award in 2012, and a SFR Galaxy Award in 2016 for “Most Intriguing Philosophical/Social Science Questions in Galaxybuilding” She has been a national magazine editor and for a decade she taught romance writing at MacEwan University.

  She is addicted to Irish Breakfast tea and chocolate, sometimes taken together. In her spare time she enjoys history, Sherlock Holmes, science fiction and ignoring her treadmill. An Australian Canadian, she lives in Edmonton, Canada with her husband, a former professional wrestler, where she moved in 1996 after meeting him on-line.

  Other books by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  For reviews, excerpts, and more about each title, visit Tracy’s site and click on the cover you are interested in: http://tracycooperposey.com/books-by-thumbnail/

  Scandalous Scions

  (Historical Romance Series – Spin off)