by Kelly Bowen
“What are you doing?” she asked, distracted.
“Going for a swim,” replied Clara. Her dress puddled at her feet, and she stepped neatly over it.
“What?” Rose’s eyes darted down the beach and along the edge of the cliffs, but they were, mercifully, deserted. “Have you lost your mind?” Clara did not do impulsive, rash things like this. Clara could be counted on for her calm and decorum at all times.
Clara had undone her stays and was now standing in the sunshine clad only in her chemise. “Not at all.”
“You can’t swim,” Rose wheezed.
“But you can. You’ll save me if I need saving.” She flashed Rose a grin and then yanked her chemise over her head.
“Dammit, Clara,” Rose mumbled as she yanked at the ties of her own dress. Her sister was already picking her way over the stones toward the water’s edge. Naked.
Clara stopped as the surf splashed against her pale legs. “It’s freezing,” she reported over her shoulder and waded in deeper.
Rose tossed her own clothes aside and stumbled after her sister, who was standing in the water up to her waist now. Because of the cove, the surf was gentle here, devoid of dangerous undertows, but that did not mean that Rose did not have a healthy respect for the power of the sea.
A slow-moving wave crested and broke over Clara’s shoulders, and her sister suddenly laughed like a lunatic. Rose struggled forward through the water, taking too long to close the gap. Another wave crested, and Clara ducked under, coming up spluttering and giggling. Rose dove into the wave, surfacing smoothly beside her sister.
“What the hell are you doing?” she gasped, wiping the water from her face.
“Swimming.”
She grasped Clara’s hand and pulled her toward the beach. “Let’s go back.”
“Not yet.”
“You’ll sink.”
“I’m not going any deeper than this.”
“Someone might see us.” Maybe that would snap Clara out of this insanity.
“So?”
Rose stared at Clara. “Who are you and what have you done with my sister?”
“Why haven’t I done this sooner?” Clara giggled, ducking as another wave broke over them.
Rose tightened her hand on Clara’s. “Because you might drown?” she suggested when they came up.
“I’m not going to drown. You’re right beside me.” Clara sighed. “Perhaps I’ll get you to teach me to swim. It feels glorious, does it not?”
Rose raised her face to the sun as the water caressed her skin. “Yes,” she admitted.
“Though perhaps it is a bit chilly.”
“Your lips have gone blue,” Rose confirmed.
“Let’s go warm up.”
“You don’t have to ask me twice.”
A few minutes later they sat side by side on the beach, clad only in their chemises, their hair dripping down their backs, letting the sun warm their skin.
“Why did you do that?” Rose asked presently. Because Clara didn’t do anything without a reason.
“Swim naked?”
“Yes.”
“Because it’s good to shock yourself from time to time, I think. Do something that you scares you once in a while.” She paused. “Why did you tell Rivers you didn’t love him?”
Rose felt her something deep in her chest twist painfully. She should have known Clara would come back to this. She drew her legs up and rested her chin on her knees. “You know why,” she mumbled.
“I want to hear it from you.”
“Because I can’t ever be his countess.”
“I don’t think Eli Dawes was asking you to be his countess. I think he was asking you to be his wife.”
“They are one and the same.”
“I don’t think so, Rose.”
“He asked me to dinner. At the home of the Duke and Duchess of Stannis,” Rose said bleakly. “And I couldn’t even give him that.”
“Did you tell him why? The truth?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because the why makes no difference.”
“Perhaps he should be allowed to decide that?” Clara asked gently.
Rose closed her eyes briefly in helpless frustration. “He is angry with me.”
“Funny,” Clara remarked. “Because I remember, not so long ago, you were angry with him. You were angry with him for years, in fact.”
“That’s because I didn’t know that—” Rose stopped abruptly.
“Exactly,” Clara said. “Whatever it was, you didn’t know. And now you’ve put him in the same position.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Would you have pulled me to safety if I had found myself in over my head just now?” Clara asked suddenly. “Out of my element in the sea?”
“Don’t be obtuse. Of course I would have.” Rose scowled at the seemingly random, inane question.
“Why?”
“Because you’re my sister and I love you.”
“Do you love Eli Dawes enough to believe that he would do the same for you?”
I would have been right beside you to pull you back.
Eli’s last words echoed through her, making her insides tilt and her chest ache.
“Regret is a far worse fate than fear,” Clara said quietly. “It will last a lifetime. If you truly love your earl, you owe him the chance to prove that he is the man you believe him to be.” She found Rose’s icy fingers with her warm ones. “The Duke and Duchess of Stannis are hosting a ball in Rivers’s honor in two days’ time.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because Tabby and Theo are invited. So are you.” Clara squeezed her fingers. “And you should go.”
“I can’t.” It was immediate.
“What do you have to lose?” Clara asked.
“I couldn’t even get out of the carriage when he took me to dinner,” Rose said brokenly. “In my head, I knew it was stupid and irrational, but I froze.” She tried to pull her hand away from her sister’s, but Clara held fast.
“Tell me what happens if you freeze at that ball,” Clara said with an infuriating calm.
“You mean, what happens if I’m not branded a madwoman? Or hysterical? Because people have been committed to Bedlam for less.”
“Will he run?”
“What?”
“Will the Eli Dawes you fell in love with run? Turn away from you?”
I would have been right beside you to pull you back.
Rose drew back, swallowing hard. “I’ll humiliate him,” she whispered.
“More than you did when you lied to him and told him that you didn’t love him?”
“I had no choice.”
“You had every choice. You still do. There is nothing perfect about true love, Rose, and I say this from experience. It will be messy and terrifying and hard. It will make you do things that you never thought you’d do.”
Rose stared down at their interlocked fingers.
“Let him love you, Rose. Let him in.”
There was a tiny kernel of…something stirring deep within her, and it took her a moment to identify what it was. Hope. Fragile and tenuous, but it was still there.
“What if I can’t?” Rose whispered.
Clara gazed at her. “What if you can?”
* * *
The Duke of Holloway caught them in the hall.
He stopped abruptly, almost sliding on the polished marble as he stared at them. His eyes went from their damp, tousled hair to the crumpled stays each held in her hands. “What the hell happened?” he demanded, looking as though he couldn’t decide whether to be incredulous or worried.
“August,” Clara breathed before she launched herself into his arms.
The duke caught her and kissed his wife with such searing passion that Rose blushed and looked away.
“Why are you half-dressed?” he asked after a moment, drawing back to examine Clara. “And why is your hair wet? And where are your students?”
“The students are with Theo and Tabby,” Clara told him, her arms still wrapped around his neck. “And I was swimming.”
“In the ocean?”
“No, in the fountains.” She made a face. “Of course in the ocean.”
“You don’t swim.” His dark brows had lowered like thunderclouds.
“Today I did. I don’t know why I haven’t done it before now.”
“You could have drowned.”
Clara released him and gave Rose a piercing look with dark eyes so like her own. “I was perfectly safe. Rose was with me.”
The duke transferred his attention to Rose. “Good afternoon, Rose,” he said belatedly. “And my thanks, it seems, for saving your sister from herself.”
“I think I was only returning the favor,” Rose murmured. The hope that had germinated down on the beach had grown, spreading tiny, tentative roots. The easy thing is rarely the right thing, she had told Eli. Perhaps it was past time for her to heed her own words.
Clara smiled softly, and Rose nodded. Holloway looked back and forth between them, but no further explanation would be forthcoming.
He turned his attention to his wife. “When will your students be back?”
“Not for hours. It’s why I didn’t bother with these.” Clara held up her stays. “I was planning on changing.”
Without warning Holloway swept his wife into his arms, ignoring Clara’s startled gasp. “Just as well,” he growled. “It will save me some time.” He started up the stairs, only to stop halfway up. “I almost forgot. Lord Rivers sent something along for you, Rose,” he said over his shoulder. “I had it put in your rooms.”
* * *
Rose knew what it was before she pulled the thick protective fabric away from the canvas with shaking hands.
She stumbled back and sank down on the edge of the bed. In front of her, the beautiful blond woman still gazed into her mirror, alone and silent.
“Oh, Eli,” she whispered. “What have you done?”
There had been a satinwood box delivered with the painting and left on the end of her bed. It wasn’t large, perhaps something that had once been used as a tea caddy. Rose reached for it and pulled it onto her lap, opening the inlaid top. Inside lay a bundle of letters, clearly written over a long period. Some were travel stained, frayed and torn along the edges, and some were still crisp and unmarred, but all were clearly addressed to her. On top of the bound bundle lay a single folded sheet of paper. Rose lifted it out of the box and opened it, Eli’s neat cursive blurring as her eyes stung.
You once asked me why, in all the time I was away, I never wrote to the woman I loved. I did, though it seems it has taken me longer than it ever should have to post these letters. Just as it has taken me longer than it should have to truly understand what I once possessed.
Rose sniffed, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.
I will never ask you for anything you can’t give. But know that I have loved you from the moment I saw you and I will love you until my last. My love for you is a great love that will forever eclipse all earthly vanities.
Rose set the paper aside and clutched the bundle of Eli’s letters to her chest. Her eyes found those of the woman who gazed back at her in the mirror, eternally searching for her love, and Rose knew deep in her heart that her own search was over. And the proof of it lay not in the priceless masterpiece that sat before her but in the collection of battered, dusty papers she held in her hands.
And knowing, in that moment, what she needed to do.
Chapter 22
Eli used to love balls.
Any sort of extravagant entertainment, really, where the music was excellent, the food superb, and the spirits plentiful. This display of lavish excess would have, at one time, delighted him. The orchestra was expansive and talented, the tables positively sagged under the weight of all manner of delectable offerings, and footmen appeared and disappeared like wraiths, making sure one’s glass was never empty. The fact that all of it was in his honor would have once made him positively giddy.
He was certainly grateful. Appreciative of the time and the expense that Stannis had gone to on his behalf. But time had changed his perspective, and he found himself trying and failing to keep a low profile in the crush. A ball held in honor of a dead man was a novelty. A ball held in honor of a man who had risked his own life, suffering dire injury to save the son of a duke, was an even a bigger draw.
Somehow, Eli’s appearance had become a badge of honor and bravery. His ruined face belied not a monster to be eschewed but a hero to be embraced, and the irony of that was not lost on him. The charming rogue everyone had once adored had returned, now a triumphant conqueror, tested and proven. And Eli had been subsequently and enthusiastically swallowed back into the glittering world as though he had never left.
The guest list had been exhaustive and there had been no shortage of men who had wanted to talk about the wars. Most he found he already knew, others he was introduced to. He accepted condolences on his father’s death. Danced with daughters and debutantes under the cynical gaze of marriage-minded mamas delighted with his newly acquired fame and, even more, his newly acquired title and fortune. He’d fielded subtle and not-so-subtle questions about his delay in returning to England. As the hours had dragged on, he answered what he wished to and ignored the queries he didn’t.
And tried not to think about the fact that the only person he really cared to see was missing.
He knew Holloway would have kept his word and delivered the painting and the letters to Rose. But she had sent nothing back by post. Not a word. He’d thought that giving her a modicum of privacy, a small measure of time and space, would be best, but as of tomorrow, he would be on his way back to Avondale and damn whatever consequences that might bring.
Eli placed his empty glass on the tray of a passing footman and headed toward the tall terrace doors that had been pushed open at the end of the ballroom. He couldn’t leave, but he could escape, if only for a few minutes. The dark night air beckoned him forward, offering him respite from the stuffy ballroom and the tiring if well-meaning masses.
He had reached a row of potted orange trees that had been placed by the doors, checking his surroundings surreptitiously to make no one had followed him, when a haunting sense of recognition froze him in his tracks. A young woman with raven hair and wearing a pale-green dress sat against the wall on the other side of the spindly trees, a wistful smile on her face as her fingers tapped against her knee in time to the music. She was alone, as far as Eli could tell, with nothing save the abandoned crutch that leaned against her chair for company.
Abruptly, without considering what he was doing, Eli altered his course until he was standing directly in front of her.
“Good evening, Lady Ophelia,” he said.
The young woman started, emerald-green eyes ringed with sooty lashes widening as she gazed up at him.
“Lord Rivers,” she managed smoothly, as if strange, battle-scarred earls addressed her without warning every day.
“Good, you know who I am,” he said easily. “I suppose that saves me the need to introduce myself. Or alternatively, drag our illustrious hostess over here to do it properly.”
Lady Ophelia tried to hide a smile and failed. “I won’t tell if you don’t. My mother went to fetch us a refreshment, and there’s no need to give her an apoplexy.” She paused, meeting his eye. “This is your ball, my lord. Everyone knows who you are. But I’m not sure how it is that you know who I am.”
Eli found himself grinning back at her. “It would seem,” he said, “that we have a mutual friend in Miss Rose Hayward.”
“Indeed.” A hint of pink crept into her cheeks.
“I understand that you have been taking painting instruction from her?”
“Yes,” the young woman replied slowly. “Painting instruction.”
“Excellent. Miss Hayward is quite extraordinary.”
She gave him a curious look and opened her mouth
as if to say something before changing her mind. “Yes. She is,” was all she said.
“I’m sure you learned quite a bit.”
“You have no idea.”
“Ophelia?” The question snapped her head around.
A short, expensively dressed woman with two glasses of punch in her hands was looking suspiciously between Eli and her daughter.
“Mama,” Lady Ophelia said, her eyes darting to Eli and back.
Eli offered the woman a slight bow. “Good evening, my lady,” he said airily. “My apologies if I’ve intruded.”
“Not at all,” she murmured, uncertainty and confusion adding to her existing suspicion. “A wonderful welcome tonight, isn’t it, my lord?” she offered, clearly at a loss as to why the guest of honor was speaking to her daughter and what she should do about it.
“It is, isn’t it,” Eli agreed. “And the only thing that would make it even more so is if your daughter would be so kind as to grant me a dance. With your permission, of course.”
The woman’s mouth fell open. “She can’t.”
Ophelia was blinking at him.
“Why ever not?” he asked stonily.
“She’s…she’s…She simply can’t.”
Eli frowned. “Do you not believe my intentions honorable?” he asked, a clear edge to his words. “I can assure you, I’ve danced with many lovely women tonight, and not one has questioned my honor.”
“No, of course not,” she sputtered.
“Well, then, that settles it.” He extended his hand toward Ophelia. “If you would grant me the privilege, my lady.” He cocked his head. “It sounds as though they are getting ready to play a waltz.”
Lady Ophelia put her hand in his, and he could feel her hesitation. She reached for her crutch with her other hand.
“You won’t need that,” Eli assured her. “We’re dancing. Not running a lap at Epsom Downs.”
He saw her bite her lip.
“Trust me, my lady.”
Lady Ophelia nodded and stood. He tucked her hand through his arm, making sure he was on her weak side, simply replacing her crutch with himself. He ignored the horrified huffs from her mother.
