He felt entwined with her, like theirs was a path that was destined to cross. And even if it were for just a short while, he planned to make every step of the journey count. He would walk beside her along the path until they had no choice but to go in opposite directions.
Turning back was not an option. Not for either of them, he suspected.
“How about a safe stroll along one of the lanes?” he suggested. His smile was not fake, but nor was it entirely authentic.
“Well…” she said, appearing to consider.
Robert’s lips widened into a grin, the dashing smile that his mother said made everyone melt.
Rose melted. He saw it in the slight loosening of her jaw, of the hiccup in her breathing, in that momentary pause of her batting eyes. It might as well have been a full-on grin. She looked behind her to the inn, then back to Robert, meeting his gaze direct. “I suppose—”
That was all it took. She hadn’t yet finished her sentence, but he could feel that she was at the beginning of what would end in a yes. He had her by the hand—a gesture that even in the lower classes was a bit salacious for a single woman wishing to keep her reputation in tact—and was leading her toward the nearest path through the nearby forest that surrounded the village, one that just happened to be narrower than the one upon which he’d found her the day before.
And more secluded.
Chapter 8
Robert took off with no care for the direction in which he was leading her. If he could, he would have walked her right out of England and off the edge of the Earth, to a place where they could be alone together. Where it didn’t matter that she was a farmer’s daughter and he a duke. Where there would be no one to care that she was not fit to be even his mistress, much less his wife.
Of course, he didn’t want Rose to be his wife, he told himself.
He did not drop her hand or slow down, even after having lost sight of the street and the noise of the festival. Instead, he was nearly dragging Rose along behind him, so close that he could feel the skirts of her dress brushing against his legs as he walked.
The sensation was killing him.
“Robert,” Rose said, nearly breathless. She was pulling her hand from his. Or trying to.
She was so soft and dainty. He wanted to hold her hand in his for all eternity.
Wherever had that thought come from?
She wasn’t for him, and forever was not an option. Now was hardly even an option.
But her hand felt so good in his! It was the softest skin he had ever felt and, Lord, if that hand was not made for holding in his then he didn’t know what it was made for! Her slim fingers seemed to be chiseled by the same master who’d created his, molded to fit perfectly into his.
He didn’t want to let go. He wanted to lie her down right there, along the path, and explore not just her hand but her entire body, discover if she was that smooth everywhere.
He took a deep breath in.
What was he doing? What was he thinking?
It was like his body, not his brain, had sent him charging down this path with her in tow. If he wasn’t careful, it would be the carnal desires of his body that would be setting her down upon the ground and taking things from her that he shouldn’t dare to even dream of.
He needed to stop this. He needed to think rationally.
His footsteps slowed.
“Robert,” Rose said again, and his name was like honey on her lips. She made his name sound so fluid, so enticing.
He stopped suddenly, turning on his heels to face her, so suddenly that she hardly had time to stop herself from landing square against his chest. He was grateful she did though, for if she had run into him, if he had once again felt her body pressed up against his, his resolve would have been broken. He would not have been able to deny his body the satisfaction that it craved.
But, oh, how he wanted her to run into him so that he could be lost in it—in her!
This girl was a drug.
Robert took a step back, away, dropping her hand, watching it fall to her side, growing cold without the protection of his. He watched that hand as it stretched, then fisted, then stretched again, as the skin slowly turned from near white back to pink as the blood flow restored.
“I apologize,” he said, recognizing how tightly he had been clenching her hand. He began to dip into bow, as he would for any other lady, before remembering who they were in this moment, who he was. He was a stable hand and she but the daughter of a local farmer. The gesture was that of the aristocracy, and the last thing he needed was to be recognized. Not now. Not with her. With her he just wanted to be Robert, free and careless.
He halted the gesture, sighing and raking a hand through his hair, fumbling for words, for what came next. “I thought we might stroll the grounds of the estate.” His words were half question, all uncertainty.
He had never felt uncertain around a female. It was the luck of being born handsome, and a duke—one learned quickly one could have anything one wished, and it was always such fun to ask. One well-placed grin practically made women weak at the knees. He had never had cause to question himself, to feel self-conscious, because the answer to whatever question he asked would inevitably receive the same reply: yes.
But Rose was not like the females he normally associated with. She wasn’t anything like the ladies he sought to avoid in ballrooms or the women who earned their living by, well, other means.
She wasn’t like any other female. Period.
Her face tilted to the side and, while her expression didn’t change, he could feel her boring into him, seeing all that he took care not to reveal. “The estate,” she repeated slowly, her eyes pinching inward in the slightest. “It’s private.”
A good point that.
“Well, there are the public paths,” Robert countered quickly. His stomach was knotting and unfurling. He was afraid of that look on her face—or the lack thereof. Afraid that she would say no. Afraid that she would retreat back to the village, to her life.
Please, say yes.
She didn’t say yes.
“But that’s not what you wish to show me, is it?”
She said something more glorious.
She saw through him, even when she gave no indication she saw anything at all. She saw the truth that he himself didn’t even know until that moment, until she spoke the words.
Rose was right. He didn’t want to stroll with her along the carefully cultivated paths through the forests of his estate or through the fields or gardens, or any of it. He didn’t want to do proper things with a proper young lady. He wanted a friend, a confidant. He wanted to share, to open himself up to someone for once in his life. Even if she didn’t do the same.
He eyed her directly and answered truthfully, openly. “No. It is not.”
Rose’s eyes dropped to the ground between them, and for once, she let him see her too. Her pale eyes deepened. They were like the Mediterranean—water so light, so clear you thought you could open your eyes beneath the surface and see for miles. But the color was just an illusion; the depths were vast and the monsters hidden in plain sight.
She was hidden in plain sight.
For how many years had she lived just miles from his home? How many times had their paths just barely missed crossing?
She was the most perfect person he had ever met and she was but the daughter of a farmer. No one would suspect such a gem to be hidden so humbly. She could snare the king himself if she so desired. But would she ever get the opportunity?
She was to be married to another man—another farmer, no doubt. Did this man even realize what he was getting, how truly lucky he was? Would he understand that he had snared the greatest prize of them all? Would her husband treasure her the way she deserved to be treasured? Or would those sweet, soft pink hands turn calloused from hard work? Would her skin weather in the sun and her clothes wear? Would she be followed around by a herd of children as perfect and polished as she? Or would she struggle to keep the hunger from
their bellies?
Her depths were endless. Her expression true. It was not a mask. This was the great reveal. And he had wanted it. He had wanted her to open to him, to show some emotion, some hint at who was hidden beneath the exterior. He’d wanted her depths to be revealed, her monsters drawn out so that he could dispel them from her life. But now he saw them, he saw her, and it was crushing. It was a blow like no other.
In her eyes, he saw her struggle. He saw sorrow and resignation, but he also saw longing. The same longing as he.
A more unfortunate duo there never was. Romeo and Juliet were but characters in a play. This was real life. Their lives were not their own, they were both bound to others, and so they could never be. Their fates were bitterly not aligned. He hardly knew Rose, but he felt he would do anything—lie, cheat, steal, kill—just to have a glimpse of her. He would do anything to hold her, anything to have her.
He would give up the world for her if he could.
“It is not a good idea,” she said to his feet, her voice revealing that she wished it was.
It is not a good idea.
The implication in her words were obvious. How could they not be?
Because somehow, they weren’t talking about what they were talking about. They were talking about something bigger, something they both wanted.
Right?
He was not wrong. Was he?
She felt the same as he? He saw it there, in her eyes, her longing for him.
And, it was not a good idea. No, indeed it was not. But…
“Why not? It’s not as though anyone will ever know,” he said. He knew the implication in his own words and let them form, slide up his throat and out of his mouth.
Rose looked up at him sharply, but the anger he expected was not in her stare. There was shock, to be sure, but there was something else, something fiercer. There was passion in her stare, desire that burned through those long gold eyelashes that were like a halo around her eyes. The emotion was unbridled, unrestrained.
Her lips parted on an exhale.
Robert struggled to keep his breathing steady.
He could not have her.
Robert cleared his throat and set the conversation back on track. “The family never uses the trails,” he explained, his hands clasped behind his back. They were separated by a scant few feet and he worried for his sanity being in such proximity to her. He needed something to hold onto, or he might just end up holding onto her.
And perhaps if he could keep her here—away from where he suddenly longed to take her, from where he was afraid he could never bring her back from, never let her leave—then he would be able to restrain himself, and remember that theirs was an impossibility.
She paused for but a beat, holding her gaze firm on his eyes, and he felt once more as though he were under inspection. Finally, she said carefully, “But they are their trails to use, not ours.” Her voice sounded tempting, as though she were willing him to disagree, but really not giving him any desire to do so. Robert wanted to forever agree with anything that she ever said.
Had she meant it to sound so? Or was she unaware of her power over him?
Oh, how he wished he could read her mind!
“Semantics,” Robert answered, dipping his head toward hers slightly—playing the game he wasn’t sure at all that they were both playing—and planting his most charming smile upon her once more, hoping that she felt as weak towards his powers as he felt towards hers.
“No,” she practically barked, jumping back a foot. “I cannot.” She turned away from him then, clenching her eyes shut as she did, her breathing turning rapid and shallow.
It was a moment of triumph, if only for a second. Now he knew beyond any doubt that Rose was just as affected by him, was full of the same desire that rioted through him.
“I am to be married,” she whispered to her hands clenched at her sides. Her voice had lost all expression beyond civility, and with the loss of it, Robert felt the loss of her.
There were but a few feet between them, yet he felt separated by an ocean.
He had pushed her too far and now she was once more shying away, back into her shell. Not only that, she was leaving him literally as well, planting one step in front of another and retreating away from him. It was only a matter of time before she disappeared completely and he was left with nothing but the bitter memory of having let her go.
The feeling of loss drained away as panic swept over him.
He was desperate to make her stay, to not lose her. His body, not his mind, willed him to go after her, taking one, two steps. “I know of another place,” he said, far too loud for such a reclusive setting.
Robert could hear the desperation in his voice and was certain that she had heard it too. He wished he could have contained it. He was reaching for her arm to stop her—by force if need be—but it was she who stopped now, turning to face him, and he who nearly slammed into her.
“Where?” she asked, and with that one word all hope was restored. She didn’t want to leave him. He was sure of it.
“My favorite fishing spot from childhood,” Robert replied, his insides warming and cooling at the same time.
He hadn’t fished in years. Not in nearly twenty of them. Not since he was a boy of six-years-old. Every Sunday afternoon, he and his father would slip out of their fine-tailored clothing and into the brown wool the outdoor servants donned. Together they would escape the estate and walk down to the bridge that crossed over Blackwater Stream, fishing poles in hand. It was there that Robert’s most precious memories were formed.
His father had been a busy man, with the many responsibilities of a duke; many thought him cold and many of the servants feared him, but had Robert never understood why. He hardly saw his father except for on those afternoons when they were alone together, incognito. And those afternoons were perfect. It was on days like that his father seemed like a god.
But then he had to go and prove himself to Robert, prove that he was just that, a god, and that, as such, he was in control of everything. It was there, seated on the cool, damp stones of the narrow bridge, that his father brought Robert’s world crashing down around him. He was six years old, he had his whole life ahead of him, and he had no life at all.
In that moment, when his father told him that he would wed the first female born of Lord Blythe, Robert realized that he had lost faith in there being a just god, a good god. A kind god.
He had thought his father a god, and he found that his father did too. His father destroyed that place, that boy.
Robert never forgave his father and he never went back to that bridge. He was only six years old and his father had stolen his life from him, but he couldn’t steal this moment. His father was gone now, and yes, the future was what it was, what it had to be. But right here, right now, with this girl, he could dispel his father’s ghost. He could leave those memories in the past. He could live.
He would take Rose to the spot that he frequented with his father and let her heal him.
Rose nodded, her blank eyes seeing more than they let on. “Alright,” she said in a barely-there whisper, uncertain eyes searching his. The passion was gone, replaced by her cover, but he was coming to know that too.
She didn’t change outwardly, but somehow he could read her anyway, like it was becoming instinct. He knew that she understood his need for her to go with him to this place, and she would go there. For him.
Fifteen minutes later he was seated on the edge of the narrow stone bridge, Rose at his side. The black water of the stream below ate away at the silence and surfaced the years of pain he bore, until he couldn’t help but give voice to his past. “I used to come here with my father when I was a boy. We’d bring our poles and fish right here, off the side,” Robert said, talking to his distorted reflection rippling below as his feet dangled over the water.
“Did you ever catch anything?” Rose prompted when he didn’t continue talking.
“Nothing remarkable,” he answered, lost i
n thought.
There were so many memories from back then when life was simple and resentment didn’t course through him like blood. Back before he learned to hate the man who had cast his future into stone. Back then, his father could do no wrong. Back then, his father was his hero.
But in reality, he was no hero at all.
His father was a gambler, and a bad one at that, who resorted to gambling away his own son’s future. All the land that was not entailed had been lost in a card game, years before, leaving the castle with not enough land to be able to afford it’s taxes, much less run the household. And so, the two gentlemen struck an accord—upon Robert’s marriage to Blythe’s first-born daughter, the land would be restored and the Brighton Estate would be able to support itself once more. But, as Lord Blythe had every intention of marrying his daughter off to a wealthy duke, not an impoverished one, and as a sign of his good intentions, he had allowed the Brighton’s to retain use of the lands—for a fee, of course.
Robert’s father readily accepted the offer. How could he not, after all? They needed that land or the entire estate would be lost. Oh, they had a half dozen houses and estates sprawled out across the country, but this was their seat. This was their heirloom. Every Lord Brighton that had ever lived had lived in Brighton Castle, upon this land, and theirs would not be the two generations to disrupt nature’s chain.
So, Robert would marry Lady Rosalyn, and restore Brighton Castle to its former glory. He might resent his father, but the title was undeserving of his loathing. Like it or not, he had a duty to uphold, and he had no choice but to do just that, and marry Lady Rosalyn.
He almost scoffed.
He couldn’t even picture her. He could see her as a child, in flashes. Blonde hair, wide smile, skirts in a tangle behind her as she ran from her governess. Then, with a stiff back and proper airs as she acted as though she had never done any wrong. Oh, but she had. She was always inevitably covered in grass stains and always the subject of her parents’ ridicule. And for good reason. She was a child that needed to be tamed.
Rose by Another Name Page 9
