Ben laid his hands on the table and sat back. There was no tension in his posture, and she was certain he would not have pressured her if she remained silent, nor would he resent her if she shared everything on her mind.
“Fern and I haven’t spoken in two years,” she said in a rush. Rose had not wanted to tell this story in nearly as much time, and she found the pain had not dulled with age. She could have kept the story to herself, minimize the ache in her chest every time she spoke the words. But she wanted Ben to have this piece of her history; perhaps he would give a piece of himself in return.
“A student at Oxford was courting me, but he fell in love with Fern instead. I was blindsided by the news and looked like the biggest fool in England. They’re married now, living in Boston. I’m supposed to see her before I go home, but…”
She’d never found the words to express the gulf Fern’s absence left in her soul, how a part of her had been torn away when her sister left her side and never looked back. If Rose were to reconcile with Fern now, would there be space left in her sister’s heart for her?
Ben’s dark eyes betrayed none of his thoughts. He would side with Fern if he knew the entire story. How did anyone expect Alex to choose Rose when Fern’s brilliance matched Alex’s. Rose could never make a man of substance happy. Now it seemed she would make no man happy. Rose, the perfect, beautiful centerpiece of her mother’s bouquet of daughters, had been a complete disaster of a debutante. From a diamond to a disappointment of the highest order.
“She hurt you terribly, didn’t she?” Ben’s words tore her open, the wound exposed, and her vision blurred.
“She did,” Rose whispered, dabbing her napkin to her cheek.
“Were you in love with him?”
It had taken Rose nearly a year to answer that question for herself. “No. I wanted to love him, and I wanted to be loved in return. I thought being married would relieve the pressure, the expectations of my parents.”
“What did they expect of you?”
She exhaled slowly and dragged her finger in a swirl through the sticky syrup on her plate. She brought it to her lips, the tart flavor biting at her tongue. “I was considered a beauty, a diamond of the first water.” She gave him a weak smile when he tilted his head. “Essentially, I was expected to marry a wealthy, titled man, provide him with an heir and a spare, then spend my time on charity boards and hosting tea parties. You were not terribly far off in your assumptions about me.”
He tracked her finger’s movement across the plate, then cleared his throat. “Expectations are not reality. Why didn’t you marry?”
“Initially, my father and my mother respected my wish to remain unwed if I did not find a suitable match, but they have grown impatient. The difficulty was finding any man who sparks my interest.”
“Because you prefer the company of women?”
Her eyes shot up to meet Ben’s focused gaze. “No. I mean—” She shook her head. “Dozens of men asked to court me and I refused every one. I had no desire to do anything more than dance with them. I was lost and confused.”
“You can’t be the only woman in England to remain unmarried.”
Rose scoffed. “The expectations for me were different.”
“How so?”
“I was deemed an incomparable. The society papers named me as the debutante with the most promise before I even had my coming out.”
His brows furrowed. “The most promise for what?”
Rose felt ridiculous explaining this, the strange rules of a culture that had meant everything for so long. “A prestigious marriage to a man of power and wealth. Some papers speculated I would marry a German prince.”
“Did you like being talked about like that?”
No one had asked her that question before. When the London papers named her an incomparable, a diamond of the first water, her mother had cried and her father boasted to everyone within earshot. But what had she done to deserve such an honor? And once she’d achieved this pinnacle, what could she possibly do to remain in society’s good graces?
“I did, for a bit. I liked the attention, the praise. But it didn’t last.”
Ben said nothing, only looked at her with a concern she’d not witnessed from him before.
She hesitated, like she stood on the precipice and was about to throw herself over. “When I didn’t find a match in my second season, I became a joke, a warning for other girls not to become too full of themselves, because no man wants an arrogant woman.”
“You’re not arrogant. They shouldn’t have talked about you that way.”
Rose shrugged, although his words warmed her. “They weren’t wrong. I thought I deserved more than just a title and wealth. I wanted love, attachment… desire.”
Ben took a long drink of his water before speaking again. “Everyone deserves those things.”
She gave him a brief nod. “I wondered if it was the pressure of society that made it difficult for me to find an attraction to someone. I engaged in a brief flirtation with a gentleman, a man who was a clerk in a solicitor’s office in town. It was pleasant, but meaningless, and I never desired anything more, nor did he.”
