There was no use in delaying the inevitable. She would pass along the information she learned from Stewart and make her way to see Fern while she still could. At the most, she could stay in New York for another week before going to Boston, then back to England, where her future waited. Lord Timothy would provide for her, be a caring and loving, if platonic, partner. Her day-to-day life would not change.
And that hurt most of all.
“I didn’t know you played piano.” Ben’s voice was like the smoke billowing above them.
“If you can call that playing. My sister is quite accomplished, a prodigy on the piano. I merely smash my fingers on the keys.” She shrugged. “No one wants to hear me play.”
“Everyone in the Pearl wanted to hear you.”
Rose glanced behind her to see Cass guiding Abby towards their building, linked arm in arm. She would never have expected her cousin, the girl who had been so fastidious about only using silk ribbons in her doll’s hair, to embrace this life so far removed from every luxury she had known. But Rose wanted it too, the pull so strong it ached in her chest, as though her very soul was being wrenched out.
Her heart begged Ben to put his hands on her, to wrap her in an embrace and comfort her, like Cass had done for Abby. For someone to watch over her and hold her fast.
“Do you miss England?”
She blinked at Ben’s question, so lost in her thoughts she wondered if she imagined it. “Some things. Not London as much. I enjoyed many parts of the city, the shops and restaurants, my friends… But I wouldn’t say Imissit.”
He looked down at her and raised one brow, and Rose felt that movement in her core. The man was some sort of magician.
“I miss Oxfordshire, though, and my home.” Her throat began to burn with unshed tears, and she swallowed hard.
“What about them?”
She sighed. “I suppose I miss my family when our circumstances were better. My mother used to smile, and my father would join us for dinner. I miss my sisters—”
I miss Fern.
The longing struck hard enough to make her steps falter, and Ben took her elbow, steadying her. She blinked back the tears; too few hours remained in New York to dwell on what she’d lost.
“My mother loves to garden, so there are flowers everywhere in our home. And the countryside is so green there, every shade imaginable all at once.”
“Like your eyes.”
She stopped and turned to meet his gaze. The streetlight gleamed above him, limning the planes of his cheeks, his deep eyes warm and comforting.Home.
“Your eyes,” he repeated, “have every color of green in them. I spent a year in Washington state, where it rains constantly. There were so many shades of green that I had to invent alternative names for them, asgreenwas insufficient.” He paused as though he wanted to say more. “Like your eyes.”
Rose’s lips parted as she pulled in a breath. But he’d started walking again, guiding her down the street as the façade of 138 Willow came into view.
“Tell me more about England, your life there. What you miss.”
Lord help her, this man. He was a puzzle Rose would never be clever enough to solve, something beyond her ability to understand. She could only try to keep up. “I miss the stars,” she managed. “On summer nights, they spread for miles. I often wondered if I could reach up and take one, whichever one I wanted, and keep it for myself. Of course, I was greedy and wanted them all.”
“Would you have shared them?”
“Probably not then,” she replied. “But now I would.”
Ben paused his steps again, examining her for several beats before speaking again. “Come with me.”
They had reached his building, but instead of entering the front doors, he kept walking, turning down the alley to the side. He stopped below the fire escape and stretched to pull down the iron ladder, wincing as the creak echoed down the quiet street.
Ben must have sensed her hesitation, because he took her hand. Warmth flooded her, leaving her knees weak. But this wasn’t desire, it was safety. Protection. Love.
They climbed the ladder together, Ben close behind her as they ascended the five stories, past laundry and potted plants on iron balconies, children’s toys and Mrs. Mortimer’s orange tabby cat. Past the trappings of the lives Ben had helped to thrive in his small corner of the universe, filling in broken pieces with hope and potential while giving his own shattered heart nothing.
Rose stepped over the edge of the fire escape and onto the roof, flat aside from the two massive chimneys on either end, the twin plumes of smoke oddly reminiscent of the fog hanging over the fields in Oxfordshire on a spring morning. Her breath caught as she took in her surroundings, the lush greenery so incongruous amid the harsh rooflines she had to blink repeatedly to make sense of it.
Makeshift planters of all shapes and sizes wrapped around the perimeter of the roof. Puffy orange and yellow chrysanthemums huddled beneath trellises of climbing white clematis. White daisies sprouted merrily from a milk crate, and pale pink roses burst between the tufts of ivy scaling the chimney stack. A single bench sat tucked between gnarled rose bushes.
