“We thought you were dead,” she said. “We thought the fever would have taken you even if not the wound. I thought you were dead.”
“There would have been one less person to torment you if I had been,” he said.
She whirled around to face him, her face contorted by some deep emotion he could not interpret.
“Don’t,” she cried. “Don’t make a mockery of all I—of all we went through at that time. We thought you were dead, don’t you understand?Ithought you were dead.” She turned and hurried toward the doorway.
Lord Beresford picked up the branch of candles and went after her. He caught up to her at the top of the staircase and took her by the arm. “I sometimes find it hard to believe that anyone can really care for me,” he said. “I tend to make a mock of claims like yours rather than take the risk of believing them.”
They had reached the floor on which the bedchambers were situated.
“I spoke the truth, Joshua,” she said before pulling her arm free of his grasp and whisking herself along to her room. “If you had died, I think I would have died too. So there!”
Lord Beresford was left alone at the head of the stairs leading down to the drawing room, his free hand stretched out to where she had stood. There was a still look on his face.
Rosamund was already in bed, the candles extinguished, when she heard the door of her bedchamber open. She sat up abruptly, her first mad thought that it must be Justin.
“Who is it?” she said, and found that she was whispering.
“Aunt Rosa?” a hesitant voice said. “Are you awake?”
Rosamund pushed back the bedclothes and got out of bed. “Come in, Annabelle,” she said. “I’ll light a candle. Is something wrong?”
The girl was in her nightgown and was barefoot. She was hugging herself and shivering.
“You had better climb into the bed,” Rosamund said as the candle brought sudden light to the room, “and pull the blankets about you. This is not summer to be walking about like that.” She pulled on a warm dressing gown and slipped her feet into a pair of slippers. Then she perched on the bed, where Annabelle was obediently sitting, the blankets pulled up about her. “Couldn’t you sleep?”
The girl shook her head.
“You went to bed early too, didn’t you?” Rosamund said. “A headache?”
“Aunt Rosa,” Annabelle said, “when you married Uncle Leonard, Papa was opposed to the match, wasn't he?”
“He thought me too young to marry,” Rosamund said, “and your uncle too old for me. I hope I convinced him over the years that I had done the right thing.”
“How did you do it?” Annabelle asked. “How did you defy him?”
Rosamund laughed. “It comes far more naturally for me to defy your father than to agree with him,” she said. “Indeed, it only now strikes me that we have not had a really good quarrel since our return from Lincolnshire.”
“But what did you say?” the girl asked. “What did you do?”
Rosamund looked closely at her. “Is it about you we are talking?” she asked. “Has something happened, Annabelle? Something you cannot talk with your mother or father about? Did you come to confide in me? You may do so, you know. I will not run telling tales to either of them.”
“They want dreadfully for me to marry the Earl of Wetherby,” Annabelle said.
“They consider it a good match,” Rosamund said. “It is.”
“They would be furious with me if I refused him,” the girl said, clasping her knees beneath the blankets. “Papa would be furious.”
“But both he and your mama have told you that the final choice is yours, have they not?” Rosamund said.
“It is too late, though,” Annabelle said. “If I had said no last year when Lord Wetherby first asked, or some time over the winter or even last week or the week before, it would have been all right. Papa would have accepted it, perhaps, even if he had not liked it. But now? Everyone seems to know, Aunt Rosa. Everyone is taking for granted that there will be a betrothal and that it will be announced on Grandpapa’s birthday. It is too late to change things now.”
“Has his lordship asked you yet?” Rosamund asked.
“No.” Annabelle rested her chin on her updrawn knees. “But we have both referred to it. It is just a formality. We both know that he will ask and that I will accept.”
“Don’t you want to?” Rosamund asked quietly.
