But it was a trying afternoon. There was her sick awareness that Justin was with Annabelle and that Annabelle was in a strange mood. And her awareness that they were walking to the lake, where she had been with him just the day before. And there was Toby maneuvering her into the churchyard, of all places, while the girls tried on bonnets at the milliner’s, in order to ask her to marry him.
“I am greatly honored,” she told him, “and I am fond of you, Toby, but I am not the right wife for you. I would be a great trial to you.”
It took her all of ten minutes to persuade him that she was being neither coy or self-denying nor overly modest.
And then she looked at him, silent and hurt as he examined some of the older, mossy headstones, and wished that he could have been just a little different, just a little less pompous, just a little more sensitive to the feelings of others.
How good it would have been to be able to feel a fondness for him strong enough to take her into a marriage. She would not demand love, only a little fondness. She knew from experience that that could be enough. She had been only fond of Leonard when she married him. Yet she had grown to love him more dearly than she had loved even her father.
If only she could feel for Toby what she had felt for Leonard in Bath. They could have made an announcement that evening at dinner and she would have been safe. She would have had a definite life to plan and dream of while the main drama of the next few days unfolded around her.
But it was not to be. She could not marry Toby under any circumstances at all. And yet he was a person with feelings despite all the pomposity. She had hurt him.
The drive home was not a comfortable one. The girls talked and giggled and seemed to notice nothing strained about the atmosphere. But the Reverend Strangelove beside Rosamund sat very straight and very silent and very dignified.
She did not enter the house. She took herself off to walk alone, carefully avoiding the lake side of the house. Doubtless Justin and Annabelle had returned long before, but she did not wish to risk coming upon them. She walked for what seemed like hours, returning to the house only in time to hurry to get ready for dinner.
And she sat through dinner, between Lord Beresford on the one side and Sir Patrick Newton on the other, allowing them to carry most of the conversation, and she came to the conclusion that the situation was finally and totally intolerable. If she had to wait another four days until the ball was over before removing herself to Leonard’s cousin’s, she might well go into a nervous collapse. All her sensible thoughts of the night before really could not carry her through four more days.
Annabelle was sitting at her grandfather’s right, Justin beside her. His mother and his sister and brother-in-law were at the marquess’s left. The conversation seemed to be animated at that end of the table.
Rosamund waited impatiently for Lady Gilmore to rise and signal the ladies that they might leave the gentlemen. She was going to retire to her room, she decided, and if anyone came looking for her, well, then, she would have the headache that Annabelle had had that morning.
But it was the marquess who rose to his feet and signaled for silence. He smiled genially the length of the table at his wife.
“My birthday has been planned as the perfect day,” he said. “Yet it seems that one of my relatives and one of my other guests have seen fit to spoil those plans.”
He did not look by any means unhappy about it, Rosamund thought.
“My granddaughter Annabelle,” he said, “and the Earl of Wetherby have shown a lamentable lack of patience today and have betrothed themselves three days early.”
There was a buzz and a smattering of applause around the table.
The marquess held up one hand. “But being the old tyrant that seventy-year-old marquesses have every right to be,” he said, “I hereby forbid anyone in this room to divulge the news to anyone outside this room. The public announcement will be made to our friends and neighbors at my birthday ball as planned. In the meantime, I think it is as well that we all adjourn to the drawing room together so that the ladies may kiss my soon-to-be grandson and the gentlemen my granddaughter.” He beamed down at them and bent down to be the first to kiss Annabelle.
There were noise and laughter, the sound of chairs being pushed back. Only one sound penetrated Rosamund’s consciousness before she forced a smile to her face and allowed Sir Patrick to pull back her chair.
“The devil,” Lord Beresford muttered from beside her.
Well, Rosamund thought as Lady March turned to hug her just inside the dining-room doors, tears in her eyes, there could be no headache and no convenient escape to her room now. She squared her shoulders and prepared to face the evening.
And if she had had any lingering hope of an early escape, it was dashed when she found her brother waiting for her outside the dining room.
“Well, Rosa,” he said, “Anna is a naughty girl, isn’t she, rushing things like this?”
But he looked pleased and proud enough to burst, she thought, reaching up impulsively and kissing him on the cheek.
“Gilmore had to be allowed to make the announcement,” he said, “but I hoped perhaps to have one to make too.” He smiled genially at her. “But that was being too greedy for one day, I suppose. Tobias is proving to be a slowtop, after all. I thought that was why he decided to accompany you into the village.”
“It was,” she said, looking suspiciously at him. “Did you set him up to it, Dennis? Oh, you are quite insufferable. What makes you think I could possibly endure Toby for a lifetime? I suppose he came asking you just as if you were Papa?”
“He asked me this morning, yes,” he said, “as is only proper, Rosa. You refused him?”
“Of course I refused him,” she said, “and hurt him into the bargain. You ought not to have encouraged him, Dennis. I am none of your concern. I am twenty-six years old and no longer your ward. You will kindly inform any other gentleman who comes to you of those facts. And once all this is over, I am going to return to Lincolnshire. Felix will let me live in the house and I can be free of meddling brothers.”
She turned sharply away from him, but he caught at her arm. “What a spitfire you are, Rosa,” he said. “I was about to say, if you had just waited, that I was glad. I mean, I would have been happy if you had accepted, and it would certainly have been a good match. And who was I to say no when Tobias came and asked me? I told him he would have to put the question to you. But I’m not sorry you said no.”
“You aren’t?” she said doubtfully.
