Page 17 of The Perfect Rose

Miriam took a deep breath. “I do hope you are correct. You seem to have thought of everything, haven’t you?” She looked up at him through her lashes and then dropped her gaze to Dragon walking quite calmly on the other side of him. “He doesn’t seem to be quite so scary when you are around. I have to admit, our neighbors growing up had the most vicious dog. I still have a scar on my ankle from one of our chance encounters. I am ashamed to say the day that dog died was one of the happiest days of my childhood.”

“You must have had a sad childhood.” Frederick tried at a joke.

“Indeed.”

His flippancy hadn’t hit the mark, just as his arrows had missed the previous day. “I named this mutt Dragon because I thought it would be funny. It was the furthest name from the truth I could think of. You truly have nothing to fear from him.”

She nodded but remained quiet. He led them down a slope toward the river where he had found her cowering in a bush that first day of the house party.

“So, what is your plan to distract your mother, Lady Rose? I can’t deny I’ve been quite curious as to what you’ve been scheming.”

Lady Rose removed her hand from his arm and clasped her hands together in front of her as they walked. “I’m afraid this won’t be easy, Mr. Hastings, for me to say or for you to hear. But we both know why I am here.” She paused and looked up at him with a cocked eyebrow. “My parents are desperate to have me married and you must be desperate for my fortune. That being said, my mother would like me to marry someone with a title, if at all possible.”

Lady Rose continued forward, but Frederick’s feet had stopped working, although his brain seemed to take off at breakneck pace. He sputtered, “Desperate for your fortune! You think that I want to marry you? I can assure you that is the furthest thing from my mind.”

He watched her face change from a ghostly white to a sunburnt red in an instant. Why would she possibly believe that he wanted to marry her? The idea was absurd. She was the last lady he could love.

Lady Rose tipped her chin up in defiance. “Tell me then, Mr. Hastings, why it is that you never gave me a moment of your time or attention until my dowry doubled. It was a callous move and yet, I am here. You have some friends of high standing that my mother could not ignore.”

“You are here for my sister’s sake, not mine.” Frederick hissed through his teeth. How was it that this woman could bring out the absolute worst of feelings in him? He rarely felt angry, and here he was ready to stomp back to the house like a five-year-old boy throwing a tantrum.

“Your sister’s sake?” Her expression morphed from one of blame to that of curiosity. She was looking at him with an intensity made him want to stand taller. What was she seeing? Did he really want to know? He stared right back, unwilling to break the connection.

Frederick took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair. Lady Rose had to know the truth. If the two of them were going to work together, something he very much doubted, they would have to at least try to understand one another. “Miriam has been one of your many admirers this season.”

Lady Rose scoffed. “I have no admirers. Only those who want something from me.”

A pang shot through Frederick’s chest. He had to admit the truth of her words; even now, he wanted something from her. But no woman should feel jaded. He’d faced that emotion before and didn’t wish it on anyone. Besides, she wasn’t actually jaded. She was an innocent woman on the upper crust of society. She likely didn’t even know much of living at this point. And, he reminded himself, she had brought much of her misery upon herself. Still, he was walking a fine line on a lady’s feelings and he knew it. “I speak the truth, Lady Rose. Miriam desired you to come to the house party so that she might learn from you and your mother.” That much was true.

“And . . .” Lady Rose kept her eyes down on the path as they walked.

He sighed. “And she knew that if you were at the house party, it would draw others to attend as well.”

Lady Rose nodded her head but said nothing. The fact that she could take in such information and not have an emotional reaction was almost eerie. How long had she seen much of her life like a business proposition to be debated and leveraged amongst society? It was an unnatural sight in the most natural of places. Sounds from the stream mingled with the call of birds around them. Dragon pounced off into the surrounding trees, chasing a robin. The cheerful, common sound was at odds with the churning in Frederick’s stomach. He knew he needed to address the entirety of Lady Rose’s accusation, but he knew it might wound her further to do it. He shouldn’t care that he could sense her vulnerability at the moment, but he did.

“I do not intend to marry. But Miriam has always been fascinated with the idea of being in love. Her favorite book is Romeo and Juliet.” He rolled his eyes. “Her season has not met with her expectations due to so many gentlemen being distracted by you. Her hopes are for you to marry so that the general populous will remember that other women do, in fact, exist.”

“Miriam should talk with my mother. The two of them can simply pick someone for me to marry, and I won’t have to deal with it anymore.” Her caustic tone stung him just as effectively as the bee had last night. He didn’t believe she actually wanted Miriam choosing her future husband, though it would certainly solve the problem more quickly. “Why do you not intend to marry?”

He’d not expected that question. “Past experience . . . It is a conversation for another day,” he sighed, “that will probably never come,” he added under his breath.

“I envy you that freedom,” she whispered as she sat down on a large stone at the stream’s edge. “I have no choice but to marry. My parents’ hope is that my dowry will induce someone to propose and take me off their hands. I have been an abysmal failure this season and an embarrassment to my family. If, by the time this house party ends, I do not have an engagement, my parents tell me they will apply to Mr. Dillard to see if he would be willing to marry me.” She rested her chin in her hands that were propped up on her knees, looking toward the river. He had the strongest notion she wasn’t seeing anything before her.

Frederick’s chest swelled with indignation. What type of business proposition was this? Mr. Dillard was the worst sort of man. He was a rake: always drunk and rude and completely broke, where Lady Rose was the picture of perfection. To the point that it maddened those who could not measure up to her. “What could convince your parents to want him a part of your family?”

“He is the heir presumptive to a barony, and his father was a family friend. And his financial reserves have recently run dry. It is but a match of a possible title and a fortune that could fix everything.” Spoken again with emotionless acceptance of this cruel decision by her parents. He wanted to shake her, to wake her up from the nightmare she was living.

“And why, Lady Rose, do you only have a little more than a week to become engaged?” The rushed nature of the situation was unheard of unless a lady was publicly ruined.

She breathed evenly and patiently, as if she were answering a child. “Because the season is almost over. My whole life I’ve been molded for this short span of time, and I have come up wanting. I have had every possible advantage given to me: financial security, a family title, and a fair amount of talents, but even those have not been enough to secure a match.”

Frederick was dumbfounded. They had given her one season . . . to the day, and her time was almost up. Her parents would take matters into their own hands and make their too perfect daughter miserable, all in the name of family pride. It was disgusting. He was becoming physically ill for her. But she sat before him as if she hadn’t just revealed the most shocking of personal news.

Lady Rose shook her head and sat up straighter again. “I’m sorry. We didn’t come here to talk about my troubles. But this does all have a point, I assure you. If you could help me find or even stage some success at gaining a gentleman’s attention, my mother would likely be placated enough to remember her place. Her desperation for me to marry is her top priority.”

“And what is your top priority?” It was such a dismal view on life that he felt compelled to know if there was something he could do to help her. She needed a reason to smile, perhaps more than most people he knew.

She glanced up at him, tears swimming in her brown eyes. He hated to see a woman cry. “No one has ever asked me that.”