Page 13 of The Thorn and the Rose

“Spooky,” Thorn said with a smile, to hide how touched he was by his brother’s words.

Pip laughed, understanding. “Get some rest, you silly devil. I’d best go and see what Tilly has done. No doubt she’s turned the house on its ear.”

Thorn watched his brother go and sighed, before giving into sleep, thoughts of a beautiful girl with bright hazel eyes chasing him into dreams.

8thJune 1845. Magpie Hall, Winchelsea, East Sussex.

Rosemarie sighed as the carriage halted before the ancient walls of Magpie Hall on the outskirts of the village of Winchelsea. Pasting a smile to her face that felt tight and false, she climbed down and greeted her mother, who had come out to meet her. Her mother had been beautiful once, and still was in the way of a delicate faded rose, but she was a shadow of her former self and seemed to Rosemarie to haunt the old hall like a wraith, lost in dreams of what had or might have been.

“Oh, dear child, how I have missed you!” she said, falling upon Rosemarie’s neck and weeping, a lace handkerchief scented heavily with violets clutched in one small fist.

“There, there, Mama, it’s only been three weeks, not a lifetime.”

“But you have never been from home before, and I was so worried. Oh, I have fretted myself to death, thinking of you in town and with none but your brother to protect you, and such an odd time to go when you’ve never had a proper come out. I cannot understand what Everett was thinking.”

“He had business, Mama, and wanted some company. He thought I might like the change of scenery, as you very well know, and as you see, I am quite safe and well,” Rosemarie assured her, though she did not feel like the same person who had left the hall just a scant few weeks before. Something in her had changed, and her eyes had been opened to a world of which she had lived in happy ignorance. Nothing seemed the same, or safe, and she did not see how it ever could again. Not that she told her mother this. Mama must be gentled and handled with care, reassured like a child lest she fret herself into an apoplexy. Rosemarie did not doubt the weeks of her absence had been a strain upon her remaining parent.

“Oh, do come in and take tea with me, and tell me everything you have been doing, but…” Her mother looked around then, turning in a circle, her expression one of confusion. “But where is Everett?”

“He stopped off in Rye. Don’t worry, he will be home for dinner,” Rosemarie said briskly, not wanting to think of her brother.

“Oh, dinner.” Her mother twisted the handkerchief in her hands, turning it and turning it until it was quite mangled. “Oh, Rosemarie, darling, it’s all been so ghastly since you left. Cook tells me that there is no money for roast lamb. Can you imagine? No roast lamb on a Sunday. Have you ever heard such nonsense? And when I asked her for a chicken and ham pie for supper, she just laughed at me. Indeed, I have been fed most miserably in your absence. Nothing but soup and stewed mutton. Please, won’t you speak to her and put her right, for the wretched woman pays me no mind and puts me in such a fluster. Oh, well, you know, and you will set it all to rights, I’m sure.”

Believing this implicitly, her mother seemed quite at ease now, and guided her inside the great hall, chattering all the while and promising to make her a lovely cup of tea, with sugar biscuits, of course. Rosemarie let her words float by, knowing that there was no money for roast lamb, nor likely to be. Not if Everett had his way. He would ruin them if she could not stop him, but she did not know how. The reality of their situation had been a rude awakening for a girl who had been used to fine things and not to considering how much it cost to put food on her plate. Of late she had considered it plenty, as well as the leaking chimney in the dining room, and the increasingly threadbare linen on her bed, and the fact she was wearing last year’s fashions. At least her mother was not vain, or such depredations would have been a red flag proclaiming their precarious existence. As it was, Mama, with her lace hankies and her hazy vagueness did not really notice the turn of the year, past exclaiming, oh, is it Easter already, or goodness, Christmas again!

Just as well, Rosemarie thought sullenly. If only she too could return the shutters to her eyes and unsee the things she had been privy to of late. Mr Barry’s battered face came to mind, his bright blue eyes glittering with warmth and laughter despite his predicament.

An ache in the vicinity of her heart almost stopped her in her tracks, making her breath catch as she remembered the things he had said to her, the kindness in his expression. He had been so reluctant to leave her alone, wanted so badly to save her, and she had wanted so badly to be saved. Her life had been led more or less in seclusion, for her brother believed the world a wicked place that she needed protecting from. She had never spent any time with a man before, certainly not alone, and not just any man. Eyes as blue as a summer sea, so inviting she could not look away, and hair the colour of ripe wheat were clue enough, but despite the bruises and swelling, she could tell he was beautiful. Thoughts of the hard, muscular body she had touched so intimately when tending to his wounds made her cheeks heat, a strange, coiling heat unfurling deep in her belly. And the kiss… Rosemarie had never been kissed before. It seemed impossible that she had instigated it, though he had hardly seemed reluctant to follow her lead. How she had found the courage to press her mouth to his she did not know, she’d only known she would die of sorrow if she never saw him again without doing so. But now those memories would plague her forever.

A desperate, wild longing to return to that grim little room and spend the rest of her days there, with him, was the final straw, and proof that she was out of her mind. She thrust the thought away and scolded herself severely. She must not to think of him or anything else that had happened in the past three weeks. It was an aberration, nothing more: a few weeks of her life that she could not have changed, no matter how hard she tried. No choice, she reminded herself. There had been, and was, no choice. There never was.

With those bitter words echoing cruelly in her mind, Rosemarie followed her mother and told her lies of the pleasant time she had spent in town with her brother, whilst drinking tea and eating sugar biscuits, and wondering what on earth they might have for dinner this night, or on any of the nights to come.

Rosemarie was halfway up the stairs on her way to bed when her brother came home.

She turned, shielding her candle from the sudden draught whistling past the front door, and looked down at him.

“Excellent,” he said, tossing his hat to one side. “I’m glad you’re still up. I have something for you.”

“For me?”

“Yes, you. Come down and see,” he added with a smile that was so reminiscent of the brother she had once known and loved that her heart clenched.

Reluctantly, for she had a suspicion she would not like what was coming, Marie made her way back down the stairs. Her brother headed directly for his study and set about lighting lamps and stirring up the fire. Rosemarie hesitated in the open doorway.

“Well, come in, come in, you’ll let all the heat out,” he said impatiently, splashing a hefty measure of brandy into a crystal glass from the decanter that awaited him on a silver tray on his desk.

Some little luxuries were still in evidence, she noted, all of them belonging to Everett. Stop it, she told herself, disliking the sour turn her thoughts so often took these days.

Her brother took a sip of the brandy, spun around to look at her critically, and then clicked his fingers. “Oh, your present. Of course,” he said, as though he had forgotten in the moments between telling her to come and getting to his study.

Perhaps he had. His behaviour was increasingly incomprehensible to her, and so far from the man she had loved all these years. She hardly knew what to think of him.

He reached into his coat pocket and brought out a small velvet-covered box. “Here.”

Rosemarie set the candle down and took the box from him with a frown, opening it. Inside were a pair of delicate peridot drop earrings. The green stones glinted in the firelight and her throat tightened. Once upon a time, she would have delighted in such a gift from her adored brother. Now, though…

“Don’t you like them?” he asked, an edge to his voice.