Page 60 of The Duke’s Masked Wallflower

She nodded and looked deep into his eyes. He reached to touch her cheek, but the front doors opened, and Lady Howard emerged.

The carriage was ready to take them home to London. Rosalie gathered her skirts to go. Gabriel walked her the last few steps himself, and then outside. As he handed her up into the carriage, he closed his hand around hers, beneath her cloak where no one could see.

“Pray, send word,” he said gently, his throat tight.

“I will,” she replied.

He released her hand and stepped back, watching the carriage pull away down the long drive with both Winthrop sisters inside it, until its dark shape vanished through the gates, and they were closed behind them.

He was still standing there some minutes later when a subdued James came to stand beside him.

“They must send word once they know more,” James said, staring into the distance, his eyes red from lack of sleep.

“She said she would.”

“You are concerned for that family.”

“Yes,” Gabriel admitted.

“And for her.”

“More than anything.”

“Then you must be careful,” James warned. “You cannot explain her to me—that much I have come to understand. But if her father recovers, she will have a great deal to reckon with. And if he does not... she will have more still to reckon with. Do you understand my meaning?”

Gabriel did, though he wished it were not the case.

“Then I would suggest,” James said, not unkindly, “that you return to your bed to rest—and to consider what will happen once you go to her, in London, as you know you must eventually.”

Rosalie and Anna arrived home just after midday. Their mother met them at the entrance, and for one disorienting moment, Rosalie did not recognize the woman standing before her.

Lady Winthrop’s hair had come half out of its pins. Her gown was likely the same one she had traveled home in, creased and unbrushed. Her usually bright and animated face had gone gray and slack. With a lurch of real terror, Rosalie started behind Anna. Her mother looked like a woman who was already grieving the loss of her husband.

“Is he dead?” Anna asked plainly.

Her mother shook her head. That sad, strained face contorted in anguish, and Lady Winthrop began to cry. Anna rushed forward and seized her mother in her arms, patting her hair and saying, “There, there, now... If he is still alive, then there is hope.”

“Mama,” Rosalie murmured like a child, approaching.

Her mother reached out and grabbed her, holding her two girls tightly and shaking with her sobs. “I have never hated poetry more,” Lady Winthrop said into Rosalie’s neck. “Mr. Aster’s poem... He was reading when it happened—an ode to water, if you can believe it, how it rushes endlessly, never disappears, always comes back to its source. It was a bad omen. I felt the Lord—no, the Devil in that poem. Your father turned to me to make a joke, ask why my face had gone so pale, and then, and then...”

“Never mind that,” came Anna’s voice, sharper than Rosalie expected. “We do not need to know what happened, not now.”

Her mother drew back, releasing her daughters, and wiping her eyes on a cloth one of the parlor maids had brought forward. “You mean you do not want to hear it, Anna. I know you too well. But you must know what happened. When I think of my own father, when he passed, I knew nothing, and it followed me. It will follow you...”

“You are talking about him as if he is dead already,” said Anna, her eyes burning with anger. “I said we do not need to know what happened now, standing in the hall, where the staff is watching.” Her tone softened slightly with the effort of an olive branch being extended. “Where is he now, Mother?”

“He is upstairs.” Lady Winthrop blew her nose. “Doctor Brown was already waiting for us when he arrived last night.”

“And is he awake?” Anna pressed.

Lady Winthrop’s silence answered the question before her words could. “He has not spoken since we brought him home,” she added. “But, Anna, don’t⁠—”

Anna was already gone by the time her name was spoken. Rosalie, who had been mostly silent up until then, gathered her mother’s hands in her own and led her into the drawing room. She had no idea what to say or feel. She had consoled so many friends through hardship and losses. But it was different when it was her own mother, and her own father whose life lay on the line.

“Now you’re crying too,” Lady Winthrop said, caressing Rosalie’s cheek with the back of her hand. “You need not stay with me. Go with Anna. Go and see your father; you must see him eventually, Rosie.”

Nodding, Rosalie left and went up the stairs. The door to her father’s room was open, and soft but steady voices emanated from inside. She paused in the doorway and watched. The physician bent over the bed and talked with Anna, who knelt at her father’s bedside, clutching his hand.