Page 217 of Courting the Wrong Duke

“Extremely.”

Gabriel climbed to his feet and took a hopeful step toward her. Isabella promptly raised one of the sticks between them.

“Do not become overconfident.”

He stopped.

Rosalind laughed again and quietly stepped away from the balustrade before either of them discovered they had an audience.

Sunlight poured through the tall windows of the gallery, warm and brilliant against her face. She closed her eyes and stood in it for a moment, thinking of everything waiting for them beyond this peaceful house.

Tomorrow they would return to London. There would be questions and scandal, and her mother would undoubtedly weep when she finally held Papa again. William would have to face what remained of his family after secrets buried for decades were dragged into the light. Some wounds would take years to heal, and others perhaps never would.

Nothing would be quite as it had been before.

Rosalind found that she did not want it to be.

Once, freedom had looked like the painting in the Sinclair gallery. An endless road beneath a strange bright sky, with no one waiting at the end of it and no one who knew the traveler well enough to tell him who he ought to be.

She had thought being unknown was the same thing as being free.

Now her father knew the woman she had become. Isabella knew nearly every secret she possessed. And upstairs was a man who had seen Rosalind at her most stubborn, frightened, unreasonable, and determined and apparently intended to marry her anyway.

Perhaps freedom was not disappearing beyond the horizon where no one could find her.

Perhaps it was being known completely and still choosing the road for herself.

Rosalind opened her eyes.

Another laugh floated up from the lawn, and she glanced toward the windows.

She had, after all, come upstairs because she needed to speak with Isabella.

And considering what she had just overheard, it seemed they both had news to discuss.

Rosalind smiled and headed for the stairs.

Gabriel had enjoyed quite enough of Isabella’s attention for one afternoon.

Epilogue

Three Weeks Later

On the morning of his wedding, William found his mother cutting roses.

He stopped at the edge of the garden path and watched her for several moments before announcing himself.

His mother stood beneath the climbing roses with a small pair of shears in one hand and a basket hooked over her arm. She had already filled half of it with pale blossoms, though William suspected she had no earthly need for them.

His mother had always gardened when she wished to think.

William knew that now.

Three weeks earlier, when he had returned from Wales with a healing wound in his side and more questions than he knew how to ask, he had found her in almost precisely the same place.

She had taken one look at him and known.

Not everything, perhaps. But enough.