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“I didn’t know it was you either until you got down from your horse. I couldn’t see you from beneath my hood.”
“But then…”
“It was not proper what I was doing. I didn’t want you to recognize me.”
“Who cares about proper?” Will threw his hands up, slightly exasperated.
Rose span to face him. “I do! I have to.”
She watched his expression darken.
“Ah yes, I forgot.” His tone was suddenly bitter. “Rose the duchess”.
“That’s not fair, Will. I have to respect my station. I can’t just do anything I want. There are consequences.”
Will didn’t look up from his sodden breeches.
“Trust me, I am well aware of your consequences,” he ground out.
She was looking at the top of his head, his dark curls now flattened in the rain. She felt a sudden, wounding flash of guilt. He looked up, straight into it.
“This is what I was afraid of,” Rose said softly. “Of your anger; your annoyance. I was scared to tell you it was me.”
He said nothing then, looking away from her to stare out across the fields.
She did not want to argue with him; she just couldn’t let him go on kissing and caressing her because she was afraid he might not stop. Or worse still, thatshemight not.
“I did not know you had come home,” She tried to break the silence.
“It is no longer my home,” he snapped back.
“How can this not be your home?” she chided. “All our memories are here.”
“I left them behind,” he said tartly. “Like you did!”
The wonder of the morning had disintegrated into upset and recrimination. She didn’t blame him. How could she? She had nothing to say to make it better. She knew she could say she was sorry, but how would that help? So she just sat, plucking the wet fabric away from her rapidly chilling legs, knowing she should go back to the castle but unwilling and unable, to walk away from him.
“How is your family?” She ventured, acknowledging to herself the ridiculousness of a parlor conversation in the middle of a soaked field.
“My father is dead.”
“Oh.” Her sudden, obviously heartfelt show of emotion seemed to crack the armor William Browning had donned around himself.
“My mother called me home when it was time.” He bowed his head now, not looking at Rose. “I had not seen him for many years. London had preoccupied me.”
“I am so sorry, Will,” she managed. “He was a truly lovely man.”
“He was very fond of you.”
She knew that. Rose was aware that Benjamin Browning had wanted nothing more than to see her and his son married in the local church and provide him with a clutch of grandchildren. In any other circumstances, that would have been the case.
“It seems I did not come home soon enough.”
She looked at him quizzically.
“Not soon enough to grant my father his dying wish anyway, which he only revealed on his deathbed.”
“What was his wish?” She asked tremulously, wondering if she really wanted to know.
