Page 101 of Waking Roslyn

I laughed, grateful for the levity. “I’m glad you think so.”

He smiled, then sobered. “Are you ready to leave?”

I put down the card that was in my hand and nodded. “I am. My parents will be down soon, and I’m certain I’ll turn into a puddle of tears as I tell them goodbye. But yes, I am ready to leave. I’m ready to be away from this place.” This castle was so familiar, and yet the foreign worry of danger had gotten underneath my skin like an itch I couldn’t reach. Worry was my close acquaintance, but feeling the danger inside my own home was new, and horrible. “Who do you think sent the note?” I asked. The question had been haunting me since it arrived, but no matter how long I thought on it, the only reasonable guess I could come up with was Everett. He’d been openly civil to me at the ball, bordering on kind. Would he really go against his family and warn me? I didn’t know. It felt like I knew nothing at all.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It might be a scare tactic by one of the earls. Maybe they preferred it when you were gone.”

“If only I could convince them that I’m not a threat.”

“I think you hold more power than you know,” John said.

I chuckled, forcing myself not to dwell on all the pain and gloom that waited to smother me. “And therein lies the problem.”

While we waited for my parents to come down and for the carriage to be pulled around, I allowed myself the distraction of admiring the collection of flowers. I wished that I could truly enjoy what all these flowers meant. Not only had people tolerated my presence at the ball, but some gentlemen had appreciated my presence enough to send me these arrangements. I certainly didn’t lament the loss of any relationship that might have come of them. Any interest they had in me would only be political. Plus, no one other than John had caught my eye last night, and my mind was too occupied with potential danger to even allow my imagination to go down that road. Still, I could at least take in their fragrance and let the scent of flowers clear my mind and calm my nerves.

“I think I’m going to have to plant more flowers at Bridgefield,” John said from behind me.

I smiled over my shoulder at him. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you deserve more flowers. I’ve never met anyone who loves them as much as you do.”

“I do love them,” I said as I stepped to another arrangement and sampled the air above them, their fragrance bringing to mind damp greenery and sweet rolls. “But please don’t change Bridgefield’s grounds on my account.”

“Sorry, I’ve already made up my mind. There will be more flowers,” he teased.

I appreciated what he was doing. He was helping to distract me, hoping that I wouldn’t work myself back into a lather over the fact that I was once again fleeing for my life.

Except that wasn’t the only thing I was worked up over. Half of me wanted to blurt out my marriage idea to John, see if he was mortified over the idea or if he found it intriguing. I cared deeply for John. In fact, I was fairly certain that I loved him. But leaping from maybe love to a life’s commitment wasn’t something I was prepared for. Not when suggesting it might scare him off altogether.

I shoved the thought aside and bent to put my nose into a bouquet of roses, inhaling deeply as I tried not to cry.

A sharp pain hit my nose and the back of my throat. I pulled back and coughed, pinching my nose to try to ease the discomfort.

“Are you all right?” John asked, his voice full of concern as he approached me from behind.

I pulled my hand away from my nose and looked at it. There was a fine white powder on my fingers. What in the world? My body listed to one side and my head spun, but when I looked back at the roses, I could clearly see that several of the blossoms in the bouquet were coated in the dust—and I’d just inhaled it.

No…how could I have been so stupid?

I turned to face John, unsteady on my feet, and held out my hand to show him the white on my fingers, like I was presenting evidence. My heart raced and the room around me blurred. It was done. They had gotten to me, and by the heaviness in my head, it was clear I wouldn’t last long, so I wanted John to see the powder, to know what I knew. I wasn’t sure he saw it, though, because the moment I turned to look at him, his face had gone pale and he rushed forward.

I stumbled to the side as my vision dimmed. “They knew I loved flowers,” I managed to say as everything went black.

John

“Who?” I yelled at her unconscious form as I lowered her to the floor. Who knew? The earls? Their wretched sons? “Rose? Rose!”

I didn’t have to call for help. It surged in moments later. Rose’s father and mother, as well as Captain Sterling, came in as soon as they heard my shouts.

“Roslyn!” her father bellowed as he dropped to the floor beside her. “What’s happened? Did she faint? Is she alive?”

I understood his chaotic thoughts.

“Rosie!” her mother wailed as she pulled Rose into her own arms. “Wake up, love. You’re all right. You’re all right,” she said in the hysterical high pitch of a woman desperate to make her own words true.

“She was smelling the flowers, then she just collapsed,” I said, hardly believing it myself. “Rose?” I called again, even though the dead weight of her body had screamed of unconsciousness at the very least. As she lay splayed across her mother’s lap, I studied her face, noting the odd white power that clung to her nose.

Her father noticed as well. He touched it with his fingers. “What is this?”