Page 33 of The Duke’s Masked Wallflower

“He asked for me, Rosalie,” Emily said, spinning in a circle in the middle of the Sutton solar with her arms spread wide. “He asked for my hand, came here in person to ask yesterday, and my mother said yes. I am to be married to Thomas, by the end of the Season if the banns go smoothly, which they will, because my father has already spoken to the vicar and there is nothing left now for anyone to object to... Isn’t it marvelous?”

“But how?” Rosalie rose from her seat, coming to take Emily by the shoulders. She had only arrived ten minutes ago for tea ahead of the musicale and had barely sat down. “Your mother swore you would never marry him, and certainly his family’s station could not have changed so much in so little time.”

“Of course not. Thomas is still the son of a collier, but his uncle is richer than rich. My mother found out through some friend of a friend. They say he may be knighted by the end of the year. Something to do with imports, or exports, a contribution to...” She laughed giddily, jumping up and down. “As if that matters! When my mother found out, my father said enough was enough. They were good enough. It turned out he had more spine than any of us gave him credit for.”

Rosalie smiled, so happy for her friend, yet not quite as convinced of her parents’ altruism as Emily was. Rank was important, certainly. But money mattered a great deal too.

Emily continued: “He told my mother that he would not have his own daughter’s happiness weighed against a coat of arms. And my mother cried for an hour before she was forced to agree with him. Now she has already begun discussing where the wedding should be held. We are meeting with his uncle tomorrow evening to discuss the details. Thomas wrote that his uncle wants to buy us a house!”

Rosalie watched Emily walk past, throwing herself into a chair by the window with an exhausted sort of bliss. “However we got here, I am so happy for you, Emily... I hardly thought things could be so sweet for you.”

“So sweet indeed...” Emily closed her eyes and sighed happily. But her eyes opened again, and Rosalie felt the air in the room shift. “But there is one thing I do not understand...”

Rosalie braced herself, sitting opposite her friend. She looked over her shoulder at the closed door and held her gaze there while Emily said the inevitable.

“Thomas said that the reason he did not write was that I did not come to him the night on the terrace, and so he thought I meant to withdraw my agreement to marry him—that something had happened to change my mind. Eventually, he realized that did not matter. He loved me anyway and knew I was in an impossible position. But Rosalie...” She could not bear to turn around. “How can this be when you told me you went to him?”

Not so deep inside her, she knew it was only a matter of time before the truth would surface. She supposed it was better now than earlier, now that Emily and Thomas had been undecided, and she and the Duke of Hartmere were known to be openly courting—even if that was a lie.

At the thought of the word, a lie, Rosalie began to cry. She pressed her face into her shoulder and let her muslin sleeves absorb her tears. But nothing could hide them indefinitely from Emily. She rushed over and knelt in front of Rosalie, turning her head so she would look at her.

“I’m not angry that you lied to me,” Emily said, her brown eyes wet with sincere forgiveness, her brows knitted in concern. “I realized in hindsight that it was an awful thing I asked you to do. I noticed this distance between you and me after the night of the masquerade, and I knew I had made a terrible mistake. No woman should ask of her most loyal friend to betray herself in the way I made you betray yourself.”

“It’s... I am...” Rosalie could barely speak. Her throat felt raw and constricted.

“It’s all right. I know. You can be mad at me. It’s all my fault.”

“It’s not.” Rosalie sobbed, digging her nails into her palms. “I lied to you.”

“I forgive you.”

“About more than you think, Emily. There is more that I have not told you.” She felt the torrent of the truth rising to the surface. She couldn’t stop it now that she had found her voice again. It all came out.

“I went on the terrace to kiss him. I did. But it was so dark, and I was so afraid. When I saw a gentleman standing where you told me someone would stand, I kissed him without thinking twice. But it wasn’t Thomas. I must have missed him by minutes only. It was someone else, and I, and I...”

“Oh, no.” Emily looked nauseated. “Don’t tell me he⁠—”

“He did not hurt me. But in the morning, he discovered who I was, and he called on me at the house, and ever since we have been bound by this mistake of mine, and he offered me a way to make it right, and I accepted and now...”

She went quiet. When she dared to look at her friend, Emily’s eyes flitted back and forth in thought. Her skirts made a pool around her. They were floating in this story, the sun coming in harshly through the grids across the windows. A slash over her chest.

“That man was the Duke of Hartmere,” Emily said, gasping. “But of course, it was. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

When Rosalie nodded, she leaned back. “What did he offer you? You said⁠—”

“We had been seen together so many times... And when he asked why I kissed him, I did not want to expose you and Thomas, so I told him the first thing I could think of, that I wanted to make another man jealous.”

“And then Mr. Sinclair arrived in the picture.”

“Yes.” Rosalie was ashamed. “Poor Mr. Sinclair. The Duke of Hartmere said we could pretend to be courting in order to make him more jealous, and that such a thing would guarantee his long-term interest in me as a bride. And a gentleman like him has his own reasons too for wanting to pretend to be spoken for.”

“What a thing to risk. Do you not think Mr. Sinclair would have asked for your hand anyway?”

Rosalie shook her head. “I cannot say. I think maybe he would. But I have been disregarded so many times before that I thought anything was worth trying. Now I worry I have doomed my only real courtship instead. And... The Duke of Hartmere is not an easy man to be in a partnership with. He is not cruel to me. It’s not that.”

“He has been too good to you,” Emily concluded. “You like him too much. I saw it at the park. I thought that was just the way you were. And he is so handsome, and his title, of course... But he is using you, Rosalie.”

“Am I not using him?”