Page 48 of The Duke’s Masked Wallflower

“Terrifying more like,” Rosalie said more sharply than she intended. Her eyes drifted to her mother’s easel, where a portrait was drying, featuring Rosalie and her father, seated side by side in the garden.

I cannot tell my mother the truth; she thought privately that this invitation strikes me as odd in more ways than one. Why would he invite me to a party and thereby draw me outside of London, where all the suitors are supposed to be? Unless he plans to match-make me there at Wide River Abbey—a theatre for love, in which I am the player, and he is the director.

Wide River Abbey was located thirty miles south of London, in a fold of Surrey countryside that bordered West Sussex. The Winthrop carriage wound through the country at a glacial pace by Rosalie’s standards, church spires rising in the distance over the hedgerows and into the clear blue sky.

After making the necessary cultural stops in Epsom and elsewhere, the Winthrop party arrived in the little village of Ockley, which did, in fact, sit on a very wide river, a tributary of the Thames. When the house finally came into view, Rosalie, who had told herself firmly on the journey down that she would not be impressed by anything the Duke of Hartmere had to offer, found herself entirely unable to keep the promise.

The abbey was old, with a real medieval foundation. Its stone had turned honey-colored over time. The western wing was wrapped entirely in ivy. A waterway ran along the eastern edge of the grounds, wide and lazy, throwing back the afternoon light in silver ribbons. Little stone bridges crossed the water, leading to the fields beyond. Birds flew eastward overhead. It reminded her of illustrations she had seen in a book of early Tudor history.

“It looks like something out of a story,” she said in awe as the carriage climbed the drive. “Small but big all at the same time.”

“A ghost story?” Lady Winthrop asked, gently rousing her husband from sleep with caresses and pokes. “Or a love story?”

Only time will tell, thought Rosalie.

Her nerves set in the moment she stepped down from the carriage, turning in a circle to admire the house from up close. The huge entrance cast them in shadow. Rosalie peered through the front windows, glimpsing curtains, candelabras, and potted plants in the nearest windows. It struck her that the house reminded her of Gabriel very much, though she did not know why.

“Don’t I know?” she asked herself as they brought out their bags. These are the library windows he must have grown up reading behind. These are the steps his boots crossed ten thousand times before I even knew his name. A house like this held a man’s whole history in its walls, and she was walking right into the middle of it.

For his part, Gabriel was reported to be an entirely different man, once his own gravel was under his boots. He did not come to greet them. That was Lady Chipping’s chore. She looked lighter at Wide River Abbey, her face flushed with healthy color, her hair worn in braids around her crown.

“You won’t be offended, chérie, if my nephew is absent most of the time,” she said to Rosalie once they were alone, walking through the lower floor of the abbey. Her parents had gone upstairs to rest—and the rest of the guests were also occupied. “He has not returned to his home for many months. And each month passes for him like a year.”

“What does he do here that is so different?” Rosalie asked, though she knew internally that she should not have been asking questions about a man she could not have.

“It is difficult to describe. To me, he returns to his boyhood, but maybe you will not experience him in that sense. He goes riding in the morning, walking in the afternoon... Always outside, even when the weather is unwelcoming. He is gone now with the gentlemen, riding to a nearby town. I do not know if they plan to return for the evening meal.”

They stopped in front of a large library. Rosalie peered inside, ignoring the tightness in her chest at the thought that she would not see Gabriel that day. She pictured him surrounded by his friends, stopping at inns and public houses, meeting all sorts of vagabond folk and wanton women. Though maybe that was an unfair projection.

“That is perfectly fine,” Rosalie said, forcing a smile. “I am merely glad to be invited, my lady. I expect no special treatment.”

Lady Chipping stroked the side of her face. “And yet, I suspect that you will find yourself specially treated nonetheless.”

As it turned out, Gabriel was not seen that day, and he was not seen the morning after. So, Rosalie spent her time largely with the women.

Miss Warwick, who was also missing her betrothed, took Rosalie under her wing. The rest of the party consisted primarily of her elder sister Charlotte, who insisted on being called Lottie, their female cousins, and their cousins’ many friends. Some were married, and some were not, but all of them were lovely—and loud.

They walked the gardens. They played cards very badly. Lottie was a bluestocking and proud, and she was delighted to discover that Rosalie had read enough to argue back with her about Vathek when the topic arose, during a dinner picnic by the river.

When their literary talk had concluded, Lottie turned to Rosalie and smiled.

“You are not nearly as quiet as I expected you to be,” she declared. They sat on the bank with their skirts tucked beneath them, while the other women followed a group of ducklings down the water under the ebbing daylight. “I have met often with the Duke of Hartmere since Tiffany’s engagement, and I expected the woman he courted to be...”

“To be what?” Rosalie asked when Lottie hesitated.

“Completely and hopelessly vapid.”

“What reasons did he give you for thinking he would have such taste in women?”

“I cannot say for certain,” Lottie replied, tapping a finger to her mouth. “He just seemed that way inclined. When a gentleman is handsome but also charming, it makes me doubt his taste in many things. That is why my husband is ugly and hermitic. Men like the duke do not need to be shrewd, so they pick the ripest fruit, but most often that fruit is infected with worms.”

“Which explains why they are vapid.”

“Brain worms?” Lottie laughed. “Yes, let’s go with that.”

Rosalie nodded, but she felt a little uneasy talking about other women in that manner. “I do not believe all beautiful women are empty-headed.”

“Certainly not.” Lottie gestured between them. “Case in point. You and I are lovely and not lacking in spirit or intellect. But His Grace... I expected him to want half a woman, not a whole one. And I must ask... What is it that you see in him? You do not strike me as a woman easily lured in by good looks or a title. Is someone pressuring you to be courted by him? The press? I heard the story of how you met at that dinner party—the grape.”