Page 61 of The Duke’s Masked Wallflower

When she could bring herself to look at her father, Rosalie gasped. He lay still against the pillows. His color was waxen where it should have been ruddy, his breathing shallow and audible, filling the whole small room. His stomach, rounded from years of over-indulgence, rose slowly beneath the covers. His eyes were closed, and he did not open them when Rosalie entered and spoke to him.

“Oh, Father...” She reached for his arm and felt Anna lean her head against her hip. “We are here. Oh, please... Oh...”

She wanted to wish him to wake up but held back. Doctor Brown worked on the other side of the bed, sighing as he mixed something into a glass of water, and the mixture turned cloudy.

“He is doing better than when he arrived,” he said softly, sending a sad smile at Rosalie over her father.

“Is that not a sign that death is fast approaching?” Anna said, rising to her feet. Now that Rosalie could see her face, she could tell that Anna had finally allowed herself to cry. “If he wakes up too soon and seems too healthy, then he will die. I know it. It’s better if he stays like this.”

A shot of pain went through Rosalie. “Why do you talk like that?” she asked, frowning. “It’s not right. Father can hear you.”

“Father would not want me to lie to you.”

“You don’t know anything,” Rosalie cried, tired of her sister’s confidence in everything, especially the bad things. Father will die. Mother will be broken. It is going to rain. You cannot make the duke love you without my help. “You always think you know exactly what will happen, but you don’t. You are not as clever as you think you are, and you are not nearly as kind as you ought to be.”

She felt Anna’s hand go out to grab her arm, but Rosalie stormed out of the room. Racing to her bedchamber, she slammed the door shut and threw herself on the bed, grabbing a pillow to muffle the sound of her crying, as her sobs wracked her body. Her chest ached as she prayed for her father, for everything to go back to the way it had been.

Rosalie did not know how long she had been there, alone, when someone knocked on the door and entered without waiting for permission.

“Rosalie, oh dear, oh no...” It was Emily, still dressed in her coat and hat. She flung her arms around Rosalie and kissed her. “I came the moment I heard. My mother is downstairs with Lady Winthrop... I am so sorry.”

“What if he does not recover?”

“You cannot think that way.”

Rosalie pulled back far enough to look at her friend. “If he dies... everything changes. Mother will have no one. I will have no one, and I will have wasted the last weeks of his life playing at courtships and believing that things might finally be possible between me and⁠—”

She stopped herself, horror rising in her chest. Her preemptive grief was not just for her father. It was for the life she had never lived. The family of her own she still did not have. The security of a husband. The love of a man she could never have. The knowledge that her father could pass in peace because both his daughters were settled.

Rosalie thought about Mr. Sinclair, of the games she had been playing with him while chasing Gabriel at his house party, making a fool of herself in more ways than one.

“I need to see Mr. Sinclair,” she whispered, untangling herself from Emily’s embrace. “I need to tell him... He must know...”

“Stop.” Emily’s expression sharpened with concern. “Rosalie, you are not thinking clearly. Grief is not the moment to go making decisions you cannot take back. Whatever it is you feel you must say to him, it will still be true tomorrow, or the day after, once you have slept, and once we know more about your father’s condition. Do not forget the duke⁠—”

Rosalie stood and wiped her face with the back of her hands. “I must forget him. I have waited and waited, and now it may be too late. Do you not see?” She gestured at the door. “Time will not stop for any of us, least of all for women who do not seize their lives in their hands.”

Emily shook her head. Around her neck was the string of diamonds she had received after her engagement. “Promise me you will wait a few days before doing anything rash. Promise me, Rosalie.”

Maybe Emily had been fortunate. She had lived a love like in the stories and won. But it would not be like that for Rosalie. Time was running out for stories and true love, and promises that could be made and kept.

Twenty

“And, again, you are quite certain that you wish to come with me?” Elisabeth stood in the front hall, drawing on her gloves as she said this, her face still swollen from the trip to London, lack of sleep, or some grief she had not voiced to him. “I only mean to deliver the painting, and that is not a task that requires both of us. I would not be offended if you remained here, at home.”

Gabriel stopped at the base of the stairs, and his hands went to his cravat to adjust it for the fifth time that afternoon. “Quite certain, yes.” He sighed and ripped the garment off. His valet handed his coat to the butler and crossed over to tie his cravat. “Why do you insist on questioning me about this? It is only a social call.”

Elisabeth watched as they carried the artwork, covered with a protective sheet of paper, out of the building and into the carriage. “You have not been yourself since Surrey,” she said.

“Have any of us been quite the same since the news of the baron?” He nodded as the valet stepped back to assess his work. Gabriel no longer felt like he was choking, which was an improvement.

His question silenced his aunt, which had not been his intention, though the implication was not untrue. She had taken the baron’s collapse harder than Gabriel had expected; harder, he thought, than a friendly acquaintance could account for. She had spoken of little else since their return, the trips she and the Winthrops had planned together that coming year, some scheme involving Provence she’d only half mentioned before, all of it now suspended indefinitely.

“Well... We had agreed on the Bologna piece, and that is what he should get,” she said now, stepping toward the open doors. “He wanted it for his study, and I thought it could not hurt to bring it to him now, whatever state he is in, as a gift instead of a purchase.” She looked away. “A man ought to have something to look forward to while he lies in his sickbed.”

“You shan’t go in to him.”

“Of course not,” Elisabeth snapped, some energy returning to her at last. Anger was funny in that way, especially with his aunt. “Who do you take me for?”