“That’s just piffle,” Mary erupted.
“I destroyed him, Mary. You were there. You saw what happened. I broke him.”
“Obviously not. He is still standing and has done very well for himself.”
“But nothing is the same between us.”Not mentally, Rose thought.Physically it is so much the same, or better, but mentally his anger is always there, just below the surface.
“You just need time to be together.”
“He hates me, Mary.” The tears welled behind her eyes again. “Deep down, I know he hates me for hurting him so badly.”
“Then why would he ask you to marry him?”
“Out of pity, out of charity.”
“I’ll take pity. I’ll take anything that keeps you away from the Duke.”
Rose smiled a watery smile. “You can only say that because it is not you he despises.”
Mary grabbed her shoulders. “Listen to me, Rose, you need to accept.”
“I already said no.”
Again, she watched Mary’s gamut of emotions.
“Rose, you have truly taken leave of your senses. You are not of right mind.”
“I cannot marry Will Browning for convenience.”
“Why not? It seems you have agreed to marry everyone else for precisely that. I refuse to believe you were in love with Ambrose Barrington, and as for his repulsive brother…”
“You don’t understand,” Rose said flatly.
“No. I don’t.”
Mary looked mutinous. She had had exactly the same expression when they were small when Rose would not play the game she wanted.
“Do you love Will?” She demanded now.
“Yes,” Rose replied, and then both she and Mary looked equally shocked. Rose had never admitted to herself that her overwhelming feeling for Will Browning was love, and Mary seemed stunned at how easily she had secured the admission.
“You do love him,” she said triumphantly.
Rose could have rowed back immediately and claimed she had not meant that, or just admit the turmoil roiling through her body and have someone to talk to about it at last. Even if that someone was Mary, to whom she couldn’t ever tell the whole story.
“Yes, I love him,” Rose chose to say, the flow of her tears resuming as soon as she started speaking, so she was forced to say it around her sobs. “I have tried so hard not to. I tried to forget him, but he has always been next to me, for years, even when he was away and I was here. That is why I would never visit London. I had to stay as far away from him as possible.”
Mary did not embrace her again. She appeared to be sitting stock still, listening.
“The attraction between us is so strong, I can’t fight it. It takes everything I have to stay away from him.”
“Then don’t,” Mary urged.
“I have to.”
“Why? Admit you made a mistake and set it right. If Will had asked you to marry him before Mama and Papa died, would you have said yes?”
Rose lifted her tear-filled eyes to Mary’s. She knew Mary did now know what she was asking, but Rose could answer her as if she did.