“Yes. I would have said yes then,” she said sadly.But, thankfully for you and me, I didn’t,she thought.
“Well, take it back to that point. Turn the clock back right now.”
“Don’t you think I would if I could?” Rose said plaintively.
“I don’t understand why you can’t!” Mary could not hide her exasperation.
“Because he can’t.”
“How do you know that? Did you ask him?”
“Because I can see it in his eyes. I don’t need to ask him. It is in his eyes when he kisses me.”
“He kissed you?” Mary half-shouted.
Rose looked hurriedly at the drawing room door and ssshed her sister.
“Yes,” she said softly. “We have had a few chances to be together.”
“And?” Mary was agog.
“It always ends in heartache and anger. He will never forgive me for abandoning him.”
“Well, doing it twice probably isn’t helping,” Mary said ruefully, putting her hand on Rose’s knee. “You never know, if you marry him, that might change over the years when there are no longer obstacles between you.”
“I can’t take that risk, Mary,” Rose shook her head.
“But if you are in the same house, day in, day out—”
“That is not his intention.”
“But you said he wanted to marry you.”
“A marriage of convenience. Separate houses, separate beds, not even wanted as much as a mistress.” Rose’s voice cracked on the word mistress.
“You must have misunderstood him. He can’t have meant that.”
“He said it very clearly. He said we could be married, and then he would not bother me. He would secure me a house and give me money and then leave me to my own devices.”
Mary looked so confused. “But what about children? Would you be expected to raise them alone?”
“I don’t think they were part of the game plan. Just a business arrangement.”
Rose looked at her sister beseechingly. “I couldn’t do it, Mary. It would break me. I would rather be hidden away in this castle, enduring Ernest Barrington, than sitting in a house somewhere wondering if Will might choose to visit or be happy cavorting with his lady friends in London.”
“Does he have lady friends?” Mary asked.
Rose looked at her askance. “What do you think? Looking like that?”
Mary accepted that but asked, “Why has he never married then?”
“He’s only thirty-one, not an advanced age for a man to take a wife. Maybe he just hasn’t met the right one yet.”
“You were the right one, Rose,” Mary took possession of both her hands again. “I have no doubt you were the right one.”
“Maybe, at one time, I would have agreed with you, but he told me he met someone else after I married Ambrose. He said he sought solace in her.”
“Well, you can’t really blame him for that!”