So that is that, then,Rose thought.But no rush of panic set in. Just nothingness. A big empty slab of nothingness.
“We have to send Jacob back to London to demand what he is thinking,” Mary insisted.
‘We will do no such thing,” Rose chided. “Will is a grown man, and if he wants to get married, it is up to him. It is nothing to do with me.”
“How can you say that? How can you accept that he loves someone else?”
“Because he doesn’t!”
“What?”
“I fear Will is the victim of an overzealous mother trying to offload her reprehensible daughter.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she came to the castle when Will was there and accused him of asking her daughter to marry him.”
Mary’s expression was incredulous.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I haven’t seen you. I would have told you today. The newspaper makes it clear Lady Camilla was in her second season, which is nearly over now, and she has failed to make any match. I bet when Will walked into that ball, it was a gift from heaven.”
“And you have known this for a week? You poor soul.” Mary wrapped her arms around her sister. Rose waited for the tears to come. Nothing.
“He went back to London to try to extricate himself from the mess. It seems he didn’t.”
“But he didn’t tell you himself?”
“Maybe he didn’t know how.”
“Why are you being so calm?”
“I truly don’t know,” Rose said, mystified. “Maybe it is just a final acceptance that I can’t stop this chain of events. Maybe Ernest’s accident just gave me enough time to settle my differences with Will, and for him to find someone else, and for Ernest to turn from an angry drunk into a seemingly reasonable man. Maybe all that had to happen for me to be able to accept it.”
“Well, I don’t accept it. Whether you like it or not, I will make Jacob talk to him, man to man. You are my big sister, and you have always fixed everything for me. I will do everything I can to fix it for you.”
Rose smiled at Mary and put her arm around her. “Thank God for you, Mary. Thank God for you.”
Rose went home, taking her bubble with her. It was wrapped all around her as she went up the stairs to her bedchamber. She was still holding the scrap of the Morning Chronicle, which Mary had torn out of the paper and pressed into her hand as she left.
“You take this, you put it under your pillow, and you read it every day until you feel compelled to go straight up to London and fight for him,” she had insisted.
Rose wondered what had compelled her sister to become a modern-day Joan of Arc. She smiled as she put the paper down on her dressing table.
The truth is she couldn’t fight for him. She was betrothed to Ernest, and if society had decreed he was betrothed to Lady Camilla, then she would just have to accept it. She prayed this numbness would never wear off because she feared she would collapse in a puddle of liquid emotion if it did.
She changed her clothes and decided she would check in on Ernest for half an hour or so, given she had been out all day.
When she arrived at his room, he was not in bed but dressed and sitting up, working at a small writing table by the window.
“Ah, there you are,” he said companionably. “How was your sister?”
Screaming, Rose thought. “Very well, Your Grace,” she said. “It is nice to see you up and about.”
“I will get bedsores if I lie there any longer.”
“Who are you writing to?” She indicated the letter on the table before him.