“As well as can be expected,” Eugenia replied, with a sigh of her own. “Now, remember not to say anything that will tax his powers too much. He knows that the wedding will take place in three days, of course, but I have kept the circumstances from him and you must do the same. Do you understand, Rose?”
“I do,” Rose confirmed. “I shall tell Father nothing that will distress him.”
Summoning as cheery a smile as she could from the bottom her heart, she walked slowly upstairs to the Duke of Westvale’s chambers.
“Is that you, Rose?” said a weak, papery voice as she entered her father’s bedroom.
“It is me, Father,” Rose confirmed, coming to his bedside and kissing his rather thin and sallow cheek.
The Duke of Westvale had always been a big, booming man of great cheer and excellent appetite with the same fair hair as Rose and Magnus and the solid barrel chest and shoulders of Edwin. In the past year, he seemed to have aged and shrunk like someone cursed in a fairy story, becoming a shadow of his former self.
Rose had always known that her father was many years older than her slim, busy and bright-eyed mother but part of her had not believed it until that apoplectic attack had laid him low.
The maid who had been sitting and keeping watch in a corner stood, curtseyed and left them alone.
“My rambling Rose,” said the old man affectionately, taking her hand in his as she took a seat at his bedside. “How pretty you look, but how sad. I told Eugenia I wanted to see you by yourself. You have been so very quiet before your mother and the boys.”
“I miss having you with us, Father,” Rose told him in a trembling voice, hoping that he would not ask her a direct question that force her either to lie or disobey her mother. “It is not the same downstairs without you, especially now.”
“Now that you are getting married, eh?” he said with a smile, the thought evidently giving him pleasure. “It is good to know that someone will be taking care of you after I am gone, Rose. You’ve always been a good girl but Edwin and Magnus are like their mother sometimes, aren’t they? They don’t understand my Rose like I do.”
At this, Rose could not help the tears that ran down her face, even when her father saw them and frowned.
“What is wrong? Not a lover’s tiff, I hope? Or does your dress not fit? I know that everything is being done very quickly on my account and I am sorry for that although I am glad that the wedding is to be here at Westvale Park.”
“I will have to leave you, Father, and leave Westvale Park,” Rose confessed, giving him a small and hopefully un-alarming part of the truth as she wiped her cheeks. “I don’t want to go and I am frightened.”
“Oh my little Rose,” he sighed and drew her head down against his thin shoulder to stroke her hair and pat her back as though she were a little child again. “It must be frightening to start a new life but you are braver than you know and you will make a wonderful duchess."
“I hope so,” she said softly, knowing that even if she did not, it would be her life.
“Tell me about your duke,” suggested her father. “That must cheer you up. Tell me of this dashing young man, Dorian Voss, who has stolen my only daughter’s heart.”
Rose took a deep breath and steeled herself.
“He is very handsome,” Rose began, thinking that this was the most straightforward area where she need mind her words the least. “He is tall and strong with black hair and the darkest eyes you have ever seen. I don’t believe I have ever seen a man so handsome as the Duke of Ravenhill.”
Her father gave a little chuckle.
“All the girls must have been after him, but my Rose has caught him,” he remarked.
“We caught each other,” Rose demurred, thinking of the mishap in the garden that had trapped them both in this mess.
“Of course you did,” said the old duke, patting her cheek. “There isn’t a young woman to match you in London, although I know I’m partial. Not for looks nor sweetness of character. I hope Dorian Voss knows he’s a very lucky man.”
“Josephine’s husband, the Duke of Ashbourne is an old friend of his. He says the Duke of Ravenhill is a fine man and Josephine says he will be a good husband.”
“Cassius Emerton is a good judge of character,” nodded her father, seeming satisfied with this endorsement. “It all sounds very well indeed. But what do you like most about your young man, apart from his handsome face?”
Rose was briefly lost for words. She and her betrothed were virtually strangers, but she must say something.
“He is kind,” she replied, the answer coming to her in a flash. “He listens to me and considers me, Father.”
Rose recalled how the Duke of Ravenhill had made sure to wrap her shawl back around her shoulders and neck in the garden when she froze in shock, even as her brothers charged down the path towards them, and a small crowd gathered to watch. He had known how much worse things could go for her if anyone had spotted that small mark of passion.
She remembered too how he had sent her family from the room in order to complete his strange proposal, neither bullying her into a decision nor reproaching her for constraining his own will.
These were such small kindnesses, she knew, but they were presently all she had. Thankfully they seemed to be enough for her father who had nodded and closed his eyes again.
