“In your opinion, Dorian, we ought to pull down vast swathes of English traditions and mores with the crumbling houses and start all over again,” chuckled Cassius Emerton. “Nor can I entirely disagree, as long as your replacements are better rather than worse. I ask only that you and Levi do not start your revolution at Ashbourne Castle.”
The two other dukes smiled at this, and then at one another, giving Rose the hope that Dorian and Levi might be friends. While very different personalties, they did seem to have certain views and experiences in common.
When the dinner gong sounded, the others began to rise to their feet, stretching and yawning, while Dorian strolled over to a shelf to replace a book he had been browsing. Rose felt she had almost been falling asleep in the warmth of the fire and a woolen blanket she had pulled over herself.
As she stood and stepped away from the chair, another wave of dizziness took hold of her. Levi Collins saw first what was happening and sprang across the room to catch Rose by elbow and shoulder before she could fall.
Then Dorian was there, shoving Levi rather roughly aside and lifting Rose in his arms as the room spun around her. What was happening?
“I have her,” Dorian’s voice sounded, rather aggressively. “Rose? Rose?”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she murmured as Dorian sat down, cradling her in his arms. “This has happened three times this week.”
“Three times?” Dorian repeated with alarm, his arms tightening. “Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Because you weren’t there, Rose wanted to cry out, but felt too tired even to rail against him.
“Should we call out the physician?” asked the voice of the Duke of Ashbourne, somewhere out of Rose’s view.
Did she need a physician? Rose couldn’t say that she exactly felt ill, only strange and occasionally dizzy. It was surely not worth the trouble of calling a physician out on a cold winter night. Turning her head to explain this, she saw Josephine standing on her toes to whisper something in Cassius’ ear.
The Duke of Ashbourne nodded at whatever was said and some of the immediate concern evaporated from his face.
“I think perhaps Rose only needs to rest,” Josephine said aloud then, coming to her friend’s side with a reassuring smile. “I shall have a tray brought to your room for dinner, if you wish to retire early, Rose. We can send someone for the physician tomorrow, if you don’t feel better.”
The offer was tempting, but at the same time, it would mean being alone again and losing perhaps her only chance to talk to Dorian.
“Stay with me, Dorian,” Rose whispered to him. “Please, don’t go.”
In response, he took a deep breath and nodded, stroking her hair. How handsome, tender and pained his face looked now, all at once.
“I had better take Rose upstairs to rest,” he told the rest of the group, and Rose could hear eagerness, concern and reluctance competing in his tone. “You can send up dinner for both of us. Where is Rose’s room?”
“Next door to yours, Dorian,” Cassius said flatly, as if stating the blindingly obvious. “With a connecting door and shared dressing room. You are married, you know…”
Despite Rose’s reassurances that her faintness had passed, Dorian insisted on supporting her up the stairs and it was all she could do to persuade him that he need not carry her. Kneeling beside her as she sat down on her bed, he took off her slippers and eased her feet up onto the cover.
“Stay with me, Dorian,” Rose said again as he stood, sensing that he might flee to his own room next door, or a chair in the corner.
She held out her hand to him and to Rose’s relief, he took it between both of his and then sat down beside her on the bed.
“Hold me,” she added, looking up at his face. “Please, hold me, Dorian.”
For a moment the Duke of Ravenhill paused, his face deeply conflicted, but then, with a long sight that was almost a groan, he did as Rose asked and lay down beside her on the bed, bringing her head onto his shoulder and holding her close to him, one hand automatically stroking her hair.
“I wish we could stay like this forever,” Rose admitted after some minutes had passed and Dorian’s muscles were relaxing beneath her head. “There is so much I don’t understand but when you hold me, it doesn’t matter.”
“My Rose,” he answered with deep sadness in his voice. “I don’t want to hurt you. I could not bear it. You were trapped into this marriage against your will and if you would like a legal separation, I will arrange it, and you need never see me again… My Rose, my wife…”
Rose gasped and sat up, feeling as though Dorian had thrown a bucket of icy water over her. Perceiving her reaction, he made to sit up but Rose knew she could not let him go. Dorian’s words were like a bomb thrown into the room and the fuse must be put out before it exploded and destroyed everything.
She clambered over his prone form and seized his hands in his, pushing them back onto the pillows.
“How can you say such things, Dorian? How can you possibly suggest that to me? Never say those words again! Never!”
He looked confused but this only increased Rose’s fierceness. She felt that she might be angrier than she had ever been in her life.
Rose was Dorian’s wife and he had sworn himself to her in front of a priest and their families, even seeming determined to keep his unwilling vows in his own way. Despite their ill-starred beginnings, Rose had never felt so loved and cherished as when she was in Dorian’s bed. Yet still he had abandoned and ignored her. Well, she would not be ignored any more!
