Maybe everything really will be all right. Maybe this was the best thing that ever could have happened. Maybe she’ll get to tell Rosalie tomorrow that—
“A tea so wonderful it’ll force Mr.Dean to propose to you, and once you’re engaged, his father will simply have to cease discussing the past. We’ll be the talk of the town then, for all the right reasons, won’t we?”
Catherine withers, forcing herself to nod, her stomach plummeting, hope splintering into jagged pieces. She thought they’d turned a corner here—thought that Mother might finally bewilling to stand on her own, be proud ofherself, without needing Catherine’s marriage to be the picture-perfect celebrated story.
Instead, she has a single week to make sure Mr.Dean doesn’t propose.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Rosalie
“We couldn’t have done this in the afternoon?” Rosalie asks, too exhausted and sweaty to be embarrassed about her petulance.
It’s not that she doesn’t want to see Catherine. But it’s early, and humid, and she feels rather bloated and gross. Worse, she doesn’t have a plan. Mother and Aunt Genevieve’s story still pierces at her heart. And beside it, guilt for disobeying both of her parents squeezes at her throat.
“Do youwantCatherine to marry bloody Mr.Dean?” Christopher huffs, breathing hard next to her, while Amalie walks on his other side as if it’s no strain at all to climb up the wooded hill on Bathampton Down.
“Your mother would have gotten suspicious if it was any later,” MissWrigsby says on her other side, looking equally unaffected by their trek.
Rosalie doesn’t know which one of them told Miss Wrigsby, but she’s oddly grateful to have another adult along for this... debacle in the making.
“If we could cease with feeling sorry for ourselves, we could get back to the matter at hand,” Amalie says.
“Right,” Rosalie says, blowing out a haggard breath as she bats a small branch out of her way.
“You’re sure Aunt Genevieve can’t convince Mother to justtellMrs.Pine? Surely once she understands her reasoning...” Christopher says, petering off as both Rosalie and MissWrigsby shake their heads.
“She’d rather take it to the grave,” MissWrigsby says. “You’ll have to force her into it, somehow.”
“It’s thehowthat worries me,” Christopher says. “She never does anything she doesn’t want to do.”
Except for ruining her best friend to protect her sister-in-law-to-be. But Rosalie doesn’t think Mother did that truly of her own free will. She didn’t see an alternative, trapped into a situation with no good options.
Rosalie knows how she feels.
“Do you think—” Christopher starts, just as they make it to the small clearing at the top of the hill.
But Rosalie’s no longer listening. Catherine, Henrietta, and Catherine’s lady’s maid, MissTeit, stand in the center of the clearing. Catherine looks a bit worse for wear, her hair frizzy beneath her brown bonnet, cheeks pink. It takes Rosalie a moment to realize she’s wearing the cream dress Rosalie bought her, now snagged with brambles beneath her askew gray pelisse. Rosalie’s breath catches in her chest.
Henrietta, by contrast, looks entirely unruffled, but Rosalie doesn’t care.
She wants to cross the tall grass, crunching twigs and dandelions to run to Catherine. Wants to throw her arms around her. Wants to ask her how she is, and what’s been going on. Wants to push her up against the plentiful trees and—
“It’s almost worse than watching her kiss her silly, isn’t it?”
Rosalie stiffens, looking over to find Christopher and Amalie standing side by side behind her, grinning.
“Well, it’s not like they’ve been subtle about it all this time,” Amalie says as they come to the middle of the clearing.
“Hey!” Catherine protests.
“It does rather look like hearts are falling out of your eyes,” Henrietta adds.
Rosalie looks back and forth among her friends and her brother. She meets Catherine’s eyes and Catherine merely shrugs.
“I do spend an awful lot of time staring at you,” she admits.
Catherine looks good enough to eat. Actually, she’d rather like to—
