“She won’t win. Mr.Dean will be yours, we’ll get MissPine married off,notto your brother, and we’ll be done with this.”
Her mother’s face is set, her shoulders high, eyes a little wild. She’s held this secret for longer than Rosalie’s whole life—lived with having ruined (having to ruin?) her best friend.
“Don’t you want to tell her?” Rosalie can’t help but ask. “Don’t you want to apologize? Make it right?”
Mother sighs, sliding her hand down to take Rosalie’s. “Is there anything you wouldn’t do for MissRaught or MissLinet?” Rosalie hesitates, just for a second. “If it would save them from pain—from harm—wouldn’t you do everything in your power, whatever the cost, to protect them?”
“Not if it would cause them more pain in the meantime,” Rosalie replies instantly.
But there’s a squeak of doubt there at the back of her head.Even if it made them hate her—even if they never spoke to her again—if it was for the right reason, wouldn’t she? She’d protect them no matter what the cost to her. Even if it left her alone.
Mother’s never had any other friends.
“Of course you would,” Mother says, digging the knife further into Rosalie’s already twisting stomach. “You make choices for their well-being all the time. Guiding them to the right men, making sure they make the right connections. It’s what we do.”
Rosalie’s breath catches. “It’s not the same,” she says, and even to her own ears her words are thin.
“Sometimes being right and being nice are mutually exclusive,” Mother says, squeezing Rosalie’s hand again. “And sometimes causing harm for the right reasons is the kindest thing you can do.”
Rosalie doesn’t want to believe that.
“Now, the kindest thing to do for MissPine is to ensure Mr.Sholle makes her a proposal by season’s end. This... plot you have with Christopher may encourage Mr.Sholle to man up and stake a claim, so I’ll allow it,” Mother says.
Rosalie tries to let hope drown out the horror of Mother’s ethos on the world. An ethos Rosalie has followed unquestioningly since her infancy.
“A few outings,” Mother clarifies. “Don’t let the girl fall in love with him.”
Rosalie snorts, quite out of her control.
“Your brother is charming,” Mother says, chiding. “Stranger things have happened.”
If only Mother knew the strange things Rosalie and Christopher are planning.
“I’ll get invitations sent for an outing,” Rosalie agrees, trying to push the words out around her discomfort.
Mother’s gaze turns hard again. “Promise me.”
In the face of her stern, unyielding expression, Rosalie can do nothing more than nod, even as anxiety crushes her chest. “I won’t tell her.”
“Good. Now, get some sleep. All that worrying will give you wrinkles.”
She lets go of Rosalie’s hand and heads back downstairs, leaving Rosalie there alone, staring after her, wondering what in her past—what kinds of dark family secrets—could have caused her mother to have become this Machiavellian.
She climbs the stairs slowly, walking mechanically back to her room to fall onto her bed. She stares up at the ceiling, a hand to her tight chest. Is she truly capable of the same ruthlessness as her mother? As her father?
She’s always been imperious and bossy and commanding. She knows what’s best for her friends, and she sees that it happens. It’s always been for their own good, for the right reasons... hasn’t it?
Rosalie rolls onto her side and looks across the room to where Aunt Genevieve’s painting hangs over her small settee, she and MissPine staring at each other captured there in oil paint.
She’s been acting under the assumption that what she wants for MissPine—with MissPine—is what MissPine ought to want as well. Rosalie closes her eyes, dropping her head to rest against her arm. She pulls her legs fully onto the bed, curling into herself.
She can’t do to MissPine what Mother did to Mrs.Pine. She can’t choose the future that’s best for her. Even if it’s choosing a future that allows them to kiss in dark corners and steal away on hikes to lie down in the tall grass and—
Rosalie opens her eyes and stares at their pose in the painting. Miss Pine has to want to choose it herself. They have to make a choice, whatever choice, together. Rosalie can only hope that what Miss Pine truly wants might align with what she wants. That Miss Pine might want her in return.
Chapter Twelve
Catherine
