CHAPTER ONE
“What’s that?” Rosalind Drayton asked her younger sister.
“Oh!” Marianne yelped with clear surprise, just about falling from her seat in the process. “Rose! I did not hear you.” Marianne was hunched over her writing desk and, upon hearing her sister sneaking up behind her, quickly tried to discard whatever it was that she was working on.
“Hard to do when you are so distracted,” Rose said. “Care to tell me what with?”
“Nothing…” Marianne hurriedly opened the drawers to the desk and used her arm to push the writing implements inside. Then she slammed the drawer closed and spun about, flashing an innocent smile. “Nothing at all.”
Rose was standing in the doorway of her sister’s bedroom. She leaned against the frame, folded her arms, and raised a single eyebrow. “It did not seem like nothing.”
“Poetry,” Marianne offered. “Just writing some poetry is all. I would show you, but it is not very good, and I would be so embarrassed.” Her innocent smile grew. “Perhaps when I have improved?”
Rose was not such a fool as to believe what was an obvious lie. Her sister had been behaving strangely for weeks, and it seemed things weren’t destined to change anytime soon.
She does not know that I am more than aware of what she was doing… who she was writing to. Were times different, I might push for her to open up…. But no, I don’t think so. No time. And certainly not today. And Marianne knows why.
“I cannot wait to hear it,” Rose said with a warm smile, as if she believed her sister’s lies. “As I am certain it will be beautiful. Another time…” She dropped her face as the seriousness of the moment returned to them both. “Father has sent me to fetch you.Hehas arrived just now, and we’re expected.”
Marianne’s face paled. “He… he has? You are certain?”
“Father would not have sent for me otherwise. But, as I have already told you, there is nothing to worry over.” Rose swept into the room, where she took her sister by the arm and helped her to her feet. Marianne’s knees wobbled. “If there were, Father would have told us.”
“You know the complete opposite is true. He is just as likely to keep us in the dark as not. He knows that I do not wish to… that I will not…” She couldn’t even say it out loud, as if saying it would confirm its truth.
“Enough of that.” Rose steered her younger sister toward the door, doing her best to keep Marianne on her feet. “There is no sense in worrying until we know for certain.”
“Please don’t let him do it.” Marianne came to a sudden stop and grabbed hold of Rose with both hands. “He will listen to you, Rose. You know that he will. If you tell him not to do it, he will listen.”
“Maybe. But you know that father can be…” She considered her phrasing. “Stubborn.”
“He will.” Marianne looked pleadingly at Rose, her chin already starting to wobble. “Promise me, Rose, that you will not let him do it. Please.”
It broke Rose’s heart to see.
At twenty-five years of age, she was just five years older than Marianne, but that mattered little. Rose was a girl of nine when their mother died, and this tragedy gave her little choice but to skip her childhood altogether because her family needed it of her.
More than that, her sister needed her, and it had everything to do with their father.
He was not a cruel man. He was not wicked or mean. But that did not mean he was a good father. More concerned with his failed businesses and lame attempts to climb the social ladder than he was with his daughters, Rose had to step in where their mother was no longer able.
Marianne had been just four; she had needed someone to protect her, and that someone certainly wasn’t going to be their father.
So, seeing her sister like this, knowing the cause, and knowing there was nothing that could stop it made this one of the worst moments in Rose’s life.
“Listen to me.” Rose made sure to look at Marianne as she spoke. “I promise you, Marianne, that I will do anything and everything that I can do. You have my word.”
It wasn’t a lie if Rose meant every word of it. Just the fact that she knew there was nothing she could do, that’s what made her feel so awful about saying it.
“Come, Father is waiting for us.” Rose linked her arm with Marianne’s, and the two sisters started across the room. “The last thing we should do is keep Father waiting. Best that we get this over with, and in a few minutes you and I will be looking back on this moment and laughing at how ridiculous we were.”
“Do you think so?” Marianne’s voice cracked.
“I do,” Rose said without hesitation. Her sister needed to hear it.
Is it so wrong to make her want to feel better? Even if there is nothing I can do.
It was two minutes later when Rose and Marianne presented themselves in the reading room, where their father was waiting for them. As they expected, he was not alone.
