Rose was not a bad daughter. Nor was she a cautionary tale for other young ladies to be warned from. She was a victim of circumstance. After her mother died, Rose abandoned all notions that she might one day meet the man of her dreams and live a happily ever after, as so many seemed blessed to do.
She committed herself instead to her family. She turned her nose up at the idea of marrying young because if she did not, then Marianne would have been left alone. And she happily ignored the whispers and rumors spread about her because, at the end of the day, she knew it was the right thing to do.
“I am sorry, Father, if I have not been the perfect daughter,” she said bitterly. “Just as I am sorry to have disappointed you.”
“That is not what I am saying.”
“Just as I am sorry that I have had to put my life on hold to ensure that this family survives,” she hissed. “Yes, that is something I am guilty of.” She looked down at him, and he looked away with shame. “But do not pretend that it is my fault. That I am responsible for any of this. When you…” Her voice was shaking.
“I am sorry, Rosalind,” he said, and Rose believed him. “You know how grateful I am for you and all you have done. Since your mother died…” His expression tightened for a moment. “It does not matter. The Duke does not want to marry you, and it is that simple.”
“I am not a spinster,” she said. “I am not… wicked or evil! Tell him that!”
“It will make no difference,” he said. “That is how you are viewed, and unless you can convince him to view you in a different way, that you can convince the ton to do so as well, it is done. Marianne will marry the Duke, not you. I suggest you make your peace with it.”
Rose would not make her peace with it.
She left her father to his work, her mind already coming up with a plan to save her sister from this marriage. It might not work. It might make things worse. But she had to try! She loved her sister too much not to do anything and everything that she could do.
CHAPTER TWO
“Marianne,” Rose said softly from her sister’s doorway. “May we talk?”
Her sister did not answer her in words. She was on her bed, her face shoved in her pillows, bawling her eyes out as if the world was ending.
She looked so frail in the way that she cried, and her body shook. At twenty years of age, Rose still thought of her as a little girl: her golden hair, her big eyes, her puffy cheeks. And the way she always managed to find the humor in a situation, so childlike and innocent It was one of the many things that Rose loved about her.
I cannot fail her. I will not fail her.
“I know that today did not go as you hoped,” Rose began as she crossed the room for her sister. “And that this decision might not be to your liking. But I want you to know that I am here for you.”
“Are you?” Marianne said thickly into her pillows. “Are you here for me, Rosalind?”
“Of course.”
“Then why did you not stop it?” She looked up from her pillows, her face a mass of red welts and tear stains. “You promised me that you would! You promised that you would not let father… that he wouldn’t… that you would do something!”
“I tried.”
“You didn’t try hard enough!”
Rose winced at the harshness of her sister’s words. They hurt her to hear, but they did not upset her as they might have. She knew that Marianne was hurting and that she was just looking for someone else to blame. That’s all it was.
And why should she not blame me? I blame myself, too.
Since Marianne was a little girl, Rose had looked out for her. In everything that she did, every mistake that she made, Rose was there for her. And always, she told her little sister, that so long as she was by her side, nothing would hurt her.
It was time that Rose proved this to be true.
“It is not just the Duke, is it?” Rose sat down on the bed.
“What?”
“The reason that you are so upset,” Rose continued softly. “This is about more than a marriage arrangement.”
“No!” Marianne wailed. “That is exactly why. I don’t want to marry him, Rose. I can’t!”
“Perhaps not,” Rose said. “But you have known that something like this was bound to happen. Given the way our father is, he was always going to try to arrange a marriage like this. And to a duke…” She let that sit between them. “Most girls would be thrilled.”
