“Is it the Duke?” Her father did not go to her, but the look he wore spoke of extreme worry. “Did he… did he hurt you?”
Rose sniffed. “In a fashion.”
“Tell me.” Her father’s voice turned cold. “Tell me what he did and I will… I will… I will make sure he lives to regret it.”
She laughed through the tears. “It is not so simple as that.”
“Tell us,” Marianne purred. “And we will decide how simple it is.”
“I don’t want to… There is nothing you can do.” She sniffed and wiped her nose. “I should not have said anything.”
“But you did,” Marianne said, squeezing her tight. It felt good to be held like that, the sense that she was safe and loved and looked after. “And you were right to.”
“She is right.” Slowly, her father walked around the table. Then, he dropped to one knee and rested his hand on his daughter’s leg. “I know you think that I do not care, Rose. That's the only thing I care about: how I can use you. But that is not true.”
“Me either,” Marianne added. “I love you, Rose, with all my heart. And that you thought differently…” She smiled and kissed Rose on the forehead. “That is my fault. I am so sorry.”
“Tell us what happened,” her father pressed. “Maybe we can help.”
“And even if we cannot, sometimes it is nice to have someone to speak to,” Marianne added. “I doubt that we are as good as you are when it comes to fixing things, but let us try.”
“We are here for you, Rose. We will always be here.”
Rose started to cry again, and this time it was not from sadness. She was twenty-five years old, and this was the first time in her life that she had felt truly looked after. While she had never doubted that her sister and father loved her, moments like this one did well to remind her.
She did not know everything about what Christopher was hiding.
Nor did she know if she should tell her sister and father what she suspected, because if she was right, it would have untold consequences. But she needed to speak to someone, and there was no one in this world she trusted more than her sister and her father.
It was time that someone helped Rose for a change. More than that, it was time that she trusted someone to help her.
“I… I should not say,” she started, sniffing back the tears, but making sure to smile so they could see that she was feeling better. “What I am about to tell you, you cannot tell anyone. I mean it.”
“We won’t,” her sister said.
“You can trust us, Rose,” her father added.
“I know that I can…” She smiled at them both. “I know I can trust you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The days felt like they were getting longer. And each one was growing more difficult to see through to its end. Waking up in the morning took more effort than Christopher could believe, getting work done became impossible, and when the sun started to sink down the sky at the end of each day, Christopher breathed a sigh of relief to have seen another day reach its end.
Things should not have been like this.
Still, Christopher was of the mind that he should not feel so affected by what had happened. That he had decided it was time to leave Rose and end his marriage, that he was once again on his own, and that things would go back to how they used to be… how they had been his entire life until Rose wandered into it.
Perhaps it is not Rose that I am worried about? Rather, is it the fear of being discovered that haunts me and makes these days feel so long? Yes… each day that comes brings with it thepossibility that my lies might be revealed, and that is why I struggle.
Christopher spent more time than he was proud of trying to convince himself of this lie.
Typically, it did little good, because he knew well enough why he felt so rotten. It wasn’t fear of being discovered. It was Rose, the sadness he felt at having left her, and the guilt that suffocated him because Christopher knew that he had done the wrong thing.
What he did not know was what he was going to do about it.
The worst of those days came exactly one week after Christopher had left Rose behind. The week was spent north of his estate, locked away in a small farmhouse that was quite literally in the middle of nowhere. It was dilapidated and slovenly. When Christopher arrived, it was messy and coated in dust and dirt. Once, such a hovel as this would have been enough to see Christopher break down and pray for death. Now, however, he simply did not care.
For a full week, he sulked around the house. Barely eating. Barely sleeping. He did not bathe. He did not bother with clean clothes. Depression was what struck him, and because of how stubborn he was, Christopher refused to admit it.
