Rose imagined he could hear the rising tattoo of her heartbeat as she tried to form the words to explain her awful deception.
“I have something I must tell you that you must keep absolutely secret. For now. Also something I need to ask.” How she wished she was there as an excited bride, merely to request that he walk her down the aisle in their father’s stead.
“You have my full attention.” His intelligent eyes were looking right into her own, their intense blue a mirror of hers. Sometimes, she wished she also had his brains.
“I fell in love,” she began, not sure why it came out like that. She paused. Should she have begun with, “A few years back, I got married”? Her union with Finn had been all about the fullness of her heart — and her inability to fight her own heart’s desire — so naturally, the first thing she expressed to her brother was her love.
“Yes,” Reed prompted her. “With William.”
She shook her head, and immediately, the tears sprang into her eyes and began streaming down her cheeks. Reed’s shocked face caused her to bury her head in her hands.
“Don’t you love William?” he asked, his voice tentative.
Breathe deeply, she counseled herself. When she could speak, she said, “Yes, of course.”
“Rose,” Reed enjoined. “Explain, please.”
She lifted her head and started again. “I fell in love with a man named Phineas Bennet. It was in the summer, nearly four years ago.”
He reached out and touched her arm. “What happened to him?”
Of course Reed had immediately surmised that something had happened. Elsewise, she would be with him.
“He died, or I so I surmised. His ship went down, all hands lost.”
“I’m sorry,” Reed said and put his hand around her shoulders. “Are you worried that something will happen to William?”
Oh dear! She had better figure out a way to explain this more clearly before she tried to tell her fiancé.
“No, I’m not worried for William,” she said. “Actually, I do sometimes have that exact fear that something will happen to him. However, that is not ... ,” she trailed off.
Say it, she ordered herself.Simply speak the words. “I married him.”
She felt Reed’s arm stiffen. “William?”
“No, Finn.”
If Reed were the gasping type, she knew he would have done so, for she felt his intake of breath.
She rushed on. “I am Mrs. Phineas Bennet, and I have been for over three years.”
“I see.”
The disappointment was evident in his tone. She knew his quick mind was imagining their clandestine meetings, their secret marriage, the deception perpetrated upon her family and society at large, and her being a wife, not an innocent bride.
All of that was so like the Rose she used to be, she could barely countenance her younger self. Certainly, she was no longer that irresponsible, selfish girl.
Moreover, she hadn’t even told Reed the worst part.
“Does William know?” he asked.
She swallowed. “No.”
“Don’t you think he should?”
“Yes.”
He squeezed her shoulder with the arm still draped around her.
