Ridiculous name, for a rose. Much too long. That Johnathan even remembered the whole of it was a testament to how deeply he’d fallen in love with her. He remembered everything about her. Her smile, her laugh, every word she’d ever spoken to him.
Perhaps he and Emmeline were a curious match, at least from a distance. Certainly, they were so to the ton, who were too preoccupied with fortunes and titles to care much for love, and lacked imagination when it came to marriage.
They’d put him with Lady Christine, for God’s sake.
They were, however, far more imaginative when it came to scandal. To the ton, Juliet Templeton was just the sort of bold, vivacious beauty who’d catch the eye of an earl, and tempt him to abandon his duty to his mother and his title. That was a rumor they could feast on for weeks, at least until the end of the season.
To them, Juliet Templeton as a devious, ruinous siren made perfect sense, but when had love ever made sense? It was a tangled, messy business, painful and glorious at once, just like the Baronet’s roses with their lovely scent, and deceptively innocent-looking thorns—
“Good morning, my lord.”
Johnathan looked up from his teacup as his butler, Williams, entered the breakfast room, a silver tray with a stack of letters on it balanced on his hand. “Good morning, Williams. You may as well take the letters to my study, as I won’t have time this morning to—” He paused as he caught a glimpse of the letter sitting on the top of the pile, his name scrawled on the front in Cross’s bold script. “Was Lord Cross here, Williams?”
“Yes, my lord, an hour or so ago.”
“So early? And he declined to stay?” That wasn’t like Cross, who often had breakfast with him in the morning.
“Yes, my lord. He asked that you beg his pardon, and bid me give you the letter.”
Johnathan took it from the tray, his chest tight. “Thank you, Williams. You may go.”
“Yes, my lord.” Williams bowed himself out as Johnathan tore open the letter and scanned the two sentences on the page before dropping the paper onto his plate, a frown on his lips.
Cross had gone off to Oxfordshire, to his hunting estate near Albury.
It wasn’t wholly unexpected, as Cross had for years hosted a house party during the first two weeks of grouse season, but his departure seemed rather sudden, given he hadn’t said a word to Johnathan about leaving London.
He read the two brief sentences again, but Cross had said only he’d see Johnathan with his new bride at Albury in two weeks’ time.
His new bride…
There’d been a moment last night, right before Johnathan had admitted he wasn’t certain Juliet wasn’t the Lady in Lavender, when Cross had seemed to be holding his breath, as if Johnathan’s reply would make him the happiest of men, or shatter his world forever.
Cross had never been one to share the inner workings of his heart—indeed, most of the ladies in London would claim he didn’t have a heart at all—but that expression on his face…
Johnathan had been too distraught to make any sense of it at the time, but now, looking back, he recognized the look for what it was.
Hope, right before it collapsed into the darkest despair.
But Cross, and Juliet Templeton?
The two of them hadn’t ceased bickering since the moment they met. Cross contradicted every word out of Juliet’s mouth with his usual arrogance, and when Juliet wasn’t needling Cross, she was laughing at him. Still, when they were together, they were wholly focused on each other, and Johnathan had never seen Cross as animated as he was when he was in Juliet Templeton’s company.
Yes, he quite liked them together. A tentative smile crossed Johnathan’s lips, but it turned to a frown again as he glanced down at the open letter in his hand.
Had Cross fled London with hardly a word because he’d feared Johnathan was on the verge of making Juliet Templeton the Countess of Melrose? It certainly looked like it.
He dropped his head to his fist with a groan. Another proof that affairs of the heart were messy, tangled, and painful, especially when one threw passion into the mix.
For as long as Johnathan had known Cross, he’d been determined to avoid love entirely, but it seems it had found him at last, sometime between his first glimpse of Juliet Templeton’s face, and their battle over Romeo and Juliet.
As for Johnathan, his heart was as permanently taken as Cross’s appeared to be.
Well then, there was only one thing left to do. He tossed the letter aside, set his teacup on the tray, and left the breakfast room, calling to Williams to fetch his coat, hat, and stick, and order the carriage brought round.
It was time to put this business to rights, once and for all.
“Gone?” Johnathan stared blankly at Lady Fosberry, certain he must have misheard her. “Emmeline is gone?”
