“Come inside, come inside. I apologize for the mess,” Joanna said with a pointed glance at the dressing table which was all but hidden beneath Evie’s various creams and pots and potions, “but we were not expecting company.”
“I’d hoped to surprise you,” Rosemary confessed. “Or else I would have sent word.”
“This is a wonderful surprise, and please do not take this unkindly, but…what are you doing here?” Sitting on the bed and leaving the chairs for her cousin and sister, Joanna’s head tilted in confusion. “I was under the impression our great-aunt was not exactly…eager to make our acquaintance.”
“She’s not,” Rosemary said. “I mean, she is. Well, shewillbe. Eventually. But my grandmother can be quite…set in her ways.”
“We know the feeling,” Evie said dryly.
“How did you find us?” Joanna asked.
Color bloomed in Rosemary’s cheeks as she sat down. “I, er…that is to say, I followed the detective yesterday after he left our house,” she confessed, smoothing a wrinkle on her skirt. “He led me straight here. I would have come in, except I lost my nerve. But I found it again this morning. Try and try again, as my grandmother always says! Usually, she’s referring to my failed attempts at landing a suitor, but I thought it could apply to this, as well.”
“We’re glad that you are here.” Refusing to acknowledge the tightening in her throat at the mention of Kincaid, Joanna forced a smile onto her face. It wasn’t exceedingly difficult. Shewashappy to meet her cousin. Elated, really. But over all that elation was a dark, heavy raincloud.
A raincloud made all by the heavier by the knowledge that sheshouldhave been ecstatic.
After weeks of uncertainty, she had everything she could have ever possibly asked for. The location of her mother’s ring. The identity of her birth father. And other family, besides! That was everything she’d come to England to find. But in seeking those answers, she’d found something else. Something even more valuable.
Love.
Truelove.
Or so she’d allowed herself to believe.
Now when she returned to Somerville, she’d have the ring, and the knowledge of where she came from. But she’d be leaving her heart behind in London. More than that, she’d be leaving behind the possibility of what could have been. Whatwouldhave been, if not for Kincaid’s inability to give what they both desperately needed.
Did he really think she would hurt him, as that other woman had? That she would take his love and twist it into something unrecognizable? Or was he just so badly wounded from what had happened to him that he was unable to see the light of what could be through the shadows of what had been?
That was an answer Joanna didnothave.
Because Kincaid had refused to give it.
Once again, he had just closed himself off and pushed her away.
As if she meant nothing.
As iftheymeant nothing.
And maybe that was what hurt worst of all. Not that he’d all but shoved her out the door, but that he hadn’t even been willing totry.
“You seem upset,” Rosemary observed, her smile wavering as she looked at Joanna. “I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry.” She started to stand. “I will go, and—”
“It’s not you,” Joanna said hurriedly. “Honest. It’s…it’s something else.Someoneelse. Please stay. There is so much I’d like to ask you.”
Sinking back down into her seat, Rosemary clucked her tongue in sympathy. “It’s the Marquess of Dorchester, isn’t it? Silly me. If I found out my father wasn’t who I thought he was, I’d be upset as well.”
Joanna exchanged a quick, startled glance with Evie. “How doyouknow about the marquess?” she asked, puzzled. “I was under the impression it was…well, that it was a bit of a secret.”
Rosemary giggled. Then her eyes widened. “Oh. Oh, you’reserious. Nothing in thetonis a secret. Not really. Plus, I may have…erm…eavesdropped on my grandmother and Mr. Kincaid. I didn’t mean to.” Her round cheeks flushed, reminding Joanna of the doll that Claire used to carry around with her everywhere she went. “It’s just that we do not get many visitors, and I thought the detective may have been a suitor come to call, and so…I pressed my ear to the door and listened to the entire conversation.”
“Have you met him?” Joanna slid to the edge of the mattress. “My…that is to say, the Marquess of Dorchester.”
“We have been introduced,” Rosemary nodded. “I even danced with the Earl of Hawkridge once.” Her blush intensified. “I trounced on his instep so hard that he walked with a limp for the rest of the night. He never asked to sign his name to my card again.”
“What are they like?” Joanna asked earnestly. Try as she might, she’d been unable to form a picture of her birth father and her half-brother in her head. Perhaps because every time that she’d tried, her thoughts just kept veering back to Kincaid, like a moth that couldn’t leave an open flame alone even though it knew that if it got too close it would singe its wings.
“The marquess and the earl?” Rosemary asked.
