Although her mouth suddenly felt stiff, Rosemary managed a smile. “I’m sure you’re right. Should I tell Janelle to begin packing?”
“Yes.” Her grandmother’s eyes narrowed. “Whereisthat lazy, impertinent girl?”
“You sent her for lemon water.”
“That’s right. For those ghastly freckles of yours. Honestly, Rosemary. They look like ants marching across your face. No man wants to marry a girl with ants on her face. Youmustremember to wear a hat whenever you go outside.”
“I will do my best,” she said solemnly.
“One last thing. It has come to my attention through various sources that your…yourcousins”–Lady Ellinwood spat the word as if it were a curse–“have chosen to remain in England. Word has it one of them even married a private investigator, and the other is engaged to the Earl of Hawkridge, if you can believe such nonsense.”
“Joanna has married Mr. Kincaid?” Such was her excitement at the (poorly delivered) news that Rosemary shot to her feet and clapped her hands together. “How wonderful! I was hoping things would work out between them. Evie and Lord Hawkridge as well. Oh, do you think they’ll have a winter wedding?”
“If they do, I am certain we willnotattend.”
“But…but they’re my cousins.” Rosemary did not know the entire story. But she’d heard enough pieces over the years to put most of the puzzle together. Her grandmother had a sister, Mabel, long since passed, who married an American and moved to Boston where they had a daughter, Anne.
After that, things got a bit more convoluted.
When Anne came of age, Mabel brought her to London to debut her amidst High Society. Anne had a brief, secret affair with the recently widowed Marquess of Dorchester…the Earl of Hawkridge’s father. When she discovered that she was expecting, Anne returned to Boston and married her childhood sweetheart, Jacob Thorncroft, choosing a quiet life as a wife and mother in the country instead of becoming a countess. Together, they raised the baby–Joanna–without any knowledge of who her true father was, and went on to have two more girls, Evie and Claire.
Anne passed from scarlet fever when the sisters were young, and Jacob during the War Between the States. Nearly destitute, the sisters decided to sell their mother’s ring, a ring that had been given to Anne (unbeknownst to her daughters) by the Marquess of Dorchester.
Through a complexing turn of events and some truly remarkable twists of fate, the ring found its way to the Earl of Hawkridge. When Joanna and Evie came across the pond to fetch it back, they hired a private investigator–Mr. Kincaid–to help them.
Not only did Mr. Kincaid unearth the ring’s whereabouts, but–with a little help from Rosemary’s grandmother–he unraveled the entire mystery surrounding Joanna’s real birth father.
Now Joanna and Mr. Kincaid were married, Evie and the Earl of Hawkridge were engaged, and Rosemary was so happy she could burst. She’d always wanted sisters, and now that she had them they were just as wonderful as she had imagined they would be.
It was a perfect happily-ever-after.
Except for one small, teensy tiny problem.
“They are your second cousins once removed,” Lady Ellinwood snapped, “and if they are anything like their mother, they are not to be trusted. Anne was an unruly, disobedient girl who invoked scandal wherever she went, and I’m confident her daughters are no different. I had to stomach seeing them here, or else you wouldn’t have had the opportunity to get close to the Duke of Hanover. But you arenotto associate with them once we return to London. Do you understand, Rosemary?”
“But I–”
“I said do you understand?”
“Yes,” Rosemary mumbled as her shoulders slumped. “I understand.”
Chapter Three
After he watchedthe third trunk being carried down the stairs, Sterling realized something was happening. Lurching off the sofa in the drawing room where he’d spent the better part of the night guzzling down gin before eventually sliding into unconsciousness, he stumbled to the doorway and leaned heavily against it.
“What’s going on?” he asked a passing footman. “What’s all this commotion about?”
“Lady Ellinwood and her granddaughter, Miss Stanhope, are departing for London. Is there anything I can get you, Your Grace?” the footman inquired politely. For an instant, his gaze lowered to Sterling’s rumpled clothing, then immediately snapped back to his face. “Have a bath drawn, perhaps?”
“Coffee,” Sterling muttered, scratching at the thicket of beard on his jaw that he hadn’t bothered to shave in…well, he couldn’t recall the last time he’d picked up a razor. Not since the end of the house party, at any rate. “Black, no sugar or milk.”
“Right away, Your Grace.”
As the footman hurried off to fetch his coffee, Sterling glowered at the growing stack of trunks in the middle of the foyer. So Rosemary was leaving, was she? Back to the city for the start of the Season, no doubt. And that was fine. It wasn’t as if she were going to stay here forever. Hawkridge Manor wasn’t her home. Neither was it his, for that matter. But he could admit, at least to himself, that he’d enjoyed her company. Probably more than he should have.
Rosemary was different from anyone else he’d ever met. She had a petsquirrel, for God’s sake. And he…he was going to miss her, Sterling realized with a frown. More than that, he didn’t want her to go. Which was positively absurd. But notquiteabsurd enough to prevent him stepping out into the foyer when he spied her descending the stairs, her arms awkwardly holding the largest hat box he’d ever seen.
“Give me that before you break your neck,” he said gruffly, yanking the box out of her hands as she reached the bottom step. Hoisting the cumbersome thing onto his shoulder, he glared at her beneath it, feeling as surly as an old bear that had been woken from its nap in the middle of winter. “What’s in here? The Papal tiara?”
