“Miss…Miss Stanhope? Do you need help finding what you’re looking for?” Greta asked uncertainly and, with a start, Rosemary realized she was standing frozen in the middle of her grandmother’s bedchamber. The one place in all the house she really ought not to be.
“No, thank you. I’m fine. I’ll be out of your way in a minute.” She hurried to the escritoire, a desk with various drawers and secret compartments in addition to a hinged, slanted front that could be lowered for writing. She knew this was where Lady Ellinwood penned all of her private correspondence, and if she had any photographs or mementos then surely they’d be in here somewhere as they weren’t to be found anywhere else around the house. With the exception of the portrait of her son in the drawing room, Rosemary’s grandmother kept no other pictures of family past or present.
That included her granddaughter.
But when Rosemary pried open a long, narrow drawer nearly sealed shut with beeswax, indicating it had been polished many times over without being used in between, she was stunned to find that Lady Ellinwooddidhave paintings and photographs of her family. For some inexplicable reason, she’d just chosen to keep them hidden away.
Tears pricked the corners of Rosemary’s eyes and her breath lodged in the base of her throat as she unveiled detailed miniatures of her father as a baby, and a boy, and a man. There was a grainy photograph, yellowed and curled at the edges, of her parents on their wedding day. Lord Gregory Stanhope and Miss Lilly Davidson. Both so young. So serious. Soalive. To the best of her knowledge, it was the first–and only–picture of them standing together.
Underneath it she found another photograph. The last before they all turned to sketches and oil paintings. This one depicted a middle-aged man sitting on a stool, his eyes dark and somber even as the hint of a mischievous grin lifted the side of his moustache.
This had to be her grandfather, Lord George Stanhope. A man she’d never met as he was already gone well before she was ever born…but she had an inkling that if they’d had the opportunity to know each other, they would have gotten on splendidly.
There were stains at the bottom of the picture. Stains that had caused the ink to blur and run and fade. As if somehow the photograph had sustained water damage. Or–
“Tears. They’re tears,” Rosemary whispered as she very carefully returned her grandfather to the drawer before continuing on her impromptu journey through the past.
The next miniature, cut in the shape of an oval as if it had once sat inside of a brooch, showed two girls side by side, one with fair hair and one with dark. Despite their different coloring, it was obvious they were sisters. Dorothea and Mabel, if Rosemary had to guess. Painted long before Mabel fell in love with an American and sailed across the Atlantic to start a new life with a new family.
Had Dorothea felt abandoned when her only sibling left her? They were so close in age, they must have had their debuts back to back, or maybe even together. Every holiday, every milestone, every ball and party attended together, until Mabel moved to an entirely different continent.
In some way or another, Lady Ellinwood had been left by everyone she’d ever loved. Her parents, of whom Rosemary could find no picture. Her sister. Her husband. Her child and daughter-in-law.
Naturally, Rosemary knew all of this already.
But she hadn’t really felt the breadth of the loss her grandmother had suffered until now.
How awful it must have been.
How awful it muststillbe, if she remained compelled to keep these pictures, these memories, tucked away in a drawer to gather dust month after month, year after year, decade after decade.
Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Rosemary dashed at the tears that had collected on her cheeks and rushed past Greta out into the hall where she took a few minutes to compose herself before returning to her cousins in the drawing room.
Immediately, they both sensed something was amiss, but they were wrong about what it was.
“I knew it,” Evie said triumphantly, rising from her chair in a spill of lavender silk. Stylishly attired in a long-sleeved jacket with green piping along the arrow-tipped collar and a matching skirt, she was every inch a countess-to-be. “I knew you didn’t want to marry him. How did he coerce you into it?”
Rosemary’s engagement was so new that for a split second she hadn’t the vaguest idea what her cousin was referring to. “Who coerced me into what?”
“See?” said Joanna, and now she was the one who sounded triumphant. Plainly clothed in a blue dress sans piping or lace or fancy embellishments, she had her auburn hair knotted in a twist on top of her head with only a simple gold pin for decoration. “Itoldyou Lady M was mistaken. It’s all nothing more than a big misunderstanding. Maybe the Duke of Hanover became engaged to a different Rosemary? Or to someone who looks like her. There’s any manner of much more reasonable explanations than–”
“Oh, yes,” Rosemary interrupted belatedly once she came to understand what the topic of conversation was regarding. “Sterling did propose to me last night.”
“–that,” Joanna finished weakly. “It’s true, then? Are you sure?”
Evie sniffed. “Don’t be put out just because you wanted Lady M to be wrong. If anyone’s sure if Rosemary is engaged or not, it’sRosemary. Congratulations, darling! I wish we had wine or champagne to toast with, but tea will have to do for now.” She lifted her cup of black currant tea that a maid had poured while Rosemary was in her grandmother’s chambers. Her lips pursed as she took a sip, then flattened when she lowered the cup and regarded Rosemary over the curved porcelain brim. “Congratulationsarein order, aren’t they?”
“Yes, I think so.” Rosemary’s brows knitted in confusion. “Why would you believe I was coerced?”
Her cousins shared a quick glance.
“Should I…?” Evie asked.
Joanna nodded. “By your own admission, you know him better than I.”
“All right, but it’s going to sound more bluntly spoken coming from me.”
“Everythingsounds bluntly spoken coming from you.”
