Her grandmother lifted a bony shoulder. “One never knows about these things.”
“WellIknow. Sterling wouldn’t do that. He…”Loves me. Cannot live without me. Is counting the days until we’re married.Except he hadn’t said any of those things, had he? No matter. She didn’t need the words. Not when she knew how he felt. “He cares deeply about me.”
“Then you’re expecting,” Lady Ellinwood said matter-of-factly after a surreptitious glance at Rosemary’s belly. “I suspected as much, given how pudgy you’ve become lately. No matter. We’ll move up the wedding and say the babe came early. It’s done all of the time. Why, just look at Lady Ives. As if we’re to believe she miraculously birthed a healthy four-month-old baby. Ludicrous.”
The pictures, Rosemary told herself.
Remember the pictures.
Of all the people that her grandmother had loved and whose subsequent loss had made her this way. Bitter, and cynical, and callused over like a heel that had been crammed into an ill-fitting boot. It hurt at first, to wear a shoe that didn’t fit. But if you ignored the pain and wiped up the blood then eventually the blisters would harden and the skin would thicken and you wouldn’t feel anything anymore.
Or…or you could just take off the boot.
“No, Grandmother, I am not expecting. But Evie is.”
“Evie?” Lady Ellinwood said, and it was impossible to tell if her lack of recognition was real or feigned.
“Evelyn Thorncroft. Lady Evelyn Weston now, I guess, given that she and the earl were wed.Sheis to have a baby.”
“How nice for her,” Lady Ellinwood said curtly. “Is there anything else you wanted to discuss, Rosemary? It has been a long morning and it will be a longer afternoon. I’d like to rest before we depart for the boat races.”
“That is what I wanted to discuss.” Rosemary inwardly braced herself for the storm that was to come. She could already taste it in the air. See it in her grandmother’s stiff, unyielding posture. “I understand that you do not have a favorable opinion of my American cousins. But they’ve done nothing to deserve your malice except to welcome me with open arms. If you gave them a chance…if you got toknowthem–”
“I have absolutely no interest in getting to know my sister’s illegitimate granddaughter or her sister. And neither should you.” Lady Ellinwood picked up her cane. “This conversation is over, Rosemary.”
“But Idoknow them,” she persisted. “I know that they do not deserve whatever preconceived notions you may have of them. Whatever happened to drive you and your sister away from each other, Joanna and Evie were not a part of it, Grandmother. They weren’t even born yet. Theirmotherwasn’t born yet.”
“Anne Thorncroft.” Lady Ellinwood’s mouth twisted around the name as if she’d uttered a curse. “Proof that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. And as far as I’m concerned, her daughters are made of the same rotten fruit. You arenotto see them, Rosemary. If you have been sneaking about behind my back, which I suspect you have, you are to cease all communication at once. Is that clear?”
“No!” Rosemary burst out as she rose from the sofa. “No, itisn’tclear. Why don’t you want me to see them? To have a relationship with them? They are my cousins. My family.”
Lady Ellinwood struck the floor with her cane. “Iam your family.”
“Yes, you are. That is not in dispute. But why–”
“Because they will leave you.”
The silence that followed such a dire proclamation was raw and filled with hurt. Eyes wide, Rosemary sank slowly back into her seat while her grandmother took a moment to compose herself.
“Mabel left me.” Lady Ellinwood’s voice was uncharacteristically soft, and small, and Rosemary’s chest ached to hear the hint of bewilderment in it. “She fancied herself in love with a dashing American businessman. I asked her to stay. I begged her. I didn’t want to be alone.”
“But your parents–”
“Our parents were not kind. When our father drank…” Her lips trembled as she pressed them together. “Mabel and I looked after each other. When one of us slept, the other would listen for the creak of footsteps on the stairs. But then she left. She left me, and there was no one to listen.”
“I am so sorry.” Her eyes swimming with tears, Rosemary rushed across the room to kneel beside her grandmother. She gathered her hands. Hands that suddenly felt old and frail. The hands of a woman that had endured more than any woman should have to. “No wonder you were upset with her when she went to America.”
“There was a part of me that was happy Mabel got out. That she escaped what I couldn’t.” Lady Ellinwood was gazing at a picture on the wall, but it was evident by the vacancy in her stare that she was looking far into the past. “But the other part of me was bitter and angry. When she finally returned to London, she had a daughter nearly full grown and I had a son. Your father. But too much time had gone by, and the bridge between us had grown too long. We did not leave things on good terms. I never…I never spoke to her again.”
It was strange, to imagine all of the different lives that Lady Ellinwood had lived before she became a grandmother. Rosemary only knew her as one person. Which was how everyone tended to think of those who were old. And they forgot about who they’d been before. When they were a daughter, and a sister, and a wife, and a mother.
As she gently held her grandmother’s hand, Rosemary’s heart wrenched. It was easier and simpler to paint someone with a single stroke of a brush. Easier still if that brush was filled with paint that coated everything beneath it in a layer of thick, oozing black.
It was easy to dismiss a crotchety old woman as mean.
A lecherous duke as a drunken scoundrel.
A shy, unique debutante as a boring wallflower.
