Rose (Flower Trilogy) (23 page)

“Bee stings do happen,” Lord Trentingham put in. “Especially out in my gardens.”

No one corrected him this time.

Jewel waved a currant cake. “Accidents at two of your buildings? Are you not wondering if your other building might have a problem, too?”

Out of the mouths of babes. Kit sighed. “Perhaps I should go to Hampton Court and make certain everything there is progressing smoothly.”

“Rose and I are going to Hampton Court,” Lady Trentingham volunteered cheerfully.

Kit was not surprised.

Her husband had actually heard that. “Not too soon, I hope, Chrysanthemum.”

“Well, we won’t want to wait too long. The Court is there, after all, and Rose will want to see the duke.”

Rose’s sisters turned to her in unison.

“The duke?” Violet asked, leaning down to swipe her son’s spoon off the floor for at least the tenth time.

Lily fed a bit of cake to her cat under the table. “What duke?”

“The Duke of Bridgewater.” Rose hid her face by raising her goblet to her lips—even though Kit knew it was empty.

“We’ll talk about this later.”

Not too much later, Rose found herself upstairs flanked by her sisters, the three of them lying crosswise on her oak four-poster bed, staring straight up.

“Tell us about the duke,” Violet said to the underside of Rose’s crimson velvet canopy.

“He’s very generous and handsome and kind,” Rose returned morosely. “He gave me these ruby and pearl earrings.”

Her sisters both turned to look. Violet touched a finger to one of the delicate drops. “They’re lovely.”

“Goodness!” Lily exclaimed. “He sounds perfect. Exactly what you were looking for. Do you think he likes you?”

“Very much.” Rose sighed. “I’ll not be surprised if at Hampton Court I receive my first proposal.”

Violet came up on an elbow. “Then why,” she asked, “do you sound so melancholy?”

Rose turned to look at Violet, but her sister’s warm brown eyes looked too concerned behind the lenses of her spectacles. She focused back up on the canopy. “I don’t care for the way he kisses.”

“Oh . . .” her sisters said together in a way that made it clear they considered this as important a problem as she did. Rose wasn’t sure whether she was glad or frustrated at that fact.

Part of her wished they’d just tell her to marry the duke and be done with it.

“Is his kiss . . . sloppy?” Lily asked.

“No.”

“Rough?” Violet wondered.

“No.”

“Then what?” they both chimed.

“I’m not sure. There’s nothing wrong with his kisses. I just don’t enjoy them. They don’t make me feel anything.”

She crossed her feet where they hung off the end of the bed.

She uncrossed them. Her voice dropped miserably. “For the longest time, I didn’t like
anyone’s
kisses. I thought something was wrong with me. Until . . .”

Now Lily came up on an elbow. “Until what?”

Rose felt hemmed in. She looked at her older sister, then her younger, then back to the canopy. “I’ve found one man whose kisses make me melt. But he’s totally unsuitable.”

“In what way?” Lily’s voice was heartbreakingly sympathetic.

“In every way. He’s a commoner. And he
works
for a living.”

“Rand works,” Lily said defensively. “Do you not think being a professor is a lot of hard work?”

“But Rand doesn’t
have
to work. He works because he wants to. Good God, he’s an earl, and someday he’ll be a marquess.”

“ ’Twas not always that way, and he never minded working. And it didn’t bother me to think of marrying him when he did have to work. In fact, it didn’t bother you, either, if I recall correctly. You were perfectly willing to chase Rand when he was only a professor.”

“He was never only a professor.” Rose didn’t care for Lily’s affronted tone, nor for the reminder of how foolishly she’d pursued her sister’s husband. “Even before he became an earl, he was Lord Randal Nesbitt.”

“There is nothing wrong with work,” Lily insisted.

“Of course there isn’t!” Frustrated, Rose pushed herself up to sit on the edge of the bed. She rubbed her face as her sisters came up beside her. “ ’Tis only that I had a plan for my life, and this man isn’t part of it.”

“Is he poor?” Violet asked.

“No,” she said, thankful she could say that at least, else she’d get the same kind of tirade from Violet that she’d just heard from Lily. Violet’s husband, after all, had been poor as a church mouse when they met.

“ ’Tis Kit, isn’t it?” Lily suddenly guessed.

“No,” Rose denied quickly, then sighed at Lily’s perceptive gaze and added, “How did you know?”

“I’ve both eyes and ears in my head. You’re surprisingly familiar with the man’s projects, and you cannot deny you thought him handsome the day you met. And he was drawn to you. I was there, if you’ll remember. And he is
not
totally unsuitable.”

“I want to love the duke,” Rose wailed.

“Sometimes,” Violet said softly, “we cannot choose these things.”

All three of them sighed in unison. Lily reached to cover Rose’s hands where she’d clenched them together in her lap. “At least Mum is not trying to match you with Kit,”

she offered with forced cheerfulness.

“That’s right,” Violet said. The one thing they’d all agreed on, from the time they were small girls, was that they didn’t want any part of Chrystabel’s matchmaking schemes. “She’s taking you to Hampton Court to spend more time with the duke.”

“But she invited Kit here,” Rose realized suddenly. “And to supper in London.”

“True,” Violet conceded. “But she probably just wanted to make sure he follows through with Father’s greenhouse.”

“Probably.” That thought was a relief. The last thing Rose wanted was Mum trying to marry her off to Kit. Once Chrystabel got something like that in her head, the pressure would be tremendous. “She likes Kit’s sister, too. Perhaps she felt sorry for Ellen and invited her to the town house to cheer her up. Kit would naturally have had to come along.

And oh!” she added, “I almost forgot. I’ve borrowed a book from Ellen that you two may find very interesting.”

Just the thing to take her mind off these gloomy thoughts.

“A book?” Violet loved books.

“Not one to read—unless you read Italian.” She hurried over to her trunk to fetch
I Sonetti.
“Mostly you’ll want to see the engravings. The ladies at Court found them fascinating.”

“The ladies at Court?” Lily reached for the book.

“You’ve never even been to Court.” Violet snatched it away.

“I vow and swear, neither of you ever grew up.” Rose laughed as she took it back, knowing she was no better.

“Let me sit again between you.”

She wedged her wine-skirted bottom onto the bed between Violet’s lavender skirts and Lily’s yellow ones. After settling the book on her lap, she slowly opened it.

“Goodness.” Lily’s eyes widened—she was newly wedded, after all. “May I borrow this?”

“No. ’Tis not mine.” Rose flipped a page, then another.

“Now look at this. Is this even possible?”

Lily shrugged. “I know not.”

“Oh, that works fine,” Violet assured them, her gaze glued to the book as Rose turned to a new engraving. “But wait”—she stayed her hand—“I cannot imagine how this one would.”

Both of Rose’s married sisters had cheeks as red as her bedding. The three of them looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“Wait ’til you hear the words,” Rose said with a grin.

The men had adjourned to Lady Trentingham’s perfumery. Ford tinkered with the distillery he’d made for his mother-in-law, searching for a reported leak. Rand sat in a green brocade chair, sipping brandy.

Kit paced.

The contraption Ford was working on, and the large utilitarian table on which it sat, looked out of place in the otherwise elegant room. Kit ran a hand down the silk and linen brocatelle wall-coverings. “How is married life?” he asked Rand.

“Splendid,” Rand said, looking nauseatingly relaxed.

Feeling decidedly
un
relaxed, Kit gazed up at the black and gold cornice around the plastered ceiling. A fine display of workmanship. Something like it would look magnificent in the apartments he was building for the Duchess of Cleveland at Hampton Court, not to mention in his own house in Windsor.

“You should try it,” Rand added.

“Marriage?” Kit looked down to his old friend. “If I have my way, I will.”

“What?” Rand half bolted out of the chair.

“Sit,” Kit said.

Frowning, Ford removed a lid and disconnected a copper tube. “Whom are you hoping to wed?”

“Your sister-in-law. Rose.”

Ford looked up, astonished. “Rose?”

“Rose?” Rand echoed. He gulped a swallow of brandy.

“I knew you found her attractive, but—”

“She saved my sister’s life,” Kit said flatly. “And she yearns to travel, as do I. Not only that, she can speak the language when we get there.”

Ford looked at him through a large glass bulb that was part of the device. “Where?”

Kit examined the marble fireplace. “Rome, Florence, France . . . wherever.”

“If all you want is a translator, you can hire a linguist.”

Rand set the goblet on a small inlaid table. “I’ve students that would jump at a chance to spend a summer—”

“I love her,” Kit said simply. “She’s fun and beautiful and bright, and . . . something in her calls to me.”

Ford straightened and exchanged a look with Rand. “He said the
L
word.”

Rand nodded. “So I heard.”

Kit rubbed the back of his neck. “I wanted success. Security. But now my sister’s married a pawnbroker—what kind of security is a life like that? Yet she’s happy. And just when success may be slipping away from me—when I need that Deputy Surveyor post, that knighthood—”

“Whoa,” Ford said, looking totally lost. “Does any of that really matter?”

“I know not.” Kit ran his hand across a rack of little glass vials, all neatly labeled. LAVENDER, LILAC, MUSK. He plucked out the one that said ROSE. “All I know is I cannot stand the thought of failing to win her.”

Ford replaced the copper tube with a little
snap.
“Try seduction. It worked for me.”

“I
am
trying that. With her mother’s blessing, no less.”

Neither man looked surprised to hear that. “With Lily,”

Rand said, “it only took getting to know one another. Once we knew one another, we
knew.
”

“I
do
know. And she knows, too—I’m sure of it. Only she’ll not admit it because she wants to marry a damned duke. My only ray of hope is that His Grace is reportedly a lousy kisser.”

The other men laughed. “That sounds promising,” Rand observed. “Has she refused your proposal?”

“I’ve not asked. What is the point?”

“You might be surprised by her answer.”

“ ’Tis one thing to wish it.” Kit’s fingers tightened around the glass vial. “Another to go heart in hand and ask.”

“True.” Ford nodded solemnly. “You could be asking to have that heart crushed.” His expression said he was a veteran of such a defeat.

Kit unstoppered the vial and breathed deeply of the oil.

Rose. “Violet didn’t say yes the first time you asked?”

“Hell, no. Nor the second, either. Or the third. Or the nineteenth.”

As they all laughed again, feminine laughter drifted down from upstairs. Rand smiled. “Our ladies are enjoying themselves.”

“Where is everyone else?” Kit asked suddenly.

“Jewel and Rowan are probably off somewhere planning a dastardly prank.” Ford straightened, dusting off his hands.

“And the younger children were put to bed.”

“But Lord and Lady Trentingham—”

“Have gone to bed, too,” Rand informed him with a waggle of his brows.

Kit glanced at the clock on the mantel. “Is it not a bit early?”

“They’ve not seen each other in more than a week.”

Rand looked to Ford. “If you hadn’t seen Violet in ten days, what would you be doing now?”

“Taking her to bed,” Ford said with a decisive nod.

“But Lord and Lady Trentingham have grown children,”

Kit protested.

“So?” Ford shrugged as he replaced the distillery’s lid and stepped back. “They’re Ashcrofts.”

“Warm blooded,” Rand added.

“Hot blooded,” Ford corrected with a grin. “ ’Tis an excellent incentive to marry one.”

Chrystabel stretched luxuriously beneath the rumpled counterpane in her bedchamber. “Ah, that was nice.”

“Just nice?” Joseph asked, his voice filled with feigned hurt.

“Very well. It was spectacular.”

“That’s better.” He tweaked the sensitive crest of one breast, smiling when she gave a delighted squeal. “This was the longest you’ve ever been gone from me.”

“You leave me for several weeks every year when you go to Tremayne.”

“That seems different somehow.”

“Because you’re the one leaving and busy.” She knew he had to go, that Tremayne, a castle near the Welsh border, was as much his responsibility as Trentingham or his duty to Parliament. But that didn’t mean she liked it. “Now that the girls are grown, perhaps I will come along. And bring Rowan,” she said, warming to the idea. “After all, he is Lord Tremayne. He should learn the ins and outs of running the estate.”

“An excellent plan, Chrysanthemum.”

Joseph’s eyes were closing, as was wont to happen after loving exertion. And, as usual, her own body felt alive, her brain wide awake. She’d never figured out what made them so different.

“I’ll have to leave again, though,” she said mournfully.

“Soon.”

He snuggled against her. “Hmm?”

“Rose is so close to making the right decision. Another few days at Court ought to convince her there is no one there meant to share her life.”

“Mmm.” He threw a leg over hers, its weight warm and welcome.

“I am quite disappointed, though, that she’s not found a moment here to go off with Kit. It seems they both believe I invited him only to settle the details for your greenhouse.

And the house is so quiet. Do you know, I think everyone’s gone to bed. And ’tis not even midnight.” She gave an expressive sigh, rubbing Joseph’s smooth, warm back. “I believe I shall have to devise a way to get Rose and Kit out of their beds and into each other’s arms, at least for a while. I imagine he’ll be leaving in the morning for Hampton Court.