Rose (Flower Trilogy) (3 page)

One of them had clearly drunk too much champagne. “As in King Charles’s court?”

“I believe they’re at Windsor now—they do move around, as you may know.”

“What I
know
is that you and Father have always claimed Court is no place for proper young ladies.”

“Well, you’re not so young anymore,” Chrystabel said, then came to wrap an arm around Rose when she winced.

“I didn’t mean it that way, dear. But you’re one-and-twenty now, a woman grown. And I
will
be there to chaperone.

’Tis perfectly acceptable.”

’Twas more than acceptable, Rose knew—girls as young as fifteen went to Court, many of them
un
chaperoned. And she also knew the licentious men there treated them like full-grown women. Violet had been to Court with Ford, and she’d come back with stories that had made Rose’s eyes widen.

A little part of her wondered if this was really such a good idea.

But she wasn’t going to argue when faced with such surprising good fortune. “Gemini, I’d best go talk to Harriet.

She’ll no doubt need to alter some of my gowns, and ’twill take me hours to decide what to bring before she can even begin.”

“There is no time for alterations, dear.” In opposition to Rose, whose stomach was churning with excitement, Chrystabel calmly plucked petals. “I mean to leave tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow!” Rose dropped the stem in her hand. “Tomorrow?”

“There’s no time like the present,” her mother said with an enigmatic smile.

At another time, Rose might have been vexed at the implication that she was getting only more spinsterish as the days sped by. But this was no time to be touchy. No, ’twas time to prepare.

She was going to Court! Leaving her flowers on the table, she rushed to her chamber to pack.

“What a day.” Chrystabel slipped beneath the counterpane to join her husband in bed, sinking into the mattress as
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Lauren Royal

she relaxed for the first time in what seemed like weeks.

“Thank God they’re married at last.”

“Are you not really thanking God they can no longer create a child out of wedlock?” Joseph teased, leaning up to kiss her lightly on the lips. He lowered himself onto an elbow, smiling into her eyes, his own a deep, sparkling green.

She pushed a lock of dark hair off his forehead. “Well, there is that,” she admitted. When Lily and Rand’s marriage plans had been threatened by Rand’s father, she’d been mortified to realize she’d allowed them to share a bed before her daughter was safely wed. It had seemed a fine idea at the time, but it wouldn’t be happening again with Rose—

or Rowan, for that matter.

Chrystabel reckoned she could learn from her mistakes.

“But mostly,” she added, “I’m just gladdened to see them happy at last. Everything worked out.”

“It usually does,” said her ever-practical husband.

She released a contented sigh. “Another wedding.”

“Another wedding night,” he responded with a lustful grin.

A tradition, their wedding nights. ’Twas one of the reasons she so loved arranging other people’s marriages. Not that either of them needed an excuse to make love, but there was something thrilling about watching a wedding while anticipating the night to come.

She smiled as he kissed her again, sighed when he slipped a hand beneath her night rail’s neckline to caress a sensitive breast. For long minutes they said nothing, their breathing growing louder and more ragged in the stillness of their thick-walled room.

Here, in their quiet, private chamber, her Joseph could hear whatever she said. Every word, those spoken as well as the silent ones that passed between two as attuned as they.

But they didn’t need words now. Actions would do. A brush of lips, warm skimming hands. Bodies coming together, creating a thrill that the years had done nothing to dim. Soft cries filled the chamber, matched by a low groan of pleasure that echoed into the night.

When their hearts had calmed, when Joseph leaned away to blow out the one remaining candle, Chrystabel sighed.

“I’ll miss you.”

“Where are you going?” The words vibrated against her throat where he’d settled back into her arms.

“I’m thinking to take Rose to Court at Windsor. With your permission, of course,” she rushed to add, knowing he would never deny her.

“Court? Do you expect that is wise? The men there—”

“I will watch her like a hawk. And ’tis only one man I’m interested in for her: Kit Martyn. He’s there as we sleep, checking on a project—”

“Kit Martyn? Chrysanthemum my love, I know you fancy yourself a matchmaker, but Rose has shown no interest—”

“Which is exactly why he’s the perfect man for her.”

Joseph lifted his head and searched her eyes in the dim, flickering light from the fire. “Come again?”

“You know how she is. As soon as she sets her sights on a man, the act begins. The flirting. The flattering. Don’t you see? She has a much better chance of winning a man for whom she has no interest. With Kit she’ll be herself.

Charming, intelligent, sharp-witted . . . why, he cannot fail but fall in love with her.”

“I suspect he’s taken with her already,” Joseph said dryly.

“But what good will that do if she doesn’t fall for him?

We’ve promised her she can choose her own husband.”

“Making her fall,” Chrystabel said, “will be Kit’s problem, and I’ve no doubt he’s up to the task. I’ve only to provide the opportunity.”

“You cannot push, Chrysanthemum.”

Her laugh tinkled through the darkness. “I would never. I
18

Lauren Royal

know full well our daughters pledged not to let me arrange their marriages. Yet I managed to match both Violet and Lily without either being the wiser, did I not? Have no fear, darling—Rose’s romance will follow suit . . . and she’ll have no idea I was behind it.”

Kit stood in a corner of Windsor Castle’s soon-to-be new dining room, watching two carpenters affix carvings of fruit to the paneled wall. The piece, exquisitely worked by Grinling Gibbons, was made of the finest wood.

He wished he could say the same for the rest of his project.

His gaze went to the sagging ceiling on the side of the room that had recently been part of a brick courtyard.

Jagged cracks ran this way and that, and bits of broken plaster littered the floor underneath. On his orders, men were hastily erecting scaffolding to support the damaged ceiling until it could be repaired from above.

All day, Kit had measured and figured, tearing out parts of the ceiling to search for causes, to find where his planning had gone wrong. It hadn’t, he’d finally discovered—the plans had been perfect. That was, if they’d been executed with the fine materials he’d used in his calculations.

But Harold Washburn, his project’s foreman, had apparently not seen fit to order those materials, no matter that he’d been supplied with the funds. Instead, the new portion of the room had been built with inferior goods that weren’t strong enough to support the ceiling. Kit had found beams made of wormy wood that had obviously been hit by lightning, weakening it; and cheap, substandard plaster that might look fine on first inspection, but wouldn’t hold up over the years, sagging ceiling or not. And Washburn, no doubt, had pocketed the savings.

Making Kit look the fool.

Seething, calculations in hand, he stalked toward the bald, dark-eyed man. “Washburn!”

The man swung around, his beady gaze hooded. “Aye, Martyn? Have you a plan to repair the faulty addition?”

“Faulty?” Kit struggled to keep his temper in check.

“The only thing faulty is the material you ordered to build it—which isn’t anywhere near the quality in my specifications.”

Washburn had the gall to pretend shock. “Sir! I would never—”

“Never again for me, at any rate.” Kit gestured with his rolled-up sketches. “Be gone.”

The man’s breath huffed in and out through a large nose crisscrossed with tiny red veins. “You cannot just dismiss me,” he snapped.

“Lord Almighty, you’re a nithing half-wit. The damn ceiling could have fallen on your good-for-nothing head.

You’re lucky I’m only dismissing you.”

To Kit’s astonishment, Washburn simply shouldered past him and walked away, looking almost smug.

Kit consciously unclenched his jaw, reaching for the scrap of brick he usually carried in his surcoat pocket. His fist clenched around it; he’d been itching for a fight.

After a moment, though, the anger faded and relief settled in its place. The problem, after all, had been resolved more quickly than he’d any right to expect.

He took a deep breath, promoted a grateful man to take Washburn’s place, then headed to the small chamber he’d been given to use as an office, already revamping the schedule in his head.

This project would still finish on time. That there were greedy men in the world was not news to Kit. But this particular man would not cost him the Deputy Surveyor post.

’Twould take a much bigger problem to destroy Kit Martyn’s plans.

“Hurry,” Rose said. “Or by the time we walk over to Court, the presentations will be finished.”

“Worry not, dear.” Seated together with Rose at the single dressing table in the rooms they’d been assigned at Windsor Castle, Mum held very still while her maid, Anne, used hot curling tongs to put the final touches on her hair.

“We will still be allowed inside, even if we’re late.”

With all the last-minute preparations, they’d left home today much later than they’d planned. Chrystabel had needed to leave instructions for the running of the entire household, and Harriet, Rose’s maid, had taken forever to pack. It had been dark by the time they’d reached Windsor, and Rose, dying of curiosity, had hardly been able to see anything of the huge castle as a warden showed them by torchlight to the small apartment they’d been assigned.

“I don’t
want
to be late,” she complained. Beneath burgundy satin sleeves fastened at intervals with jeweled clasps, her skin prickled with suppressed excitement. “I want to meet the King and Queen.”

“You will, dear.” Chrystabel met her gaze in the dressing table’s mirror. “You look very pretty.”

“Yes, you certainly do,” Harriet added as she wove matching burgundy ribbons through the bun on the back of Rose’s head. “And just think of all the new men you’re going to meet! I can hardly believe I’m here, so far from Trentingham.”

Actually, ’twas not far at all—little more than a couple of hours downriver. Though Rose had never been inside the castle before, she and her sisters often came to Windsor to visit the shops. But Harriet had been born at Trentingham Manor and, at age nineteen, had yet to leave the estate until today.

Rose suspected that was half the reason for their late start. Harriet had been so flustered, she’d been unable to keep her mind on the preparations.

“You might meet a new man, too,” Mum told Harriet, a familiar light coming into her brown eyes. Always happiest when matchmaking, Chrystabel cared not if the couples were royalty or servants. So long as two people, thanks to her, were finding their lifelong mates.

“Do you think so?” Harriet’s fingers fumbled with the ribbons as she breathed a romantic sigh. Rose had never thought of Harriet as pining for marriage. Harriet was just Harriet, a sturdy girl with frizzy red hair and pale green eyes in a wide face full of freckles. But now those eyes went dreamy. “I would so love to fall in love.”

“I shall keep that in mind,” Chrystabel promised her.

“There, Lady Trentingham, you’re finished,” her own maid Anne said. “And you look pretty, too. As for you,” she added to Harriet, “she will find you someone to love.”

Four years earlier, Chrystabel had successfully matched Anne with a coachman from the Liddington estate. Today, they both lived happily at Trentingham, and so far they had produced one little future chambermaid and a tiny stable-boy-to-be.

Chrystabel stood and smoothed her peach silk skirts, looking to Rose. “Come along, dear. What is taking you so long?”

A retort hung on the tip of Rose’s tongue, but she kept her mouth shut and followed her mother from the apartment. As they crossed the Upper Ward, excitement churned in the pit of her stomach. She was about to meet the King and Queen of England.

When they reached the open courtyard called Horn Court, where two red-and-white-liveried footmen stood guard at the door, she paused and pulled a curl forward to rest artfully on one bare shoulder. Her breath was coming short, and it had little to do with the rigid, pointed stomacher that stiffened the front of her bodice.

“Shall we?” Chrystabel asked, gesturing toward the door.

One of the footmen pulled it open. To Rose’s disappointment, the monarchs weren’t waiting right inside. Instead, she followed her mother into a tall, wide hall that held nothing but a staircase.

But what a staircase. “Oooh,” she breathed. “ ’Tis beautiful!”

“It looks French,” Chrystabel whispered back. “While exiled on the Continent, King Charles was much taken with Versailles.”

French or English, Rose thought the staircase lovely.

Twin flights of steps rose to their right and left, meeting at a central landing above. The rooms they had been given here were rather ancient, with plain plastered walls, but these walls were covered in colorful painted murals depicting Greeks and Trojans. Giants battled on the deeply coved ceiling that towered over her head.

As Rose climbed the steps, carefully holding her skirts, she felt very small and insignificant. She supposed that was the desired effect. Even here, outside his chambers, the King would want to project strength and power.

At the top of the stairs, she held her breath while another liveried footman opened another door.

But she was disappointed again. The enormous rectangular room beyond held no furniture and just a few lords and ladies absorbed in softly murmured conversations.

Rose’s and Chrystabel’s high-heeled shoes made clicking sounds on the planked floor as they crossed the chamber.

Rose huffed out a sigh. “Where are the King and Queen?”