Chapter Two

As Rosemary waited impatiently for Sterling to come out from the pub, she gave serious consideration to returning to Hawkridge Manor without him. Walking the eight or so miles back to the estate would serve him right after the way he'd treated her. Poking fun at her bonnet (even though it was, admittedly, quite hideous), repeatedly calling her by the wrong name, and–worst of all, in her opinion–going on as if their kiss had never happened.

He hadn't made a single mention of it. Not one! If she didn't know any better, she might be tempted to believe she'd fallen asleep while she was reading and dreamed the entire thing. Except that reading never made her tired. If anything, she had the opposite problem. And she hadn't imagined that kiss. She knew she hadn't! Which meant that either it was of such minor insignificance to Sterling that he'd already forgotten about it, or he was purposefully choosing to pretend it had never happened.

Neither scenario made her feel very good, and both were an excellent reminder of why she preferred the company of Sir Reginald, who liked her clothes if only because there was plenty of extra space for him to dash up her sleeve in case one of her grandmother's yappy dogs came searching for a tasty, squirrel-sized snack.

What she wouldn't do to be back in London with her beloved pet tucked cozily on her lap and not a single surly duke in sight. Speaking of which…where was Sterling?

By her estimation she'd already been waiting for the better part of twenty minutes. Without her bonnet to provide shade, the sun was beating mercilessly down on her head, causing a trickle of sweat to drip between her shoulder blades. The duke had left her–quite literally–to bake in the early afternoon heat without a thought to her comfort or that of the poor horse who had brought them here.

The carriage rocked from side to side as Rosemary dismounted. Waving down a young lad with a gray felt cap tugged low over his mess of blond hair, she dug around in her reticule and gave him a shilling to bring the horse a cool bucket of water and then keep watch over the gelding while she went to track down Sterling.

It wasn't difficult to locate him. Once her eyes had adjusted to the pub's dimly lit interior, she spotted the duke immediately. Aside from the barman, he was apparently the only other person who saw fit to frequent a drinking establishment before noon.

She pinched her bottom lip between her teeth as she hovered indecisively in the open doorway. Maybe it would be best to return to the carriage and wait. Except Sterling didn't seem to be in any rush to leave. Sitting on a stool at the bar, he had his chin in one hand and a metal tankard in the other. Half-cast in shadow, his countenance was unreadable. His posture was somehow both stiff and weary at the same time, as if he'd traveled a great distance to get here. Except she'd done the driving, hadn't she? He had just sat there like a bump on a log. An ill-mannered bump, at that.

Her mind made up, Rosemary squared her shoulders. A floorboard creaked beneath her foot as she walked briskly into the pub, causing Sterling's head to lift and his eyes to narrow.

"You can't be in here," he said.

" You're here," she pointed out.

"That's because I'm a man and you're…"

"I'm…?"

"You." He lifted the tankard to his mouth. "I'll be out in a minute."

"I have already waited twenty."

He shrugged. "Then you won't mind another five."

Oh!

Maybe it was because she was sheltered. Or maybe she'd just never really paid attention before. But Rosemary was fairly certain that she'd never, ever met someone as infuriatingly disagreeable as the Duke of Hanover!

All things considered, she wouldn't be surprised to discover that he had killed his mistress. But not by use of brute force. The poor woman had probably expired due to explicit rudeness.

"What is so good about that drink that you couldn't wait until we were back at the estate?" she demanded. When Sterling was not forthcoming with an answer, she decided to figure it out for herself. Before he could stop her, she marched up to his stool, plucked the tankard right out of his hand, and took a big swill of whatever was inside.

"Rosemary," he said with some alarm. "I wouldn't– devil take it! " Cursing when she choked and gagged and blindly thrust the fire–for surely it was fire–onto the bar, he sprang from his seat and wrapped a supporting arm around her waist as she doubled over, tears streaming down her cheeks while the flames shot from her throat into her belly.

"That's–that's vile!" she cried. "The worst thing I've ever tasted. And I once ate a boiled pig's tongue by accident!"

"How on earth did you eat a–never mind. Take deep breaths. That's it." He began to rub her back in large, soothing circles. "That's better."

When the worst of it had passed and her tongue had regained some feeling, his hand fell away and she lifted her head to find him grinning crookedly at her, a glint of amusement shining in those wolfish gray eyes. His smile–the first genuine one she'd seen from him–stripped years of hard, polished veneer from his countenance, giving her a rare glimpse at the man beneath.

"This is not humorous in the least," she said primly, pretending not to notice the lick of heat under her skin that had nothing to do with whatever terrible concoction she'd drank and everything to do with the duke standing in front of her.

Rosemary wasn't–couldn't be–attracted to Sterling.

He was everything she detested in a person.

Obnoxious, unpleasant, and belligerent.

Not to mention discourteous.

But then, she'd always been drawn to the hurt and the vulnerable. The baby bird that had fallen from its nest. The orphaned squirrel without a home to return to. The carriage horse in need of a comforting hand upon its shoulder and a fresh bucket of water to quench its thirst.

Sterling wasn't a wounded animal. That much was clear. But there was hurt there just the same, hiding behind the sharp-edged charm that he used like a sword to keep everyone at arm's length. Everyone, it seemed, except for her.

"It's a little humorous." He propped his elbow on the edge of the bar. "I take it from your reaction that you've never had gin before?"

" That's gin? That's what you drink every night?" she said, eyeing the tankard in disbelief. Having sipped the occasional glass of wine and champagne at her grandmother's dinner parties, she had naturally assumed that was what Sterling was drinking whenever he took a nip from the silver flask he carried with him. Not some foul-tasting brew that had most likely burned a hole in the bottom of her stomach! "But…it's so terrible. How do you do it? Why do you do it?"

"Because it's better than the alternative," he said with a careless shrug.

"What's the alternative? Lye?"

"Feeling."

"Feeling what?" she asked, confused.

His grin faded. "Everything."

He'd said something similar to her before, but now having sampled gin herself she was loath to imagine what kind of demons would be worth such daily abuse.

"Maybe…maybe you could try a nice tea with lemon instead?" she suggested.

Picking up the tankard, he drank what was left, slammed it down onto the bar, and swiped a hand across his mouth. His eyes, when they met hers, were as dark and bitter as a cloudy sky brewing above a tempestuous sea. "Maybe you can mind your own damned business." With that, he grabbed a brown glass jug presumably filled with more gin and stalked out of the tavern, leaving Rosemary to trail behind him, her expression troubled.

It would have been simpler if the duke had sustained his illusion of a careless rogue. But having seen his pain, she couldn't make herself un see it. Some might come across a stray dog in the street and turn the other way when it showed its teeth and growled. But she preferred to take a different approach. An animal with its hackles up was an animal that was either afraid or injured. Often both. Such a creature needed gentleness and understanding, not condemnation and judgment.

It was in Rosemary's nature to be a healer. A helper. A nurturer of all things broken.

And it appeared as though she'd just found her next stray dog.

A doctor came the next day to examine Rosemary's grandmother. At eighty-two years of age, Lady Ellinwood, who'd reverted back to her maiden name after the death of her husband, had also outlived her sister, her daughter-in-law, and her child. She was a stern woman with an iron constitution. A battle class naval ship in a sea of wooden schooners.

Rosemary had learned at an early age not to cross her. Where her grandmother was concerned, obedience was the best way to preserve calm waters. No doubt her American cousins would have chaffed and rebelled against such an arrangement, but Rosemary was content to do what was asked of her if it meant being left alone to do what she wanted. She was also aware–more so now than when she'd been a young girl still reeling from the sudden death of her parents–that her grandmother was her best means by which to keep a roof over her head and clothes on her back and food in her belly…lest she exchange what independence she had for a wedding ring and marriage to a husband who would most likely expect unfavorable things of her, such as hosting dinner parties and–horror of all horrors–releasing Sir Reginald back into the wild.

It made Lady Ellinwood's lingering illness all the more concerning. Of course, Rosemary was worried for her grandmother's sake. But she was also worried about what would happen to her if something happened to her grandmother.

Lady Ellinwood had battled flare-ups of her gout before. A painful condition that affected the joints, particularly those in the ankles and feet, it rendered her completely bedridden. Their family physician, a man even older than Lady Ellinwood, had come up with a plethora of treatments over the years, from applying a slab of raw steak to the afflicted area to draining the diseased blood with leeches. In Rosemary's opinion, blood was better served in the body than out of it, but she also understood that when faced with an incurable disease doing something was often better than doing nothing.

The Earl of Hawkridge's doctor, however, hadn't brought in dead hunks of cow flesh or sucker worms. Instead, he'd ordered Lady Ellinwood's personal maid to maintain a strict regime of hot compresses followed by cold, and a tonic with anti-inflammatory properties to be taken thrice daily.

To Rosemary's enormous relief, the unconventional treatment had actually worked and her grandmother's gout had never looked better. But for some reason, Lady Ellinwood continued to insist that her legs were too painful to get out of bed, thus preventing their departure from the manor and causing Rosemary to call upon the doctor once more to see if there was anything he had missed during his previous examination.

"Her joints are swollen," he told Rosemary in the privacy of the hallway once they'd left Lady Ellinwood's chambers in order to let her rest. "But then, that is to be expected given her age and natural degradation of the joints from her prior episodes of gout."

Rosemary knotted her hands together behind her back. "Then she can walk?"

"Not just that, but she must. Staying in bed is doing no favors to your grandmother's circulation." The doctor, a tall man with brown hair that was beginning to gray at the temple, studied Rosemary with calm, intelligent blue eyes. "I prescribe to the theory that as a person ages, their muscles and bones begin to lose mass and strength. This process is only increased by lack of exercise and movement. To put it bluntly, the longer Lady Ellinwood chooses to remain bedridden the longer she shall have to remain bedridden."

"Then what you are saying, if I understand correctly, is that there is no medical reason why my grandmother is not on her feet," Rosemary summarized, her brow creasing.

The doctor nodded. "Precisely. If there is no improvement over the next two days, let me know and I shall refer you to a specialist from the Belclaire Institution."

"But that's…that's an asylum," she said, taken aback.

"Part of it, yes. However, there is a growing constituency of doctors and philosophers, led by Dr. Wilhelm Wundt, who believe that a person's mind is just as important, if not more so, in the healing process as what ails them physically. Have you ever the opportunity to attend one of Dr. Wundt's lectures, I highly recommend it. If you are fluent in German, his most recent publication, Handbuch der Medicinischen Physik , is an excellent read. It is my understanding that they are working on an English translation." He adjusted his grip on his black leather medical bag. "If there is nothing else, Miss Stanhope, I've a newborn with croup to attend."

She wished the doctor luck and then waited until he'd gone downstairs and she heard the front door open and close before she quietly slipped back into her grandmother's room. The curtains were closed and the room was dark; her grandmother a small lump under the covers in the middle of the bed. The size of the mattress dwarfed her, making her appear frail in stature. But while Lady Ellinwood was many things–autocratic, strict, and officious, to name a few–frail was not an adjective that Rosemary would ever use to describe the elder matriarch.

"Grandmother," she called softly. "Are you awake?"

"Yes," came the feeble reply. "Has the doctor left?"

"A few minutes ago."

With suspicious zest, Lady Ellinwood threw off the covers and sat upright. Reaching for her wire-rimmed spectacles, she perched them on the edge of her nose and waved her granddaughter forward with an impatient flick of her wrist. "Open those drapes, then come here. I want to get a closer look at you and those freckles on your face. What have I said about going out in the sun without a bonnet? We're going to need lemon water, buckets of it," she ordered her beleaguered maid, Janelle, who was never far from her side and generally wore the appearance of a puppy that had been kicked too many times. "Well, what are you waiting for? I haven't all day!"

"Thank you," Rosemary murmured as Janelle hurried from the room. Then her hands crept self-consciously to her cheeks as she reluctantly approached the side of the bed. "I'm sorry. I–I lost my bonnet."

"During your outing with the Duke of Hanover, I presume."

Her mouth opened. "How…how did you know about that?"

"Just because I am confined to this room doesn't mean I am not aware of what my granddaughter is doing or who she is cavorting with," Lady Ellinwood said haughtily.

"We–we weren't cavorting . He asked me to drive him into the village to pick up some…some medicine, and I could hardly refuse." Rosemary took a deep breath. Standing up to her grandmother was no small task, but if it made a difference in her health, then she had to do it. "Speaking of being confined to the room, Dr. Shaw said something that I found quite interesting–"

"You went without a proper chaperone."

"What?"

"Into the village. You went into the village with the duke without a proper chaperone." Lady Ellinwood lowered her spectacles to the edge of her nose and stared at Rosemary over them without blinking. "You were alone together in the carriage to and from. Did anything untoward happen?"

"Untoward?" Rosemary shook her head. "I don't–"

"Did he say or do anything inappropriate?" Reaching across the mattress, her grandmother grasped her wrist, her fingers cold and surprisingly strong given her supposed infirmity. "You can tell me, Rosemary. If the duke has done something, if he has compromised your reputation somehow, then we must insist that he make amends."

" Grandmother. " As she snatched her hand away, everything became clear. And while she was disappointed in her grandmother for putting on such a farce–for that was precisely what it was, what all this was–she was more disappointed in herself for not seeing it earlier.

Rosemary was aware that people considered her to be na?ve. The odd little wallflower, sitting in her corner with her books. Occasionally they stared, and whispered, and giggled, but they never bothered her because she wasn't a threat to them. And it did not cause her distress, because she knew herself. She knew that yes, all right, maybe she was odd. At least by the standards of the ton . But she was also intelligent, and observant, and while she was admittedly ignorant about some things–such as passion–she wasn't nearly as unsophisticated and guileless as everyone thought.

Except in this…in this she had been na?ve.

Na?ve to the lengths Lady Ellinwood would go to secure a husband for her granddaughter. A husband so far beyond Rosemary's reach that the very idea the Duke of Hanover would ever be interested in her enough to compromise her reputation was laughable.

Allowing herself to be fooled by her grandmother's scheme, however, was not.

"Is that why we're still here, then?" she asked. "Is that why you've been pretending to be ill? Because you wanted to make a match with the Duke of Hanover?"

"Don't you dare take that tone with me, Child. I was ill. I am ill. It is called being old and it is very inconvenient."

Lady Ellinwood was a difficult woman. A hard woman. A resentful woman. A woman who didn't possess an affectionate bone in her body and had the unfortunate habit of moving people around to suit her purposes as she would pieces on a chess board. But Rosemary loved her just the same, for deep down– very deep down–she knew that her love was reciprocated. Even if it was an emotion her grandmother was incapable of displaying.

"I was worried for you!" Kneeling beside the bed, she rested her chin on her folded arms and gazed imploringly at the woman who had raised her like a daughter and had never, not once, made her feel as if she were a burden. "Please don't do that again. If you'd told me the truth, I'd have been able to tell you that the duke has no interest in me whatsoever. This was a ploy destined to fail from the start."

"Not even a hint of unseemly behavior?" her grandmother sighed.

She thought of the kiss.

The kiss that Sterling was pretending had never happened.

"No. Not even a hint. Can we return to London now?"

"You need to marry someone , Rosemary." Lady Ellinwood's lips compressed to form a long, thin line of disapproval. "I am not going to be around forever, and when I am gone, the money will soon follow. You need to be prepared. I would not like all of my hard work to be squandered away should you end up as a governess or a school teacher."

"Wouldn't it be amusing if men had to marry women in order to secure their future?" Rosemary grinned. "What a different place the world would be if we were allowed to be in charge of our own destinies. To inherit estates and have grand political aspirations and dowries that were given to us instead of us giving them away."

Lady Ellinwood sighed. "You are, and always have been, a strange child. I fear it is to your detriment, as no husband wants a wife with such peculiar ideas."

And no duke would ever want to marry a wallflower, she added silently.

It was true.

Never, in a thousand years, would Sterling ever consider marrying someone like her . Someone whose own grandmother considered her to be strange. Such a fact was no great revelation. But what did cause her some surprise was the tiny quiver of disappointment she felt at the knowledge that her grandmother's plan (feign prolonged gout so that her granddaughter was stuck under the same roof as a duke), while well-intentioned, had failed.

Miserably.

"But alas," Lady Ellinwood went on, "I'm sure we can find someone this Season that is willing to overlook all of your eccentric qualities."

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. "Where is that 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. You must remember 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…your cousins "–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 will not attend."

"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 are not to 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."