Page 52 of Miss Dramatic
She hugged him, and then she began her tale.
ChapterTwelve
“Lady Rutherford’s house party wasn’t the respite I’d hoped it would be,” Rose said, making herself concentrate rather than gloss over painful generalities. “I was free of mourning and free of London, but nothing could free me from the memories. Then I looked up from a dull bit of verse, and there you were.”
Gavin kissed her nose. “I went barreling into the music room, thinking to review the lines I was most in fear of bungling, hoping to find solitude. I found so much more than mere solitude.”
Rose put a hand on his chest and applied the slightest pressure, and he was gone. He listened to her with his body and his mind. How she adored him for that.
“We became enamored,” she said, sitting up and wedging a pillow at her back. “Or I became enamored and then… besotted. I had hopes, Gavin. I hadn’t gone so far as hoping for remarriage, but I’d thought myself lost to hope in all regards. My lot at Colforth Hall would be contentment, gratitude, hard work, and rural friendships. A good if stultifying and lonely life. You upended my expectations, and I tossed my common sense to the wind.”
He situated himself beside her and took her hand. “As did I.”
Rose was glad the lantern no longer burned, glad Gavin could not distract her with his smiles and knowing glances. She could be braver in the dark. More focused.
“You know most of the rest,” she said. “We became lovers, and that was magnificent, but I awoke alone. I knew we could not completely abandon propriety and dressed with particular care for breakfast.”
“You wore your hair half up, half down. I thought you were taunting me.” He took her hand and kissed her fingers. “What did you think?”
Rose cast her mind back to that awkward, difficult meal. “That you’d spurned me. You were perfectly, frigidly correct to me. When I invited you to begin the day with a stroll in the garden, you declared that pressing correspondence demanded your attention, then I saw you sitting on a bench among the daffodils, staring at nothing. Clearly, I had given offense, or I had seriously misjudged you.”
Gavin rubbed his thumb over her knuckles, a sweet little gesture that had once meant he was thinking through a knotty dilemma.
“Gavin?”
“You are correct that we could not become oblivious to propriety. I thought to join the other lucky fellows stealing about the corridors before the sun rose. To catch a nap and awaken to the joy of my lover’s countenance across the breakfast table.”
“What happened?”
“I rose from the bed, kissed your slumbering cheek, and found a considerable pile of coins among my effects in the dressing closet. Because I had undressed with some care, I knew for a fact the money hadn’t been there the previous night.”
Rose shook her hand free of his. “You thought Ipaidyou?”
“The evidence of such insulting generosity was right before my eyes.”
“Gavin… I never left the bed. How could I…?” Darkness was no ally now. “Why would Ipayyou any more than you would pay me? That wasn’t… By all the biblical plagues, I did not leave you any money.”
“And yet, the money was there. Not on the bedside table, not on your vanity. Tucked discreetly into the folds of my cravat. I returned the coins to your jewelry box, dressed as best I could, and concluded that you’d given me my congé.”
“I had not.”
“But I became distant and correct, Rose. You thus concluded that I had given youyourcongé. Somebody saw what was blooming between us and sundered a growing attachment on purpose.”
“It’s worse than that,” Rose said, straddling his lap and cuddling close. “I asked Mrs. Drysdale what could have put you in such a standoffish mood. She told me that actors are proud and mercurial, and they expect to be paid forallof their performances. The house party was proving less remunerative than you’d been led to believe and she implied that you were pouting. I concluded that you expected me to compensate you for the attention you’d shown me.”
Gavin held Rose loosely, his hands trailing patterns on her back. “Oddly enough, she spoke the truth. Drysdale promised we’d each earn generous vails. Instead, we were to content ourselves with a few weeks of room and board plus free rehearsal space.”
“Was she misleading me, or was I reading too much into ambiguous words?” Rose thought back to a hasty, quiet exchange and couldn’t decide, but Gemma Drysdale had had no reason to bear her ill will.
“Who left me that money?” Gavin murmured. “The dressing closet could be accessed from the corridor, but somebody had to have known I was finally, at long last, sharing your bed.”
“We didn’t make a secret of our attraction.”
Rose lapsed into silence, and despite Gavin’s gentle caresses to her back, she could feel him mentally parsing the same questions that bothered her.
Who benefited from wrecking a budding romance?
Who would be so bold as to intrude on a tryst?
