Page 60 of Miss Dramatic
I’m conversing with a wooden gryphon. What do you think? “Just debating a minor point of philosophy. I’m—”
“You look a tad disconcerted,” Lady Phillip said. “Even good company can become tiresome when one is accustomed to solitude.”
She spoke from some sort of experience, and her words were meant kindly, but Rose wanted nothing so much as for her hostesses togo away.
She’d often wanted Dane, Mama, and Timmens to go away. When Dane had gone away—always at the busiest times of year for Colforth Hall—she’d wanted him tostay away. She did not want Gavin to go away, but in some regard, at luncheon he had.
“I thought I’d find a good book,” Rose said, pushing open the library door. The space was blessedly deserted and flooded with afternoon light. “I am a voracious reader, and an outing into the village doesn’t appeal just at the moment.”
“This has to do with my dunderheaded brother, doesn’t it?” Lady Tavistock said, accompanying Rose into the library. “He was all Mayfair manners at luncheon, and yet, he kept looking at you when you were pretending not to look at him.”
Lady Phillip closed the library door and began a circuit of the room, twitching at beautifully arranged bouquets of sweet peas or straightening candles that needed no straightening.
“Men can be the very devil,” she said. “My own dear Phillip included. He is the best of fellows, and I adore him without limit, but he has been slow to accept that a wife is for confiding in.”
“Tavistock has come a long way,” Lady Tavistock observed. “I daresay I have as well. Gavin is still very much a work in progress.”
“Might we discuss Lord Tavistock’s books?” Rose asked. “I understand young Caroline is a bibliophile.”
Rose’s hostesses did not so much as glance at each other, and yet, they seemed to be acting in concert.
“A wonderful collection,” Lady Tavistock said briskly. “Gavin has the better library of plays. If you like, I can take you over to Twidboro Hall while Lady Phillip accompanies the ladies into the village.”
Somebody was having an argument around the side of the house. The words were indistinct, while the bickering tone was unmistakable. That dispute meant Rose could not snatch a random volume and flee to the garden, and Lady Phillip just happened to be blocking her path to the door.
“We can venture to Twidboro Hall another time,” Rose said. “I’ll content myself with some damned Wordsworth for the moment.”
She realized she’d cursed only when a silence of several eternities’ duration greeted her words.
“I’m sorry. I’m a bit out of sorts. If I can manage a few hours to myself, I’m sure I’ll be fine. I don’t actually care for poetry.”
Lady Tavistock crossed from the hearth and gave Rose the sort of look a mother aimed at a docile child turned up inexplicably cranky.
“You don’t care for Wordsworth at all, do you?”
The compassion in her ladyship’s eyes, the complete lack of judgment, shattered something old and brittle in Rose’s soul.
“I abhor his every rubbishing rhyme. Perhaps I need a nap, or one of Lady Iris’s t-tisanes. I’ll come around, I’m sure. I’m just… I’ll be…”
Lady Tavistock held out her arms. “You are not fine. You are not fine at all.”
Rose went into her ladyship’s embrace and commenced bawling as if her heart was breaking. Lady Tavistock, who was a few inches taller than Rose, wrapped her in a fierce hug and spoke past Rose’s shoulder to Lady Phillip.
“Find my dunderpated, hen-witted, bumbling excuse for a brother, please. He has much to—”
The door swung open. To Rose’s undying mortification, Gavin stepped through.
“Has anybody seen Mrs. Rob… Rose. What’s wrong? You’re crying. Who has made you cry? I’ll blacken both his eyes and boot him from the property.”
He advanced, handkerchief at the ready, and his very fierceness made Rose cry harder.
“You have,” she said, wrenching herself from Lady Tavistock’s hug. “You have, you wretched bounder, and I amnot fine, and that is your fault, and I am ready to pack my bags and leave you to your stupid male moods and whims, becauseI have had enough.”
She was being unfair, of course. She was heaping on the present moment an entire marriage worth of misery, plus the detritus of the debacle in Derbyshire, and all the uncertainty that came from last night followed by Gavin’s performance at luncheon.
“I’m tired of being fair,” Rose added. “It’s a rubbishing lot of work for no reward. I’m tired of being a proper widow, tired of even the servants feeling entitled to judge me. I’m exhausted and not in the mood for your intrigues and machinations, Gavin. If you mean to apologize, do so—you owe me an apology—but I want answers, too, and no more of your passionate odes one minute and ignoring me over the dessert tray the next.”
“Badly done,” Lady Tavistock murmured.
