Page 20 of Grasp the Thorn
The rector looked doubtfully at Bear. “We understand one another then.”
“I think we do. You have your task, Rector, and I have mine.”
CHAPTER 14
That afternoon, Rosa watched Mr Gavenor descend from the rector’s buggy. She couldn’t believe that the rector’s news had been good, and prepared for further disappointment.
Mr Gavenor joined her in the parlour as soon as he had changed for dinner. Thankfully, they were alone, for Father had a slight cough and asked to stay in bed, and Jeffreys had insisted that she allow him to tend to the invalid while she joined Mr Gavenor.
Mr Gavenor didn’t keep her waiting, opening the topic as soon as they had finished serving themselves. “Miss Neatham, the rector came out to Thorne Hall today. He wanted to tell me that the village has been talking.”
“I expected it.” Rosa was proud that her voice did not shake. “When do you wish us to move out? I can put weight on my ankle again.”
“I do not wish you to move out,” Mr Gavenor replied. He put down his cutlery and met Rosa’s eyes, his own serious. “I will move into the village for a couple of weeks.”
“But your work…” Rosa didn’t understand. “A couple of weeks… What can you mean?”
Mr Gavenor looked down at his plate, then ran his hand through his hair, a gesture of frustration. “I am doing this wrong. Look, Miss Neatham.” He reached across the corner of the table and took her hand. “Rosabel. Would you do me the very great honour of becoming my wife?”
“Your wife?” Rosa frowned. He could not be proposing, surely?
“It will protect you and your father, and it would suit me very well, too,” Mr Gavenor said, hurrying on before she could find a more coherent response. “A wife would be a great benefit to me, as these past few days have demonstrated. Someone to look after my house and make it into a home. I have never been more comfortable. I like having you around.”
“But—”
“And it isn’t just that. You would be an asset in my business. I need to entertain from time to time, and you would show to advantage among the people with whom I deal. You are a lady to the fingertips, Rosa, and the people who buy my houses would like that.”
Rosa blinked, her mind a scramble.
“Also, I need a child. A daughter would be best, because my great aunt’s property must be left to a girl, but we could try again if we had a son, and an heir would be rather nice, I think. I had thought of adopting, but a child needs a mother, and that means a wife.”
The yearning for a child hit her in the gut, and the pain allowed her to make the first of her many objections. “But…I am thirty-six.”
Mr Gavenor dismissed her age with an airy wave. “I am forty-three. Which means we are both still capable of having a child.”
“Surely, there are younger women with better connections…”
He shook his head, a firm negative. “I don’t want them. Silly ninnies. No conversation.” His voice softened, “I like you, Rosa. I like spending time with you.”
What did one say to such a thing? Rosa had no experience with compliments. “Thank you.”
Mr Gavenor’s brows drew together. “I don’t want… Rosa, you deserve to have choices, and you won’t have them in this village. If you won’t marry me, will you let me find you and your father a house somewhere away from here, where you can live without your aunt’s history following you?”
Rosa flinched. Her mother used to talk about her aunt, how she had been disappointed by a man and had died. Her father refused to allow the woman to be discussed, and Rosa had guessed the story was more sordid than her mother had been willing to tell a child. “You know about my aunt?”
“The rector told me,” Mr Gavenor said.
“And you still want to marry me?”
He nodded firmly. “You are not your aunt, and very few families lack a skeleton or two in their closet.” A second hand came to join the first; he enfolded her small hand in his large ones. “Marry me, Rosa. I will try to be a good husband.”
It made no sense. Surely a man like him—wealthy and a war hero—did not need to marry an ageing spinster of no particular family from a remote corner of Cheshire. “You could find a better wife.”
“I’ve tried. One Marriage Mart was enough.” He tried for pathos, watching her from under his brows to see if she was sympathetic. “I’m never going back. If you won’t have me, I’ll dwindle into a lonely old man.”
“I cannot help but feel that I benefit most from this arrangement.” She was considering it. She was really considering marriage to Mr Gavenor. Who would have thought?
“The benefits go both ways. You get a home and respectability. I get a home and all the things we have listed.”
