Page 26 of Grasp the Thorn
Bear asked no questions. Rosa needed time to compose herself, and would not, in any case, want to air her family’s long-standing scandals in Jeffrey’s hearing.
Rosa remained silent during the short drive, but colour had returned to her cheeks by the time Bear handed her down at Rose Cottage.
Rosa went up to check on her father, then joined Bear in the parlour, where the servants had laid out cold meats, pastries, pickled vegetables and fruits. She was calm and contained, as if the incident with Lady Threxton had not happened, but the strain showed around her eyes.
One of the Hesketh girls bustled in and out of the room with tea makings, and coffee for Bear, so private conversation would have to wait.
Instead, Bear described the work on Thorne Hall, and the new workers he planned to hire on Monday. “As you know, we’ve started the demolition, but it will go much faster with the extra hands.” His challenge—or Caleb’s rather—would be to forge teams with both skilled men and laborers, when skilled men were on foreign soil and the laborers all from Kettlesworth.
Rosa was surely just humouring him. Women didn’t care where the money came from, just that it came. Or so he had always believed, but Rose listened carefully, and asked a few pertinent questions.
“Some sort of competition seems to inspire men,” she said. “Could you have a weekly challenge, with a prize for the team that completes their task first? Something they would have to work together to achieve.”
That could do the trick. “I like that idea, Rosa.” He’d discuss it with Caleb, and they’d figure something out.
The meal finished, he invited her to take a walk to the Hall. “You haven’t seen it since we started.” The walk would give them time to chat, and the shrubbery between the Hall and the cottage offered plenty of cover, should he be able to persuade his shy lady that they were unobserved.
His male parts stirred at the thought, somewhat prematurely. He was determined to show proper respect by waiting for their wedding night, difficult though it was when she looked up at him with a demure smile, her face framed by her hat and its ribbon.
Arm in arm, they strolled through the gate that gave quick access to the Hall, along one of the bridle paths of the estate. First, the path from the cottage wound through a thicket of hazel, which looked as if it had been coppiced regularly for generations, and untouched for years. Another task for his list of all that was needed to make the property marketable, but currently an ideal spot for dalliance.
He looked back to check, and sure enough, he could see nothing but hazels. The same ahead and to both sides. Rosa had stopped when he did. She watched him, eyes wide, a light flush colouring her cheeks. She curled her lower lip into her mouth and ran the top teeth over it, and the salacious images that action prompted had him groaning. Did the minx have any idea what she did to him?
She certainly knew what to expect, for as he took a step toward her, she lifted her arms and cooperated in her own capture.
Several long kisses later, he lowered her gently to the path again, tortured by and revelling in her slide down his body. “Only one more week,” he reminded himself, and must have spoken aloud because Rosa answered, “Just seven more days.”
Bear helped Rosa with the buttons he had undone and retied her hat, which he had pushed from her head for better access to her face. Rosa had clearly been better behaved than him, since he had only to tidy his cravat and straighten his cuffs. Perhaps he could tempt her into rumpling him more on the way back.
Once they began walking again, he asked the question that had eaten at him since he’d come to Rosa’s rescue earlier that day. “What did old Lady Threxton say that so upset you?”
“Oh Hugh, just the same ancient history. But… Hugh, she did not know who I was, at the end. She thought I was my aunt. She called me Lillibelle, and said I—the two of us, so Lillibelle and my mother—should have been left in the workhouse. She mentioned Pelman as Lillibelle’s deceiver, which confirms the rector’s story.”
CHAPTER 18
Rosa couldn’t tell Bear the rest of Lady Threxton’s accusations. That she was Lillibelle’s child. That her grandmother had also run away with a man she never married, which made Rosa’s mother and aunt base born. Above all, that Lillibelle still lived, and was mistress to the Marquess of Raithby.
Such scandalous associations made her unfit to be a wife, and she should tell him the truth and release him from his promise. But, how could she? He was her salvation and her father’s, and besides, Lady Threxton’s mind was fading. Perhaps what she said was not true.
She let Bear whisk her into a shelter formed by two trees and kiss her thoroughly, consoling herself that the scandal was all in the past and would not touch them.
Still, the revelations preyed on her mind, particularly that her aunt, if Lillibelle was indeed her aunt, was still alive. Belle Clifford. Would it be such a terrible thing if she wrote a letter? But the post was collected at the inn, and the innkeeper’s wife was a gossip. Besides, she had no address.
The thought sat at the back of her mind during a busy week. By Monday, she realized she could post the letter from Liverpool, and send it in care of the Marquess of Raithby. By Tuesday, she had already rejected two drafts. She had not yet mentioned the letter to Bear, who didn’t know Lillibelle still lived, but she would have to tell him. He was escorting her to Liverpool.
She and the two maids were giving the whole house a thorough cleaning, attic to cellar, tackling all the jobs she had been unable to manage on her own. The outdoors handyman had arrived and was making order out of the parts of the garden that had been reverting to wilderness.
Bear suggested that the man cut down the rambling rose that grew up the walls of the cottage. “I don’t understand why people grown roses,” he grumbled. “They only flower for a short time, and they have thorns all year round.”
“The roses, when they come, are worth a few scratches,” Rosa retorted. “My mother used to say that thorns are not the cost of having a rose bush. The flowers are the reward for having a thorn bush.” She chuckled as she remembered. “Mother used to say that she and I both had our thorns, but we were roses, for all of that.”
Her betrothed laughed, and had the handyman trim ramblers a little and mulch them with straw cleaned out from the hen’s coop. He also had a group of workmen remaking the shed and building an extension large enough to stable two horses and a small carriage.
Bear spent most of each day at Thorne Hall, working alongside the men, but he came to dinner each evening, bringing his foreman. Each evening he found a time and place to catch Rosa alone, for another of those toe-curling kisses.
Thursday was the day set for Rosa to return to Liverpool for the gown she would wear at her wedding. On Wednesday evening, Bear asked, “Would you mind if I do not escort you to Liverpool tomorrow, Rosa? I want to be here tomorrow when we bring down the rest of the damaged wing.”
She could post her letter, now in its fifth draft, without having to explain. “Of course, Hugh. You must be at Thorne Hall for that. I can take Sukie with me for propriety.”
