Page 33 of The Marquis' Game of Seduction
But even worse, was the fact that Colin decided to apologise.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said. His voice was low and gritty.
“No. No, it’s not. It’s not a…” Rose began. Her heart fluttered. “I’m terribly sorry, as well. Perhaps I had better…”
She turned and rushed back toward the garden. Her feet scrambled beneath her, and she nearly lost her footing. Within seconds, she’d reached the back door of the mansion, and she threw herself behind it, draped her back against the wood and inhaled, exhaled, for a good three minutes, until her heart found a way to cool. She felt sure that if she didn’t take that moment’s rest, she might have fainted—stretched out across the back of the hallway, found later by a wayward servant.
It would be the final abuse to a truly embarrassing situation. And she simply didn’t need that.
Oh, but what did it all mean? Her heart ached and blurted blood and she stepped lightly toward her bedroom, her head all woozy. What did it mean that the Marquees had touched her arm not once, but twice? What did it mean that his eyes glowed with such strength and beauty and assuredness?
And what did it mean that he’d yearned to take her out into the moor to apologise to her—for something that truly didn’t require an apology?
Oh, it was all too much. Rose set her jaw and returned to her bedroom and committed herself to an afternoon alone: an afternoon of reading and writing and thinking hard. Surely, in the light of the next day’s morning, the power of this would retreat. She had only wait until that moment, when it all fell away for good.
Chapter 15
Rose found Anna scrubbing the tiles in the kitchen several days later. Although they lived in the same general quarters, Rose found it rather difficult to find a time to actually “run into” her newfound friend. She squealed with excitement and tumbled to her knees and tossed her arms around her friend, while announcing, “He’s told me it’s all right! I can teach you!”
Anna blinked tired eyes. The back of her hand scraped over her cheek, which had collected suds from her scrubbing and splashing. After a long moment, she said—a bit incredulous—“You mean that you’re going to teach me to read and write?”
“Of course, silly,” Rose affirmed, although she immediately regretted it. Anna seemed tired and stressed, with enormous bags that dripped down below her eyes. Rose draped her hand over Anna’s shoulder and rubbed at the tense muscle. “But I don’t wish to overwork you,” she said. “Whenever you feel up to it, you come and find me. As long as I’m not currently working with Duncan, my time is all yours. Okay?”
Anna nodded and bit down hard on her lower lip. “I’m really going to learn to read and write…” she muttered, as though she couldn’t fully believe it unless she said it again. “Are you really sure you can teach me? That I’m not too old?”
“Nobody is ever too old to learn anything,” Rose said. “There’s always time. And your time is now.”
True to her word, when Anna found Rose in the library reading the following late-afternoon, Rose tapped a bookmark into place and turned her attention fully to Anna. Anna perched across from her at the library table and pressed her palms together, as though she was about to pray. She was all-out jittery on the stool, wildly anxious in a way Rose had never seen before. As Rose propped open the early-education book she planned to use for Anna, she took a moment to hold Anna’s gaze and say, “It’s really going to be all right, Anna. You must only breathe and believe in yourself. Those are the only two qualifications.”
Rose had taught several orphans back at the orphanage how to read and write. Those children hadn’t had much of a care to do it—and had, generally, been acting out the roles as “students” for the sake of Rose, who wanted so terribly to be a teacher.
They hadn’t fully committed, yet had soon found themselves with the skills (which ultimately led to them being eternally grateful to Rose, who thanked them for allowing her the chance to teach. This was a cycle that went on for a number of years).
In the wake of all those reluctant students, then, Rose fell deeply in love with teaching Anna how to read and write. Anna was a stellar student, bright and whip-smart and fast, who learned with an urgency Rose had never seen. Of course, it was true that one had only to have a driving force in order to learn faster. This was what had held the orphans back at the orphanage, and it was what drove Anna forward. She yearned to write with her beloved.
After two weeks of lessons (which they held every two days), Anna was able to read out her first few sentences, and then write them back to herself. Rose was mesmerised. When Anna completed the last sentence, she leaped up from her chair and did a little jig, a dance she said her parents had taught her when she’d been a little girl. Immediately, her cheeks brightened with embarrassment. But her lips remained curled in a beautiful smile.
“It’s been so terribly awkward at the vegetable stand as of late,” Anna told her then, dropping back into her chair and hanging her head. “He’s given me just one more letter since I showed you the others. And I believe him to be giving up. When his stand grew empty a few days ago, I pressed my hand over his and gazed into his eyes in a way that, I pray, told him precisely what’s on my mind. But without my ability to return his letters, I know there’s so much lost. I cannot very well stand there and express the aching of my heart. Besides, he’s so well read, so intelligent, I can’t imagine he would want to court a woman who cannot…”
“Oh, but you can! Already, you’re getting so close,” Rose affirmed. “Perhaps you should start hinting that you’re preparing a letter for him?”
“It seems that I cannot learn quickly enough,” Anna whispered. “I’m afraid he’ll find another woman, a woman who isn’t so unsure and so lost to the chaos of her own mind. Oh, Rose, it’s so terribly wretched to be in love, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Rose said. She pressed her lips together and let that emotion fall between the two of them.
“Oh, but you will,” Anna affirmed. “Although I must tell you, when you do, it will be wretched. You’ll wish you were never born.”
“Ha. I thought I’d got over that feeling years ago. Remarkable to hear that it comes back,” Rose said, her voice light and teasing. “Anyway. Perhaps this will be enough for me. Teaching you and Duncan, moving along to teach others. I can’t imagine why I would ever want anything else. There’s really such joy in this life, Anna. Although…”
Here, her lip bubbled a bit. Again, her head was filled with curiosities for the strangeness of the house, which she was slowly beginning to learn to call home.
“At this point, I feel that I can see your thoughts chasing themselves around your head,” Anna said. “Tell me. What’s on your mind?”
Rose allowed her shoulders to slump. “You see, I can’t help but feel that there’s so much I don’t know about my current situation. Yes—I know Duncan, and I’m growing to love him more and more every day. But he’s only a child, and I feel very much that the people in his life struggle to keep a distance between him and reality. Colin himself, he goes out of his way to ensure that he doesn’t have a relationship with Duncan. But I cannot figure out why. There have been strange hints. Duncan himself has mentioned that his father and Colin don’t quite see eye to eye. Colin can be tempestuous, that’s for certain, but I can’t imagine that that could ever be enough for Colin to draw an enormous divide between himself and his nephew. It’s just… it’s difficult for me to wrap my mind around. Especially because I was an orphan. And I never had much of a family, besides my sister—who, I should mention, I hardly ever hear from. We keep very different lives…”
Anna drew her book closed before her and tapped her quill on top of the cover. After a pause, she stitched her brows together and said, “I think I mentioned to you that I was hired seven years ago. At the age of seventeen.”
“Yes, of course,” Rose said.
