Page 21 of The Marquis' Game of Seduction
She certainly didn’t want to make waves. In many ways, she was in the same boat as Anna. This was her only opportunity for safety. And she couldn’t make Colin or Judith angry with her, lest she wanted them to find reason to kick her to the curb.
Beyond that, she had enough to worry about with Duncan. Although he was incredibly creative, prone to wildly inventive afternoons, he could also be incredibly morose. Rose had to work continually to ensure that he didn’t fall into this feeling. It was wretched to see a young boy of only ten appear so down.
“You’re the only friend I have,” was something he told her after only a few days of their mix of play and education. This made Rose’s heart feel squeezed and strange. When she’d been his age, she’d had countless friends (all of them orphans, like her). But she couldn’t shake the feeling that he needed more play time with people his own age.
She supposed there was nothing she could do about it just then, though. She wasn’t going to bring it up with Judith and Colin, as it meant rocking the boat. It wasn’t yet time.
One night, approximately a week after she’d first seen the little girl, a dramatic storm swirled in across the moors. When Rose had been a much younger girl at the orphanage, storms like that had frightened her so completely that she’d sometimes grow sick, vomit over the side of her bed, or else pace by the window, her eyes to the sky—wanting to see what would happen to her as it happened, rather than hide under her covers like the other girls and let the storm do whatever it wanted to her. Of this, Carrie had frequently said that Rose was all too dramatic—that she needed to calm her mind and go back to sleep. But she’d never been able to.
“You’ll never make it in this world,” Carrie had said. “Your imagination has too much of a power over you.”
She hadn’t understood just how correct Carrie was in this sentiment until she’d been a bit older, still plagued by these storms.
Now, the storm had a similar effect on Rose’s psyche. She popped up from her little uncomfortable hell of a bed and stretched out her spine and walked toward the window. The rain splattered across the pane, so thick that it was difficult to see through it. This made Rose even more anxious, not being able to see across the moors at the roll of the clouds. And she began to pace back and forth, her hands latched behind her back. Where could she go to clear her mind until the storm passed?
Her mind manic, her thoughts racing, she rushed toward the door and swam out into the hallway. Once in the hall, she could hear the rain pounding against the roof and the windows all across the mansion. It made her feel like she was a letter inside a glass bottle, being shifted about in the waves and off to some destination she didn’t yet know. She tore her fingers through her hair and felt a bit of sweat dribble down her spine.
It was always remarkable to Rose, during these times of panic during a storm, that anyone else could ignore it. The world was clearly attempting to fight with humanity—declaring that this decision to build houses and create roads and tear through nature was a decision to be punished. “It’s God himself,” Rose muttered to herself, as a crack of thunder rang out over the top of the house.
Rose padded all the way to the first floor. Everything was hazy and shadowed and otherworldly. She had half a mind to wake up Anna, to explain her whole “deal” with storms. But she reasoned that Anna got so little sleep anyway that it would have been cruel to awaken her.
“Just a stupid storm. Just a silly thing,” Rose muttered to herself.
Once in the kitchen, she poured herself a glass of water from the basin and perched at the little table. It seemed that Judith had left out a little list for herself for the following day—a list of items to hail from the shop on Bond Street for the cook. Rose took pleasure in looking at this list, as it felt safe to know that somebody had planned for days ahead—surely sunny days. Also, Judith’s handwriting was absolutely beautiful, a mix of artistry and something a mother might write (should Rose have had a mother). There was safety in it.
Something caught Rose’s eye as she sat at the kitchen table. She swept her head around to peer out the dark window, through the snaking path of the garden and out toward the greater yard.
What she saw nearly chilled her to the bone.
The tower. The stone tower. The one she’d been told never to investigate. It was currently lit up. The top window beamed with warm candlelight, proof that somebody (or something—a ghost, perhaps?) lingered out there, up to something. Rose’s throat felt like it was closing in on itself.
Why had Judith told her never to go into the stone tower? Why had she said that nobody—nobody ever—was allowed out there, when it was so clearly not the case? This was outside the governing laws of this mansion.
Rose’s hands yanked into fists. She wasn’t entirely sure what was filling her with such rage—perhaps only that she had found yet another strange “lie” in the midst of seemingly countless others at the Kensington Estate. She clucked her tongue and sprung up from her chair.
“No. I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” she said. “They aren’t going to hide still more things from me. If I’m meant to remain on here as their governess, then they need to keep me updated on the goings-on. I’m not some child, someone to keep things from…”
Feeling strangely indignant, Rose snapped up the steps toward her bedroom to grab her shawl and a jacket. Then, she rushed back down the stairs and whirled through the back door. Within seconds, she stepped into the torrential downpour. Perhaps in that moment, she regretted what she was doing—yet she was too far along this wayward path to go back.
Already drenched, she took enormous steps over the stone path that led through the gardens. She kept her eyes directed toward the glowing light in the tower. Who on earth could it be? Was it Colin? Awake at night, perhaps going over his final duties as Marquees? Yet why would he busy himself so far from the mansion? He had an entire study in which he could pace and moan and carry on his daily duties.
Judith, perhaps? Perhaps she required a separate space from the mansion, so as not to go crazy. Rose could imagine Judith becoming privately annoyed with the Marquees’ seemingly constant switch in moods. Even the calmest human might find herself awash with annoyance in such an environment.
Rose stepped out from the last garden gate. Out there in the stretch of green, a long line of enormous, ancient trees dotted themselves out toward the tower. Rose yanked herself under one of the larger trees, as a way to keep herself out of the rain.
The limbs were thick and elephant-like. It was properly middle-autumn, and the leaves were vibrant reds and oranges and yellows, yet still clung to the tree limbs as hard as they could. Even as she walked beneath the tree, some of the leaves yanked off with the wind and flashed themselves across her cheek.
Rose paused to drag a leaf from off her face and drop it toward the ground. It seemed that no matter how many steps she took, she was still a far stretch from the tower. She grumbled and turned her chin over her chest and continued to stride forward. She reasoned she wouldn’t regret knowing, once she arrived—and that soon, eventually, she would be back indoors, her nightgown stripped off and a warm cup of tea in her hands.
That is, that would happen if she didn’t lose her job due to her sniffing around.
Just then, a huge rush of wind blasted against her cheeks. She was nearly flattened to the ground with the severity of it. And still, the wind was too much for the tree limbs above her. She heard a crackle, an ominous one, and then turned her eyes skyward. She watched in horror as an enormous limb broke off from the rest of the tree and started its mighty descent toward the ground.
Rose lurched forward, but it was already too late—and she misjudged the distance. The branch tore across her skull and cast her body toward the ground. She landed like a bag of rocks. She lay like that for a long time, lights flickering around her face and eyes. Dizzy, she stretched her hands across the wet grass and tried to force herself up. But the act was too much. She fell once more, drawing her cheek against the grass. Within seconds, she knew nothing but darkness.
Chapter 12
That night, the storm howled out of the west. Colin’s estate business papers stitched themselves across Colin’s desk, demanding his attention, but Colin remained at the window, his eyes peering across the moors.
