Page 60 of Rose and the Rogue
“From her reaction, he never told anyone of that conversation.”
“I told Rose I want to marry her. Or I implied it.” Had he? He’d been distracted.
“It seems she did not think the offer was sincere…perhaps because you mentioned it at the wrong moment.”
His friend was being unusually tactful about all this, Adrian had to admit. Carlos could have said that Adrian was an idiot for only bringing up marriage when they were in bed together after he’d thoroughly compromised her.
“Look, I’ll write a letter to Rose, with the offer of marriage stated so it’s clear. I’ll deliver it personally—”
“You won’t get past the front door, and I suspect that any letter would be burned rather than read. Mr. Blake has apparently declared us personae non grata, and Rose has locked herself in her room.”
“Then you can appeal to Poppy to slip the letter to her.”
“No I can’t! Miss Poppy suggested that I leave England at the earliest possible moment, hopefully in a coffin. As rejections go, hers was the most definitive I’ve ever gotten.”
Adrian looked up, catching something in Carlos’s tone. “You like her, don’t you?”
“She was intriguing,” Carlos said, obviously attempting for nonchalance. “But the world is filled with women. Anyway, she’s not my type.”
Oh, his friend had fallen hard. Adrian knew how it felt, and he hated that he’d ruined not just his own relationship, but another one as well. “What did she say, exactly?”
“She said she thought I was different,” Carlos replied quietly.
There wasn’t much passion in the words, but Adrian could tell that Poppy’s judgment had crushed his friend, more than anything else she might have said.
“I will fix this,” Adrian promised. “All of it.”
“How are you going to do that when we’re not even allowed to speak to anyone in the Blake household?”
Before Carlos could respond, the unmistakable sound of wheels on gravel made them both go still.
Then Adrian jumped up, moving to the window overlooking the front.
This was a nightmare, wasn’t it?
No. It was all too real.
The dowager viscountess was alighting from the coach, her expression hinting of the storm to come.
“I thought your mother went to Bath,” Carlos said, joining him at the window.
“She did, but now she’s back, because I’ve made such a mess that she’s heard of it even that far away. God help me.”
* * * *
Early the next day, the dowager viscountess summoned Adrian to her sitting room, where she sat in a high, wing-backed chair by the fireplace, which was burning despite it being a fine spring morning. She wore a pale yellow dressing gown adorned with yards of Belgian lace, and a similarly lacy cap covered her hair (but framed her pinched mouth and hard eyes). The total effect was something like being brought into the presence of an extremely angry, sentient iced pastry.
“Adrian, I am not pleased,” she announced, quite unnecessarily.
“You’re not alone.”
“You will give me an account of your doings since I left, unvarnished and honest. Leave nothing out.”
He moved to sit in the chair opposite hers, but she gestured for him to stand, right in front of the fireplace. He felt like a schoolboy forced to recite his Latin lessons while standing in the flames of hell. Eton had never been this bad.
“At Lady Herbert’s party, just before you left for Bath, I happened to meet a young lady named Rosalind Blake.”
“I have never heard of her. Who are her people?”
