Rose (Flower Trilogy) (24 page)

Perhaps we’ll wait a few days before following . . . give Rose some time to miss him. What do you think, darling?”

Her husband’s answer was a soft snore. He was fast asleep.

Oh, well. She would lie here until she came up with a plan—she was quite used to plotting these things without him. Men were dear creatures, but the vast majority of them didn’t seem to have much of an imagination.

A few minutes later she chuckled to herself. Ah, yes, that should work—and be quite amusing in the bargain. Carefully she wiggled free from her husband and slid out of bed.

She slipped back into her discarded night rail and tied a wrapper over it against the chill.

Joseph would hardly miss her. When her mission was accomplished, she’d return and wake him his favorite way.

The night was still young, and dear Joseph never minded being awakened—not by her, anyway.

A little ripple of anticipation warmed her body as she sneaked from the chamber into the dimly lit corridor.

The house was amazingly quiet. Rose’s room was right beyond hers, so Chrystabel tiptoed to the door and tapped her fingernails against it—
rat-a-tat-tat.
Then she moved to the door of the room she’d assigned to Kit and did the same thing.

Nothing. Rose was a heavy sleeper, and Kit must be, too.

She tapped on both their doors again, then a third time. Finally, the sound of a latch sent her scurrying back to her room. Suppressing a giddy giggle, she pulled the door shut behind her—but not quite all the way.

Her ear pressed to the slit of an opening, she heard someone pad into the corridor and knock loudly on another door.

“Rowan!” came a harsh whisper. Then louder, “Rowan, open up!”

’Twas Jewel’s voice, not Rose’s. Chrystabel sighed as she listened. Another door opened.

“What?” Rowan demanded rather ungraciously.

“I heard a noise.”

“What kind of noise?” he said through a yawn.

“I’m not sure. Maybe a ghost.”

That idea was greeted by a snort. “There are no ghosts at Trentingham.”

“I heard something, Rowan! Listen, will you?”

A long spell passed where there was no sound. Of course, Chrystabel wasn’t tapping on doors.

“ ’Twas nothing,” Rowan finally said. “Go back to bed.”

“I’m afraid of ghosts. I cannot sleep. Will you stay with me?”

“I cannot visit your chamber in the middle of the night.

’Twould not be proper.” Even at the tender age of eleven, Rowan knew that.

“What if I hear it again?”

The boy’s sigh would have done a grown man justice.

“Are you hungry?”

Jewel seemed to consider that question a moment. “Yes, I am.”

“Maybe it was your stomach rumbling. Let us go downstairs and find something to eat.”

Chrystabel waited until their footfalls had proceeded down the staircase before easing open her door. It seemed neither Rose nor Kit had awakened even with Rowan and Jewel talking outside their rooms. Something louder than those benign little taps would be necessary.

She scratched her fingernails down the front of Rose’s door, a nice, satisfying scrape as she raked down the carved linenfold design. After repeating the motion, she moved to Kit’s door and did it twice more.

Hearing a latch again, she darted back into her room.

“Just take a look, Rand! There must be something there.

I cannot sleep with these noises!” ’Twas Lily this time, Chrystabel realized with more than a little frustration. “Do you see anything?”

“Nothing. Would you like to come and look for yourself?”

There was a pause before Lily said, “No. But those sounds cannot come from nowhere.”

“Houses settle. You told me there have been no ghosts at Trentingham in the past, and there is no reason to believe one would suddenly arrive now. Damn, now that you’ve wakened me, I’m hungry. Shall we go downstairs and find something to eat?”

For a brand-new son-in-law, Rand certainly felt at home here, Chrystabel thought wryly. While she waited for them to start downstairs, she looked around her chamber for something that would make more noise.

Her silver comb ought to do it. She snatched it up and peeked out her door. All was clear.

Drawn sideways across the wooden linenfold grooves, the comb made quite a racket. ’Twas not long at all before the click of another latch sent her to safety behind her own door.

“There is no such thing as ghosts,” she heard Ford say.

She barely stifled a groan.

A long minute or two passed while she listened to footsteps pacing up and down the corridor. Ford, the scientific one, was a much more thorough ghost-hunter than either of his brothers-in-law. “All is clear,” she finally heard him say, “I swear it. You hungry? Let’s go downstairs and find something to eat.”

Slumped against the door, Chrystabel pictured her oldest daughter slipping from her childhood bed and into a wrapper. Joseph snored peacefully behind her, and Rose apparently still slept in her room. Vexing girl must take after her father.

By the time Violet and Ford clattered down the steps—

being none too quiet about it—Chrystabel had decided drastic measures were in order. Leaving the comb behind, she ventured once more into the corridor.

She paused by Rose’s door, then pushed down on the latch and opened it a smidgen. “Whooooooooo,” she called inside, a breathy, piercing whistle. The fourth child of five, Chrystabel had learned young how to impersonate an other-worldly creature. How better to get back at her older sisters?

She could hardly have used her fists. “Whooooooooo,” she called twice more for good measure, then hurried down the corridor to Kit’s room.

“Whooooooooo. Whooooooooo.” She’d drawn breath for another exhalation when footsteps sounded in Rose’s room down the hall.

She barely made it back into the master chamber before her daughter’s door slammed open. “What was that? Who is there?”

Unlike her sisters, Rose didn’t sound scared. Her voice wasn’t tentative and frightened. Aggravated would better describe it.

Rose’s footfalls paced the corridor up and halfway back before Chrystabel heard another door opening. Kit’s, thank the Lord. It had to be—his was the only occupied room left.

“What the hell is going on out here? I thought I heard a ghost.”

“There is no such thing as ghosts,” Rose said peevishly.

“Obviously,” Kit drawled, “you have never torn down an old building.”

“Obviously,” Rose returned, “you have a lively imagination.”

Kit only laughed. God strike her down, Chrystabel thought, if these two weren’t perfect for each other.

No lightning bolts came down the chimney.

“Are you hungry?” Rose asked.

“I could eat.”

There wasn’t a male alive who couldn’t find space for food, no matter how long since his belly was last filled.

Chrystabel credited her daughter for knowing the way to a man’s heart.

But as they made their way downstairs, her own heart sank. A jovial family midnight snack was not what she’d had in mind for Rose and Kit. And she had few, if any, chances left to arrange another meeting before her daughter wised up and figured out what was going on.

A lot of terms could be used to describe Rose, but one of them was not slow-witted. And Chrystabel knew well what would happen should her daughter discover that she and Kit were in league. The marriage would never occur.

She shut her door and made her way back into bed to wake her husband. If he knew what was good for him, he’d better not say he was hungry.

What she had in mind to ease her disappointment did
not
involve food.

As Kit and Rose approached the kitchen, they heard laughter. Boisterous, rollicking laughter.

He peeked in the door to find almost the entire Ashcroft family around a big, scarred wooden table. Pies, bread, and leftover dishes from supper littered the surface. Ale and conversation flowed.

Suddenly he wasn’t hungry. He shut the door quietly, muffling the laughter to a dull roar. “I’ve changed my mind. Let’s go for a walk instead.”

Rose’s dark eyes looked huge in the light of the single candle she was carrying. “Outside? In my night rail in the dead of the night?”

“ ’Tis been unseasonably warm. I’ll wait while you get your cloak.”

“We’ve no shoes!” she protested, making Kit look down in surprise. Suddenly he could hardly fathom that he was here in Rose Ashcroft’s home in bare feet. Though her night rail and dressing gown concealed her body much more effectively than the current fashions—Court fashions most especially—there was something undeniably intimate about the ensemble.

Something that made him belt his own robe more tightly.

“We can go upstairs and don shoes,” he suggested.

“I think not.” For a moment, he thought she would open the kitchen door and join the impromptu party. After all, it had been her idea to come down here. He’d agreed, looking forward to some quiet time with her in this noisy house, but perhaps her interest in food surpassed her interest in him.

But in the end, she didn’t disappoint him. “I have another idea,” she whispered, taking his arm to lead him away. “We can walk in my father’s orangery.”

“Your father grows oranges?”

“Not very successfully. That’s why he’s so keen to get that greenhouse.”

The orangery was a long, narrow chamber that occupied the entire ground floor of the west wing. “It used to be called the Stone Gallery,” Rose told him as they entered.

There were candlesticks mounted on the walls at intervals, and she lit them as she walked. “I suppose, after you build the greenhouse, that we’ll call it the Stone Gallery again.”

Tall windows, dark now, lined the gallery along the entire west side and half of the east as well. The ceiling was intricately carved oak. Kit recognized it and the chamber as dating from Tudor times—a room the occupants would have used to take exercise in inclement weather. But now it was filled with a variety of trees and plants, all interspersed with statuary that looked like it had been brought from Italy.

“Would you like an orange?” Rose asked laughingly, pulling a small, rather shriveled example from a scraggly branch. “Don’t worry—they don’t taste as bad as they look.”

He peeled it as they walked, the black and white marble floor cold under his bare feet. “ ’Tis quiet here,” he said.

“Yes.” She sounded amused at the observation. “ ’Tis not easy to find a quiet place at Trentingham, is it?”

“You’ve a large family. But I like it,” he added, realizing suddenly that he did. “Even the noise. There’s a lot of life here. Vitality.”

He’d felt that lack of vitality since his parents’ deaths.

He’d been busy, yes—but there was a difference.

“ ’Tis real,” he added, tossing the peel into an empty clay pot.

“Real?”

He divided the little orange and handed her half. “Charles’s Court, for example, is lively. But ’tis naught but forced gaiety, don’t you think? The liveliness here is real.”

“Ah. Yes. I see,” she said thoughtfully.

Popping the juicy, sweet fruit into his mouth, he hoped she also saw that Court was a life she’d rather live without—because she’d have to if she married him. Even supposing he got his knighthood, he hadn’t the time to flit from one place to another at the whim of his monarch. He had his lifework to pursue.

And no matter that it was fashionable, he had no intention of living a separate life from his wife.

He heard her swallow. “Are you not happy, Kit?”

It sounded like she cared. He hoped it was as more than a friend. More than
like a brother, but better.
“I’m happy right now,” he said, licking his fingers.

“And Ellen is happy now.”

“I don’t want to think about Ellen.”

“But you must.” They’d reached the end of the gallery.

She lit the last candle and set the one she’d carried on top of a headless statue. “I know you’re angry with her . . . with what she did. But you cannot remain estranged, silent—”

“I’m not angry. Disappointed, yes; but not angry.” He took her arm, turning her to stroll back in the direction they’d come. “And
I’m
not the one who isn’t talking.”

“You cannot really mean to keep all that money—”

“Will you be quiet, Rose?” he asked and then turned her toward him to quiet her with a kiss.

She wound her arms around his neck and cooperated fully. She tasted of Rose and oranges, a flavor uniquely hers. A flavor he wanted to make his.

He backed her against one of the walls between two windows. Above their heads, a haughty Roman emperor gazed down from a round terra-cotta medallion—a souvenir of earlier times. Kit only wanted to make new times with Rose. A new life, a happy life—a life full of the vitality he’d been missing.

He licked a bit of sweet stickiness from the corner of her mouth, then kissed that corner, then her chin. Bending his head, he tasted her long, slender throat, the pulse that beat in the hollow, that precious place where shoulder met neck.

He parted the top of her dressing gown, baring the smooth, fragrant skin where her night rail had come untied at the collar.

That small triangle of flesh glowed in the dancing candlelight. Her eyes slid closed. “Kit,” she breathed, and he couldn’t tell whether the single word was a protest or an entreaty. But she didn’t push him away, and he wouldn’t stop tasting her of his own volition. When she moved closer, he reached for the sash that secured her dressing gown and slowly drew one end until the bow came undone. The garment fell open, and then there was nothing between his hands and mouth and her body but the gossamer fabric of her night rail.

No stomacher, no laces, no stays. Only one thin barrier to the floral-scented softness that was Rose.

Kissing her, he teased her breasts through the delicate cloth, his pulse leaping when a little moan escaped her lips.

His breath quickened as he felt the crests peak and harden beneath his fingers. He wanted to tear off her night rail and rip open his robe and bury himself inside her.

But he couldn’t.

He couldn’t scare her away, and he couldn’t risk getting to the point where he mindlessly took her too far. He couldn’t take her at all. Not until she was his, until she shared his name, until she wore his ring on her finger.