Anger might make him impetuous. She would have to be prepared to placate him, to reason with him. Even to beg his forgiveness if necessary. Now was not the time to indulge her wounded pride.
She placed her hand on her stomach and thought about the child inside her. Her child.
And Gil’s.
Chapter Twelve
October 1814
Gil had been riding for several hours. The muscles of his thighs ached, but he was near the end of his journey now. In half an hour, probably less, he would turn into the gates of Weartham Manor for the first time in five years.
It was a grey-skied autumn day, bleak and windy. The road was banked on either side with great mounds of crisp, bronze beech leaves. Every now and again, a gust of wind would blow a little flurry of them into his path.
His carriage, containing his luggage and Crawford, were some way behind. Gil had left Crawford to organise everything at the inn this morning and had ridden on ahead. He disliked travelling in closed carriages; hated the forced indolence. It was too bumpy to read or do much of anything. And the scenery was better enjoyed on horseback.
Although he did not look forward to the confrontation with Rose, he couldn’t help but look forward to seeing Weartham itself. It had been a long time, and he was fond of the place. Odd to think that this was the first time he had come to Weartham as its master. When he had last been here, only a few nights after his wedding, his father had still been alive.
He intended to bathe and rest in his rooms before he saw Rose. It would be better to see her dressed in fresh clothes, rather than like this, caked in mud and smelling—well, like a man smelled after riding for several hours.
As for Rose, how would she look? For the hundredth time, Gil tried to bring his wife’s image to mind, but, as ever, all he could summon up was a vague recollection of a slender girl with short hair and sadly marked features. He remembered the features a great deal less well than the marks. He couldn’t even have said what colour her eyes were.
He knew her hair was brown. That her skin had been very pale and her body painfully thin when last he saw her. Beyond that, his visual memory faltered. Yet he could still recall, from their two nights together, the feel of her small, birdlike bones beneath his hands and the surprising softness of her small breasts against his chest. Odd that.
He wondered who the father of her baby was. He wondered if Rose was in love with the father or if their tryst had been a terrible mistake. Or worse, a rape. Would she be hoping for a divorce or horrified at the inevitable ruin that would bring? Her letter had given him no clue whatsoever. It had been brief and to the point, just like all her others. Or most of them.
Unexpectedly, Gil’s lips twitched as he remembered the letters she had taken to writing to Andrews after Gil refused to correspond with her directly any longer. She had blackened him forever in Andrews’s eyes. The man thought she was wonderful because she sent him inconsequential gifts and chatty notes asking after his health. Chatty notes filled with sly humour at Gil’s expense, revealing that same humour he’d liked when first they met. Before he’d discovered the truth about her.
He’d read her letters. Every one. That was the irony of it. He might have refused to write back, but he hadn’t been able to resist reading her prickly missives. Each one was brought to him with Andrews’s reply already drafted. His secretary would be wearing his tight-lipped expression when he handed them over, exuding as much disapproval as his deferential nature allowed.
“A letter from her ladyship,” he would say. “With my reply for your approval.” His replies had been defiantly full of good wishes and obsequious thanks, almost as entertaining as Rose’s letters.
Whenever he read one of her letters, he always pictured his mother’s old sitting room at Weartham. The spindly legged writing desk in front of the window. He would imagine her there, a small, thin woman with short hair, the bare, vulnerable nape of her neck exposed as she bent over her letter.
But of course that was not how she would look anymore. Harriet had written to him with news of Rose getting better, putting on weight, growing her hair. She’s turning into quite the beauty, one letter had said. He couldn’t quite believe that, but certainly she would not look like the girl he had left at Weartham anymore. She was two or three and twenty now, fully a woman.
After one more bend in the road, the gates of the manor hoved into view, surprisingly small and domestic. Weartham was nothing to Stanhope Abbey, less than a quarter as large, but it charmed all who went there. The house itself was big enough to entertain a number of guests but small enough to feel cosy. The gardens were a delight, the nearby coastline bleakly dramatic. No wonder it had been his mother’s favourite escape from London.