Unforgivable(52)

After dinner, Harriet asked her to play the pianoforte. She was glad to comply—she didn’t feel like talking anymore. She played pieces she knew inside out, so well that she simply had to let her fingers begin, and they unerringly found the right notes. It was a competent enough performance, but she knew herself; she was not playing with her heart. All she could think of was the night ahead of her. Of Gil coming to her chamber.

Harriet embroidered while she played, but Gil simply watched. She had her back to him, but she felt his gaze upon her, his attention making the tiny hairs on the back of her neck lift. She wondered what he was thinking as her fingers drifted over the keys. She didn’t ask, though. Just played. Piece after piece.

After an over an hour of playing, she stood and said that she was tired and intended to retire for the evening.

Harriet chattered on for a little while about how long the journey to London was and how of course Rose must get her rest. And then she embraced Rose, and her eyes were damp. And Rose knew that hers were too.

“We’ll say good-bye properly tomorrow,” Rose whispered.

She had spent the last few years longing to be elsewhere, and now that she was leaving for good, she didn’t want to go. She wouldn’t only miss Harriet. She would miss Will, her friends at the vicarage, everyone. She would miss the house, and the sea, she realised. The open, windy landscape. London was miles from any coast. There was no room there, no space. Ever since she had become pregnant, she had had the strongest yearning for fresh air. She kept opening windows to breathe in lungfuls of it, cold and clear. The air here was good. In London, where there was all the industry and waste of a million teeming souls, the air was stale and used.

Rose embraced Harriet again and bid her a fond good night. On her way to the door, she nodded at Gil.

“Good night, Stanhope,” she said, all formality. She’d taken to calling him Stanhope in front of others. It seemed the countess-like thing to do. Privately, though, she thought of him as Gil.

“I’ll be up shortly,” he replied.

She looked away in confusion, embarrassed in front of Harriet, who’d sat down again and was pretending to peer at her embroidery.

“Yes, well, good night,” Rose said again and hurried out of the room.

Her face was hot as she climbed the stairs. He was angry with her still, she knew. He would be angry for a long time, perhaps forever. And yet after he’d kissed her in the library this afternoon, he’d smiled at her with sleepy eyes and told her he’d come to her tonight. It had astonished her. And enraged her. He had been brooding around the house in silent hostility for three days, but he was willing to put his resentment aside for a tumble between the sheets!

Sarah was waiting for her when she reached her bedchamber. The maid helped her out of her gown and took it to the dressing room.

“I’ll pack this away just now, your ladyship,” she said.

“Very well. Then you’d better go to bed, Sarah. We have a long journey ahead of us tomorrow.”

“Yes, m’lady.”

Rose took off her shift and got into her nightgown, brushed out her hair and cleaned her teeth. The routine of it did nothing to settle her. Her stomach was in knots.

She knew she should be pleased he was coming to her tonight. She wanted their marriage to be as amicable and fruitful as it could be—she did!—and naturally, that meant welcoming him to her bed. Gil was earthy and passionate, and even though he was furious with her now, she knew he wanted her in bed. It was the one decent card she still held.

And yet she felt sick at him. Disappointed and angry. Was he really so shallow that the towering resentment he had been advertising so publicly since he’d arrived could be soothed simply by throwing her skirts up?

But the fact of the matter was that that was going to have to be enough in this marriage. If they could at least recapture the excitement of the night when she’d been Eve Adams—well, it would be something, wouldn’t it? Not exactly the pinnacle of all her girlish dreams, but something.

She tried to recapture how she’d felt that night, walking up the staircase to his bedchamber. The tingling excitement, the delicious anticipation. And then what came after. Shared pleasure and quiet intimacy.

If she could have that again, despite everything, it might be enough.

It was more than many people had, wasn’t it?





Rose was sitting at her dressing table when Gil walked into her bedchamber. He entered without knocking, not wanting to seem tentative. With the same intention, he closed the door firmly behind him and began to remove his coat. Neither of them spoke.

She was brushing her hair with brisk strokes. It cascaded down her back in dark, shining waves. He remembered that night in London, waking with her in his arms, her hair streaming across the pillow beside him, its fresh, summery fragrance teasing his senses.