Tilly. He’d been in love with her for a year already. When he’d confessed as much, she’d let him know, shyly, that she might be amenable to a proposal at the end of the season, and he’d been over the moon. Only a few months to wait and then they would be engaged, perhaps married this time next year.
It would never happen now.
Instead, he would have to choose between ruin and marriage to Rose Davenport. And really, there was no choice at all—it wasn’t just himself he had to consider.
“I won’t live with her,” he said, still staring out of the window. He couldn’t even look at his father.” She can go and live at Weartham. I’ll visit when I must.”
“Once you’ve consummated the marriage, you can do as you wish,” the earl said. “She’ll be your wife and your business. As for Weartham, I’ll make that over to you now, if you wish.”
Gil steeled himself before he turned back to face his father. “I’m afraid that won’t do. You’ll have to make over all the property to me, or put it into trust, until I inherit. If I’m to marry this girl, you’ll have to resign yourself to a fixed quarterly allowance.”
The earl flushed, a deep crimson wash that flooded up his neck and over his face. Not so many years ago, Gil would have been whipped for speaking to the old man in such a way. Even since he’d become an adult, he’d held back on any criticism of his father. But today changed everything. “I won’t be forced into this marriage only for you to lose everything again on the tables next week,” Gil continued implacably. “So, do you agree?”
The earl looked away. “I’ll have Barton draw the papers up,” he muttered.
Chapter Three
It rained on Rose’s wedding day, a relentless downpour that didn’t let up all day.
She stood at the window of her bedchamber in her chemise when she should have been getting dressed and watched the rain drive down, forming large puddles on the street below.
Four weeks had passed since her first meeting with Waite—Gilbert, though she still found it impossible to think of him by that name—and in all that time, Rose had seen him on only three occasions.
A week after their first meeting, the earl invited Rose and her father to a dinner party at Stanhope House, a grand affair at which their engagement was announced. She and Waite barely spoke a dozen words to one another. Ten days after that, Waite and his sister Antonia paid them a morning call. Waite had sat silent while his sister chattered about wedding gowns. And then, last week, the earl hosted an engagement party. Of the fifty guests present, Rose knew no one other than her father and Waite and his family. She felt young and dull and unsightly and had been relieved when it was over.
Waite was perfectly civil whenever they met, but the connection she’d thought she’d felt during their first meeting had been absent since then.
Papa told her that her dowry was substantial, but she still found it incredible that it was enough to secure this marriage. She and Papa lived modestly as compared to Waite’s family. The earl’s London residence, Stanhope House, was lavish and elegant, and the earl owned no fewer than four country estates. Antonia had told her the main country estate in Hampshire, Stanhope Abbey, had one hundred and seventy-four rooms. Surely her dowry must be paltry compared to his wealth? He couldn’t need it. If he needed money, there were dozens of wealthy merchants eager to marry their daughters off to peers of the realm who would doubtless be able to offer a hundred times as much.
Perhaps he had been cool with her because he felt nervous? She certainly did. They had never been alone, and whenever they met, she was horribly aware of everyone else watching them. Waite probably felt it too. If he did, it would doubtless make him as awkward as it did her.
In any event, it wasn’t as though she could change her mind now. Ever since she had agreed to the marriage, her father had been beaming with happiness, vibrating with excitement. He had assumed Rose would be content to get married immediately, as had Waite, and Rose hadn’t wanted to offend her future husband by asking for more time to get to know him better. Besides, it had all felt rather dreamlike till now. Until today. Until it was suddenly, and far too soon, the day of the wedding.
Despite her screeching nerves, there was no question of her not going through with it. She was not going to disappoint her father, or let Waite and his family down. She was seventeen. A grown woman. And she would not allow herself to act the scared rabbit. Her doubts were the natural reaction of a bride-to-be. In a few weeks, she and Waite—Gilbert—would laugh about them.