Collins gave him a knowing look. “The very beautiful dowager duchess.”
“Beauty isn’t everything. I’ve learned that a time or two.” Steven couldn’t stop his sudden grin. “This one’s beautiful all the way through.”
“You’ve said that a time or two as well, Stevie.”
“This is different.”
“Heard that one too.” Collins returned the grin. “When you get your heart broken, look me up, and I’ll pour whiskey down your throat. Again.”
“I won’t get my heart broken,” Steven said. “This is different, because it’s not a romance. I’m helping her; she’s taking my mind off my troubles.”
“Yes, of course.” Collins’s words were drowned out as a hansom clattered to a stop at the doorman’s signal. “Don’t you break her heart. She doesn’t deserve that.”
“No fear,” Steven answered. “Go do what you’re best at, Collins, and stop giving me advice on romance. Be off with you.”
Collins stuck out his hand, shook Steven’s, and scrambled into the hansom. Steven watched the man drive off, his emotions mixed. Whoever got their heart broken in this business arrangement, Steven was certain, it wouldn’t be Rose.
He put aside such maudlin thoughts as he headed out of the rain back into the hotel. His heart beat faster as he ascended the stairs, knowing Rose awaited him at the top. He wondered, between steps, whether his need to make up for his failure had prompted him to help her.
But when he opened the door, and Rose turned from the window with her welcoming look, Steven knew he’d not taken up with her for any feelings of guilt. He’d walk through fire for this woman. Steven only just met her, but already she’d changed his life.
If nothing else came of this, he’d be a different man when he left her, and for that he’d be forever grateful.
***
Sittford House, seat of the Dukes of Southdown, lay in Hampshire, far enough from London and other cities to be free of smoke and grime. These days, with trains as swift as they were, the journey was not more than an hour or two.
Steven booked a first-class carriage for himself and Rose. Journalists lay in wait for them outside the hotel, and managed to be in the train station as well. They wanted to know where Rose and Steven were going.
“Business,” Steven told them, and let them make of it what they would. “You know how betrothals are.”
“When will the banns be read?” someone asked. “Or will this be a Scottish wedding?”
“We’ll wed in Scotland,” Steven said. “With family.” He tipped his hat. “Good day, gentlemen. Ladies.”
Rose said nothing at all, only gave them her winsome smile. The smile sent Steven on flights of wicked fancy, but he could see the journalists didn’t approve. Perhaps if Rose had been demure and walked about with her head bowed, she might escape more of the scurrilous stories. The journalists might have decided that her late husband had married a nurse to take care of him in his dotage, instead of a lively woman to give him back his youth.
Rose Barclay was anything but demure, Steven thought as the maid fussed around to settle her into the compartment. Though her frock was buttoned to her chin, and she wore only mourning jewelry, her color was high, her eyes sparkling, her head lifted. All the black clothes in the world couldn’t repress her vibrancy.
As the train slid out of the city, and the maid left them, Rose looked about her as though this were the most exciting journey she’d taken in some time. Steven enjoyed himself watching her for a while before he forced himself back to business.
“Tell me about Keith Erskin,” he said as the farmland, dusted with snow, flowed past, along with low, tree-covered hills. “The man you are purported to have married. Is he likely to cause trouble over this?”
Rose shook her head, looking neither guilty nor embarrassed. “He was a childhood friend, later a beau.” Her cheeks went pink. “We were caught kissing at a ball when I was eighteen. He was encouraged to propose to me, but I could see his heart wasn’t in it, poor lad. The prospect of marrying at eighteen and settling down dismayed him greatly. So I refused him. This gave me the reputation of being a very fast young lady indeed, and my father took me away to Edinburgh.” She looked out the window, her gaze going remote. “In retrospect, perhaps we ought to have married, but we were young and full of stubborn dreams. We each were determined to see the world, I remember, but neither of us has left the British Isles as far as I know.” She gave a short laugh. “We might have had an ordinary life, in an ordinary town, and I’d not be followed about whenever I step out of doors.”
Steven couldn’t stop his smile, which rose up inside him like a light. “You were never made for ordinary, Rosie. There’s nothing ordinary about you and never will be.”
She flushed, which made her look even more like an exotic siren trapped in the stiff clothing of a less enlightened age. “You aren’t so ordinary yourself,” she said.
“True.” Steven tried to ignore the excitement of having that lovely green gaze on him. He’d left the hotel last night to do quite a bit of drinking before he’d been able to return, precisely to forget that look. Hadn’t worked. “I had a strange upbringing—raised by my oldest brother, Patrick, who has twenty years on me. I was the spoiled youngest child, and it led me into a lot of trouble. Made me think there was nothing I couldn’t do.”
Her interest warmed his blood. “Such as?”
“Tales for another time, dear lady. We’re arriving.”
The train had slowed, chugging its way into a station. The maid hurried back in to help Rose, who tried to hide her disappointment that their conversation had ended so abruptly.
They descended into cold. Because Steven hadn’t written or telegraphed that they were coming—no sense in putting Albert on guard—they had to hire a conveyance to take them to the house. Wasn’t difficult to find, because every man, woman, and child in the village of Sittford spied Rose emerging from the train and mobbed her.
“Have you come back to live here?” a young man in a blacksmith’s apron asked. “Say you have, Your Grace.”
Another was a woman who’d come out of the post office and shop. “Please talk some sense into that stepson of yours, Your Grace. The house has bought my goods for fifty years—now he’s sending to a cheap firm in London . . .”