12: Letters To Juliet

Rosemary's hand settling in his was almost as soothing as if every other guest had been magically transported elsewhere and they were left alone without the threat of imagined sins looming over them.

Almost.

As Alex led her towards the dancefloor, the whispers in the room grew louder, reaching a crescendo at the string quartet started up the first few notes of a waltz. He wasn't sure how, but Alex was sure he would get the blame for that. Strangely, it didn't bother him enough as it should have.

Across the dancefloor, he noticed Lucas watching him and Rosemary carefully. He waited for a frown as their gazes locked, or to feel his eldest brother's censure weaving its way through the crowd that divided them. Instead that man raised his eyes to the ceiling, looked back at Alex, and shrugged. Alex could almost have sworn he was smiling.

They had reached the dancers then, giving Alex an opportunity to turn away from the confusing sight and focus his attention on Rosemary. She looked... nervous. As he watched, she raised her chin a fraction. Nervous, but determined.

The music started up in earnest, and Alex reached for her, his right hand sliding easily into place on her upper back as his left clasped his fingers in hers. She was warm, and this close it was impossible to escape the smell of her floral perfume. Not that he wanted to. He was so distracted by her, that they almost missed the first step of the dance.

He spoke to cover up his mistake. "From what I hear, my mother has been thoroughly terrorizing us both today."

A smile tugged at her lips, but it didn't win against the sage frown. "She had some wisdom to share."

"Whether you wanted to hear it or not?"

The smile finally won. "Indeed."

For a few moments, they simply danced, enjoying the easy smiles they had drawn from each other. It was simpler with the loud music and the other dancers around them to pretend that they had escaped from the watchful eyes around them.

"I've decided not to care what the Ton thinks anymore."

The unprompted statement caught her off guard, and Rosemary peered up at Alex with a soft frown. "I thought you've never care what the Ton thinks?"

It was a fair question: until recently, he had too.

"I think I thought I didn't care what they thought, but I thought a lot about what other people thought about what they..." He sighed, warmth flooding his cheeks. "...thought... Sorry, that was unintelligible." As they turned, her skirts brushing against the tips of his boots, he shook his head. "My mother's right; I'm an idiot."

Her hand moved across his shoulder, soothing him and leaving a trail of fire in her wake. "Your mother was right about a lot of things today, but perhaps not everything." She angled her chin, a wisp of auburn hair coiling across her cheek as she fought to catch his gaze. "She called me 'silly' after all."

Alex might have laughed, but he couldn't. The crinkles around her eyes and the rough edge to her voice had taken his breath away. He shook his head, trying to dispel the thoughts that had so suddenly taken over his mind, but he couldn't. It was infuriating! Yesterday he could look at Rosemary without his mind turning to mush, but today he felt like a nervous schoolboy again. One could not grow these feelings overnight!

But then he hadn't, a voice reminded him in the back of his mind. He'd just buried them in letters she'd never understood and stamped them down until he was sure they couldn't hurt either of them. And like the stream he and his brothers had cleared, his mother had asked one simple question and now he was flooded with the feelings once more.

As well as a fervent desire to share them.

"If she is wrong," he said, drawing her attention back to him, "Then you must be the reason I'm not making sense."

"Me?" Her brows pinched together, carving a deep crease between them. She looked affronted. "How am I to blame?"

"Well..." Alex turned them quickly, bringing a startled smile to Rose's face and buying him a little more time to find the right words. He juggled floral phrases and sweet nothings, but he could not bring himself to voice them. They had always had honesty between them. "I'm trying to ask you to marry me, but you keep distracting me."

"I keep-"

He knew the moment she understood what he'd said; she went to lead in his arms and they both nearly ended up on the floor. Deftly, he swung himself to the side, turning her in place to keep the illusion that they were dancing. Whether it was the light of the ballroom or not, Rosemary looked pale. Her mouth was agape, her breaths shallow, and no matter how he nudged her, her slippers appeared firmly rooted to the floor. Alex made do with gently swaying them to and fro, hoping they were not too noticeable.

And then he waited.

For her part, Rosemary was struggling to breathe.

"Alex..." His name escaped on an exhale, and she refilled her lungs with a shaky breath, feeling his fingers splay across her back as her chest expanded. He was too close but not close enough. It was overwhelming. She pressed her eyes closed. "Alex don't say that."

The band faded into the background as she listened for his reply. She heard the shift of his jacket against his pants, a groan of new leather from his boots, and eventually a slow exhale.

"Why not?"

"Because we do not need to ruin our friendship over... this!" Her eyes flashed open and she gestured with the hand the rested on his shoulder to the people around them.

His expression was calm. Not frowning but... neutral. "Over what?"

"This..." she swallowed, feeling tears prick at her eyes. She was frustrated and upset and infuriated that the Ton had confused their relationship. That they had called them a... "Scandal! I will not marry anyone just because the Ton tells me I should." She managed a short, squeak of laughter. "And did you not just tell me that you are no longer doing what the Ton tells you to?"

"I'm not."

"Then you agree with me."

"I don't."

"Alex!" This time his name escaped her lips with more than a hint of exasperation. He was talking her in circles. "Are you trying to protect my reputation?" She didn't wait for a response. "I don't need you to do that. I have my family's support and I told you, I'm a widow, so I cannot actually be compromised. I do not need to marry you!"

Her words ran together, and she only stopped when she had to breathe. Alex's eyes never drifted from hers.

"You're right," he said, his expression serious and unyielding. He wasn't frowning – not quite – but his brown eyes held and intensity she'd never seen before. It was different to how she'd seen him in anger or frustration, different to the look that overcame him when he'd nearly kissed her in the library. This time his eyes held... promise. "But I hoped you might choose to anyway."

Rosemary's heart, which had been thumping so loudly in her chest she feared she might go deaf, almost gave up entirely.

"You... I..." She shook her head, and tried to pull away from him, only to realise that she was gripping onto him for dear life. "I don't understand."

Where had this come from, she wanted to demand. How had a neglected friendship, reignited over stolen conversations in the library, lead to this? And why only after they were so thoroughly coated in scandal? Was it guilt? Did he pity her?

She stared at him, her fingers curling into the shoulder of his coat and scrunching the material beyond even the best valet's capabilities, and begged him to answer the questions she couldn't voice.

Instead he simply looked at her, his head tilted as he frowned, as if he too did not understand.

All too quickly, the music faded away around them, the musicians dragging out the last notes of the song as the audience clapped politely. Alex's hand fell away from her back and he brought their joined hands down between them.

"Do you still have the letters I wrote you? When I first left home?"

She nodded.

"Will you read them again for me?"

Again, she managed a nod. Alex squeezed her hand. Before she could pull away, or he could think better of it, he raised her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to the skin below her wrist. Then he released her entirely and stepped away.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Rosie."

.

Rosemary's mother needed little convincing to leave the ball early, particularly when her daughter appeared at her side with pink cheeks and wide eyes, and uttered the request between short, bordering on ragged breaths. However, there was one thing Rosemary could not convince her of.

"Are you sure all is well, darling?" She asked for the umpteenth time as the carriage rattled up the drive of their estate, her eyes narrowed as she scanned her daughter's face. "Did someone accost you at the ball? Or has-"

It was difficult to feel grateful for maternal concern, frustrated for its unendingness, and guilty for the frustration, but Rosemary was managing.

"Mama, please!" As she cut her mother off, she swallowed some of the sharpness in her tone and reached for the woman's hands. "I promise you; neither my reputation or my feelings are any more or less bruised than they were at the beginning of the evening."

The carriage was too shadowed for Rose to make out much of her mother's face or the emotion that was playing across it, but a firm squeeze of her hands suggested she had been believed. They were alone with the sounds of horse hooves and carriage wheels for a moment.

"You and Alexander seemed to be having a rather important discussion this evening."

Rosemary was suddenly glad for the darkness; her mother probably hadn't seen her jaw fall open.

"Perhaps it would be best to have those conversations in private, in the future? With a chaperone, of course."

There was almost humour in her mother's voice, which left Rose bemused. In truth, she still couldn't understand her mother's reaction to this whole mess. There had been no reprimand, no disappointment. Jemima had always been kind, but there had been repercussions for mistakes when Rose had been growing up. The closest her mother had come this time – for the most colossal of mistakes – was that quip about using a chaperone, and Rosemary could not think of a reason why.

Except...

"Why do you want me to remarry when you never did?" Rosemary winced, but she would not take the question back.

At first, the only answer to her question was a rustle in the darkness, and she felt her mother's skirts brush against hers as she shifted in the carriage. As she repositioned, she shifted towards the window, catching a sliver of moonlight as it cut across her brow and cheek. In its light, Rose could see her mother's pensive expression as she weighed her answer to her daughter's question.

"There are many reasons, some you'll like, others you won't," Jemima said slowly, her gaze on the window. "You were a younger than I was widowed, and I was already a mother. I had income to live on, home to raise you and Victoria in, and the sympathy of the Ton."

Her mother was right; Rosemary did not like many of her reasons.

"But most importantly," her mother continued, "I never found another man I could love like I loved your father." Her gaze flashed away from the window to meet her eldest daughter's eyes. "I was not as lucky as you."

The carriage came to a sudden stop, jolting Rosemary out of the clammy stupor her mother's words had left her in. She alighted in a daze, following her mother into their home and up the stairs. It wasn't until she was in her bedroom, back pressed against the door as the candle on her dresser threw shadows at her feet, that she finally remembered to breathe.

And that she had more important things to find than an answer to a question her mother hadn't asked.

Crossing the room, she opened her wardrobe quickly, kneeling down to pull a small chest out from where it was nestled between the hems of various gowns. She slid the lock open and pushed back the lid, staring at a lifetime of important memories. There were bundles of letters, bound with various colours of ribbons, and a miniature portrait of her father that was smudged at the edges from where she'd clutched it over the years. She lifted it gently out of the way, setting it in the bottom of her wardrobe, and rummaged more fervently for the letters she was seeking.

The flickering light caught the gilded edges of a dark, familiar ribbon, and she quickly pulled the bundle out and into her lap. There were more letters there than she'd remembered, she thought as she scrambled to her feet, setting them on the dresser as her fingers struggled with the ribbon. It was a difficult knot, she told herself, and the challenge had nothing to do with the tremble in her hands.

Eventually, the binding loosened, sheaths of folded parchment cascading across the wood. The candlelight almost made the ink glow, highlighting the scratchy, scrawl that addressed Miss R. Vermont. She sank onto a stool as she picked it up, smoothing the pages open to reveal the words within.

"Dear Rosie..." She read aloud, the words sliding from her lips so faintly that she could not hear them. Still, she spoke them to the room to make sure they were real. "I'm sure I've left a mess behind me, but if anyone will understand why I've left, it's you." And she had understood. She'd understood the pressure to conform and the well-intentioned, but smothering instruction from his family, and she'd been excited for him to find his freedom, even if she missed him when he was gone.

She picked up the next letter, skimming through what he'd written and trying to remember what words she'd sent him in between. "Dear Rosie... I'm glad to hear the weather holds for you-" Rose bit off a groan and skimmed more quickly. "I've taken a job at the docks. I'm sure some of our acquaintance would not approve, but it's good, honest work and I feel better for it. I miss you too. Yours, Alexander." There was something else, scrawled at an angle at the bottom that she had to squint to make out. "I've trusted you alone with the news of my new job. Please don't share it. You know how they worry."

Rosemary had not told a soul. Not about the docks, or his trips to France, or the time he'd lived so close to Scotland that she'd feared he might return in a kilt. His secrets stayed between them, as he wished it, because he deserved that much. And because if she had shared his news, she knew the letters would stop coming and she couldn't bare that. For all that Alexander had been unburdening himself to her, Rose had been living vicariously through his adventures. Whilst her days were filled with finishing school and etiquette lessons, his missives had brought her a taste of the real world. She'd been happy that at least one of them was free.

She picked up the next letter, then the next, and the next, reliving the stories he'd regaled her with. But more than anything, she realised that he had not been telling her about grand adventures, but the every day parts of his life. He told her about the baker who lived in the next building and the swell of bresh bread that wafted into the room he rented, and the way his pocket watch had turned green at the edges because of all the salt water. She smiled as she read, enjoying the happy nothings as much as she had when she'd first read them.

The second last letter was on slightly thicker parchment, the wax seal still clinging to the edge as she flicked it open.

"Dearest R-" Rosemary read it twice and then a third time to make sure. She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry, as her eyes trailed the endearment. "Dearest Rosie, I am gladdened to hear you have finally returned to the Hurst estate. I hope you still enjoy a stroll through a field without the voices of the finishing school madams in your head worrying about dirtying your hem or the like. Whilst you are happy to be done with your schooling, I am overjoyed to say that I have officially restarted mine."

His emotion was clear in the scrawling lines of ink where he had not wanted to waste time by lifting his quill from the page. Rose's fingers traced a streaked spill in the top corner of the parchment, imaging how he'd knocked the bottle over in his haste to write to her.

"I will be a steward, like my father before me, and know the land like no other. I will take employment on some distant estate where no one knows who my brothers are or who my father isn't, and I will be free to..." There a phrase was scratched out, illegible beneath Alex's scribble of regret. "... to be my own man."

Rosemary sucked in a deep breath, wondering why she was still trembling. "I hope you will visit me, Rosie," she read slowly, "and stay a while. Maybe even-" She cut off abruptly, staring at the next word as if she'd never read it before. But she had – she knew she had – so why did it feel so foreign to her. Stay a while, Alex had written so many years ago, maybe even forever.

Her hands moved without conscious thought, picking up the next letter. This was the last one, the last missive Alex had ever sent her, and it had been a reply to the biggest news she'd ever had to share. She unfolded the page slowly, wondering why parchment suddenly felt like iron, and spread in on the dresser. He'd only written two lines.

Congratulations Rosie. I hope he deserves you.

Harry.

She closed her eyes tightly, blocking out the words that seemed to glow up at her. A tear broke free and set a course across her cheek, and she shook her head to try and dispel the questions that were welling in her along with the emotion. Why had she done this to herself? What had she wanted to find in these letters? What had Alex wanted her to find?

She was there at that late hour, sitting in her bedchamber with wet cheeks and an old letter crumpled in her hand, because Alexander Kilroy had asked her to marry him. But she couldn't!

Not when he asked only because of the rumours that swirled around them! It was noble of him, but she had vowed to herself long ago that she would never marry simply because the Ton decreed it. Even if the man himself denied it.

Not when another marriage would shame Harry's memory. But then, Cordelia's words rang in her mind, reminding her that the whispers of the Ton could not hurt a dead man.

Not when the man did not love her! It was true, there was something in the way he looked at her now, Rosemary admitted to herself, something... affectionate. But how could she trust an emotion borne out of the stress of their last few days. Even if they had a forgotten friendship in their past. Even if in his letters he called her dearest. Even if...

With trembling hands that threatened to set the whole thing on fire, Rose held the second last letter aloft, letting the light of the candle bleed through the paper and outline the words that Alex had tried to hide from her. It was hard to make out beneath the scribble, but as she squinted and waited and guessed at letters, she realised...

"Marry you."

She sat like that, on the edge of the stool with the last letter clasped in her lap. The candle burned out, wax pooling on the dresser and threatening the edges of the ribbon, but the rising sun streaming through the windows meant the words were never hidden from her.

It took her a moment to register the knock at the door, only reacting when the thumping rattled the candelabra.

"Rosemary,"her mother said through the door, gentle as if she feared she had woken her, "youhave a caller."

~~~

Hello Lovely Readers!

Goodness gracious me - we are getting to the pointy end of this story! I am trying to tie a big, makes-sense bow around all the feelings and emotions and motivations in this story, and I am on STRUGGLE STREET! Please let me know what you think and whether the characters are making sense to you!

And now the real question - who do you think is at the door? ;)

One chapter + the epilogue to go!

xx Flo