Page 2 of The Unlovable Lady

“Spared,” Rosalind said.

“Spared.” Selina’s smile deepened. “Someone must keep Marbury through the Season, after all. Someone the staff will mind, who knows the house and its ways. The alternative is to shut it up entirely and trust it to Hodges, and I could never be easy about that. Could you? You know how the house runs as no one else does, and it would be a real service, so much more comfortable for you, my dear, than being dragged about Town at our hours and sat below the salt at dinners that mean nothing to you. I do think of your comfort. I hope you know that I think of it.”

So there it was. She was to stay behind.

While the family went up to London for Christmas, Rosalind would remain at Marbury Hall through the dark weeks, keeping the house warm among the holland covers. It was sensible, she told herself. She was past being brought out, and she knew the house as no one else did. Someone must see that it was kept properly. There was no reason to make a difficulty of a thing she could do perfectly well.

There had been a time when she would not have minded the dark weeks, when the house had held one person who was glad of her in it. But Mrs. Pascoe had given her notice the spring after the wedding, and had not needed to say why.

Her hands found the strap of the plate chest, drawing it through its buckle and pulling it tight, and the small honest work of it steadied her as it always did.

“The chest needs its second strap,” she said. “I will see to it before you go.”

“You see?” Selina turned to Cassandra with the air of a difficulty smoothly settled. “I told you she would understand it at once. She is never any trouble.”

It was then that Lord Marbury came through the hall.

He came from the library with a letter in his hand and his face already arranged for the carriage, and when he saw the four of them gathered there, he checked, only a half-step, only for a breath. Something had been concluded in his absence, and he seemed to know it, for his gaze went to Rosalind and rested on her for a moment, soft and unguarded. Rosalind looked down at the buckle before she had to decide what the look meant.

“Edmund,” said Selina. “I have been telling Lady Rosalind of our little arrangement for the Season. She thinks it very sensible. Do you not, my dear?”

Her father’s hand rose an inch from his side, turning toward his daughter, toward her arm or her shoulder, as though for half a breath it might reach her. His mouth opened.

“I had thought,” he began, “that perhaps Rosalind might⁠—”

“Might be glad of the quiet,” Selina finished for him, gently, “after such a tiring autumn. Yes. We are quite agreed.”

The hand returned to his side, where it found the snuffbox in his waistcoat pocket and turned it once, and his gaze left his daughter for the open door and the gray morning beyond it.

“Yes,” Lord Marbury said. “Quite. The quiet. Selina has a better head for these matters than I.” He looked down at the letter in his hand as though it had asked him something. “Is that the carriage I hear? We shall lose the morning if we dawdle. Rosalind, you will write, and tell us the house keeps well.”

“I will, Papa,” Rosalind said.

The old words rose in her before she could stop them. If you wish it. If I can be of any service to you in Town, you have only to write. She pressed them down and returned to the buckle. Why did her heart still reach for him, even now? He had not defended her. There was no surprise in that, though it hurt all the same.

She bent again to the chest. At the door, her father paused. Rosalind looked up and found him looking back at her. A moment later, he was gone.

* * *

The small parlor at the back of the house was the one warm room left in it, and it was there that Lady Holt sent for her, an hour after the great carriage had rolled away down the avenue and taken the family off to the London road.

“Sit,” said her aunt, the moment Rosalind came in. “You have been on your feet since six o’clock, for I have watched you. Sit down, child, before you fall down, and let the house mind itself for half an hour. It managed to stand before you were born, did it not? I am sure it will contrive to stand while we take tea.”

“But there is still a great deal to be done, Aunt.”

“There is a great deal that will keep.” Augusta, Lady Holt, was already seated by the fire with the tea things before her, and she did not rise, and she did not fuss. She only looked at her niece, directly and unhurriedly, in the way that almost no one ever looked at Rosalind, and waited until she sat. “There. Now. I find I am to go up to London myself in a day or two, the Season being what it is and an idle widow being of no use to anyone in the country in December. And I do not at all relish the journey alone.”

“You will want company on the road, then,” Rosalind said at once. “Shall I have Hodges arrange for a maid to travel with you? There is Mary, who is steady and does not chatter.”

“I do not want Mary.” Augusta poured, and held out the cup. “I want you.”

Rosalind took the cup in both hands, its warmth coming up through her fingers, and looked at the fire rather than at her aunt, for there was something in her aunt’s voice that she did not know what to do with.

“That is very kind,” she said carefully. “But I am needed here, Aunt. Lady Marbury was good enough to ask me to mind the house, and I could not leave it shut up and trust it to Hodges alone.”

“So she said.” Augusta set down the pot with a small deliberate click, and some of the warmth seemed to go out of the room. “I heard her ask it of you, Rosalind. I was standing in the parlor door, and I heard every word of it. And I watched you take it from her as though she had handed you a kindness instead of a broom.”

The color drained from Rosalind’s cheeks, and her heart began to thud. She kept her face still, having learned long ago to keep it so whatever the blood did beneath it.