An Affair in Winter (Seasons Book 1) (7 page)

“Let me help you undress, you must be exhausted,” Celia said, moving behind her to unfasten her gown.

For a brief moment, Rosalinde had a clear picture of Mr. Gray doing exactly the same thing, his rough fingers brushing her skin. She jolted and tried to shake the memory off.

“Are you all right?” her sister asked. “That was a great shiver.”

“It was not a pleasant ride,” Rosalinde gasped. “That carriage is drafty.”

“Well, now you’re here. No more unpleasantness to be found,” Celia said as she unbuttoned the dress.

Rosalinde shrugged out of it as her sister moved to the wardrobe across the room and drew out a nightgown for her to wear. As Celia approached, Rosalinde looked at her evenly.

“I’m not certain I believe you. Was Grandfather angry when I did not arrive last night as planned?”

Celia didn’t have to answer for Rosalinde to know what she’d say. Her sister blanched and her gaze darted away before she let out a long sigh. “Yes. He blustered fiercely, even when Stenfax tried to explain the weather was to blame. Even his own brother couldn’t make it until earlier today and
he
was on horseback.”

“His brother?” Rosalinde said, sliding her shift aside and taking the nightgown from her sister.

“Rosalinde!” Celia cried. “What are those bruises?”

Rosalinde froze and let her gaze slowly slide down her body. There were bruises on her hips. Finger-sized bruises that told her a tale of a strong man holding her while she rode him. Her cheeks flamed and she shoved her nightgown on to cover herself.

“I-I don’t know. The ride was very bumpy,” she said. “I must have rattled around.”

“I’m sorry,” Celia said. “How awful for you. I tried so hard to convince Grandfather to let you come with us when we came here almost two weeks ago, but you know him.”

“Yes,” Rosalinde said softly. “He made it clear he was punishing me by leaving me behind.”

Celia folded her arms, frustration clear on her face. “If he had done as I asked, you never would have had to endure last night.”

Rosalinde turned her face. Celia would never know that Rosalinde wouldn’t give up last night for anything.

“It is no use blustering over what has already happened. But what is this about Stenfax’s brother? I didn’t even know he had one,” Rosalinde hurried to say, hoping the change of subject would distract her sister from other dangerous topics.

The color slowly drained from Celia’s face and she let out a shuddering sigh. “Well, he does. And the man doesn’t like me.”

Rosalinde drew back in surprise. “Why? He hasn’t ever met you before, has he? I’m certain I would recall meeting him, or you would have told me if you met him without me in attendance.”

Celia’s frown grew longer. “No, I’ve never met the man until this afternoon when he arrived. He has business in the North, Stenfax says. That’s why we never crossed paths until today. I thought I’d told you about him, but I guess I never thought it very important for the few times Stenfax spoke of him. But he was smiling when he entered the room…until he heard
my
name. I could tell he didn’t like me at once.”

“How?”

Celia shivered. “He grew very cold.”

Rosalinde shook her head. She couldn’t believe someone wouldn’t like Celia. Her younger sister was a sweet, lovely woman with a kind heart and an intelligent mind. There had to be another explanation.

“Some men are just like that, Celia,” she said, reaching out to grasp her sister’s hand. She could tell Celia was truly troubled by this development and wanted to ease her pain. “Especially ones who come from such families. Coldness is sometimes bred into them.”

“But it’s more than his distant reaction,” Celia said, her stare moving to her feet. “At supper I caught him…
glaring
at me.”

Rosalinde tilted her head, anger beginning to burn in her chest. “If he doesn’t like you, it’s proof the man is an idiot. Who couldn’t like
you
, Celia?”

“At least his attitude doesn’t seem to trouble Stenfax,” Celia said with a sigh. “At least, not yet.”

“And how are things with the earl?”

There was a brief flicker across Celia’s face. An emotion Rosalinde couldn’t place, but it troubled her. Then her sister shrugged. “Fine.”

Rosalinde pursed her lips at the curt response. “Fine?” she repeated.

Celia paced away to tug the covers back from the bed. “Yes. Fine. He is polite and kind and does everything an upstanding fiancé should do.”

Rosalinde watched her sister fuss with the bedclothes and folded her arms. “That isn’t exactly a glowing review, Celia.”

“Why
should
it be glowing?” Celia said, giving Rosalinde a look over her shoulder. “This is no love match. He needs Grandfather’s money, I need his title.”

Rosalinde swallowed hard at the frank description of their situation. “It is desperately unfair that you must make the sacrifice.”

Slowly Celia turned, and there was a brief longing to her face. “But there is no other way. Marry a title and Grandfather tells us the truth about our father.”

Rosalinde flinched. She and Celia had been raised by their grandfather after their mother’s death, and had long believed their father had also died. They had even grown up with their grandfather’s last name, Fitzgilbert, rather than their father’s, and all questions regarding the man who had sired them had been rebuffed by their guardian.

But once Rosalinde had married so far beneath their grandfather’s expectation, he had cruelly revealed to Celia that their father actually lived. The price for giving his name was that Celia must marry a title to further their grandfather’s ambition.

Rosalinde had never regretted her marriage more than the day she’d received her sister’s shaky letter, revealing the truth and the bargain their guardian had forced her to make.

“Do you think what he tells us will even be the truth in the end?” Rosalinde asked, suddenly weary in the face of it all.

Celia faced her again. “You mean, is Grandfather only saying this to manipulate me into doing what he wants? I’ve thought of it, of course. But we won’t truly know until this deed is done.”

“I suppose not,” Rosalinde whispered.

“And I could do worse,” her sister said, lightening her tone. “Stenfax is well-landed and handsome, a catch, or so my jealous friends say.”

“Still, I had hoped he wouldn’t be entirely uninterested,” Rosalinde said with a long sigh.

“Oh no. He is attentive in his own way.”

Celia shrugged as if none of it mattered, but Rosalinde knew better. She had experienced a man who grew to think little of her. She had recently experienced one who wanted her. She knew which was better.

“Celia—”

Her sister lifted a hand. “It is the way of our world, Rosalinde. Marriage for love is nothing more than a fairytale.”

Rosalinde nodded slowly. She had learned that lesson the hard way.

“You must be exhausted after the past few days,” Celia said, motioning to the bed. “Come, let’s go to sleep and we will talk more about all of it tomorrow when everything will be far less bleak.”

Rosalinde sighed and all but fell into the comfortable bed. She smiled as her younger sister flitted about the room, blowing out candles and lamps before she snuggled in next to Rosalinde.

Rosalinde closed her eyes, but though she was tired, sleep didn’t come right away. She was troubled with thoughts not just about what her sister had revealed to her, but about Mr. Gray. Had he reached his own destination safely after the storm? Did he think of her at all or had she been a faceless conquest after a long string of the same?

She shook her head. It was foolish to allow such things to trouble her when Celia needed her. Tomorrow she would meet this brother of Stenfax’s, and perhaps she would find a way to soften him in his ill-informed opinions of her sister. That was the best she could do for Celia now.

The best she could do for them all.

Rosalinde linked arms with Celia as they stepped off the last step together and headed for the breakfast room down the hall. It was amazing what a good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed could do for a person. Rosalinde felt rested and ready to come to her sister’s aid in whatever way Celia needed her. No more thoughts of her mysterious lover or regrets about a past she couldn’t change.

They approached the room and heard voices drifting into the hall from inside. Both she and Celia stiffened at once when their grandfather’s voice rose above the others. He was blustering about eggs.

“Doesn’t sound like he’s in a good mood,” Rosalinde mused.

Celia laughed, but it was a brittle, unhappy sound. “Does it ever?”

“I suppose not. Into the lion’s den we go.”

They walked through the door arm in arm and found their grandfather, the dowager countess, and Stenfax’s sister Felicity all gathered in the room. There was a long table on one side of the chamber and a sideboard heavy with delicious-smelling breakfast treats on the other.

“Ah, Mrs. Wilde,” the dowager said, moving across the room to greet her. “You have arrived at last, we were all so worried.”

Rosalinde smiled. She had met the dowager a handful of times since Stenfax had begun his courtship of Celia. The woman was warm and welcoming…and flighty as a gnat. It was funny, for she had produced very intelligent children. Her daughter Felicity, the Viscountess Barbridge, who was just a year younger than Rosalinde, was obviously clever.

The viscountess joined her mother as she greeted Rosalinde. “What a harrowing time you’ve had,” Lady Barbridge said, squeezing Rosalinde’s hand with a friendly smile first for her, then for Celia.

“I—” Rosalinde began, but before she could say anything her grandfather turned from where he had been standing at the sideboard and glared at her.

“A
harrowing
time? More likely you were dancing and laughing in your sleeve as you spent my money on a ridiculous night at an inn,” he snapped.

Rosalinde blushed at the set-down, delivered so cruelly in front of their hostesses. She drew a breath and tried to keep her own demeanor calm to combat his. His round face was red, which made his white hair even more shocking. And his blue eyes, the ones she and Celia had both inherited, were cold as ice when he stared at her.

“I assure you, Grandfather, had I not paid for an inn,
you
would have been paying for four coffins,” she said softly.

He did not say anything more, but spun away, muttering something about value that stabbed her directly in the heart. She forced a smile for Lady Barbridge and the dowager, who both looked uncomfortable with what they’d witnessed. And why not? Mr. Fitzgilbert usually maintained a false joviality around the Stenfax family and a pretended affection for Celia.

This was likely the first time they’d ever seen the truth of him.

“Your home, or what I’ve seen of it, is lovely,” Rosalinde forced out as she willed tears not to fall.

The dowager’s face lit up, the unpleasantness of the previous moment clearly forgotten. “Oh, thank you. I did most of the decorating myself, you know, when I came here as a young countess years ago. I would love to show you around after breakfast.”

Lady Barbridge nodded swiftly. “An excellent idea. It may even warm up enough today to be able to look at some of the grounds.”

“I would like that,” Rosalinde said, and meant it.

“Ah, you have made it at last.”

Rosalinde turned to watch as the Earl of Stenfax entered the room. He was well over six feet tall and exuded a wiry strength that women in the
ton
had been cooing about for years. And yet he didn’t have much arrogance about that fact. He hardly seemed to notice it at all. Now he had a warm smile on his face for Rosalinde. She shot Celia a look to see her sister’s reaction. There was none. Though her handsome fiancé had just entered the room, her sister was caught up talking to Lady Barbridge rather than noticing her intended’s entrance.

“I have,” Rosalinde said, moving toward him. “I do apologize for the inconvenience of my delay.”

“Not at all,” the earl assured her. “Why, my brother was waylaid by the same storm, weren’t you, Gray?”

He stepped aside, allowing a man behind him to enter the chamber. Rosalinde looked at him—and her world stopped. Time didn’t move, her heart didn’t beat, she didn’t draw breath. All she could do was stare, the blood draining away from her face and making her lightheaded.

She knew this man. She knew him all too well. He was the man from the inn.

And he was staring right back at her, the recognition just as plain on his face as it was on hers.

“Mr. Grayson Danford, may I present Mrs. Rosalinde Wilde, Celia’s sister,” Stenfax said, motioning to her.

Mr. Gray…no, that wasn’t right. He wasn’t Mr. Gray and he never had been. That had been a lie. Mr.
Danford
ducked his head toward her rather dismissively. “Mrs. Wilde, is it?” he drawled.

Her body clenched as it remembered all the ways he’d said her name just two nights before. All the ways he’d touched her and pleased her and made her feel alive.

Now he looked at her like she was nothing.

“Yes,” she managed to squeak out. “A pleasure to meet you.”