An Affair in Winter (Seasons Book 1) (16 page)

Gray pushed to his feet. “I think I’ve heard enough.”

“How did your family lose their money in the first place?” Fitzgilbert asked, ignoring the warning in Gray’s tone and posture. He even smiled up at him in the face of it.

“You had best watch yourself, sir,” Gray growled.

“No.” Fitzgilbert pointed a finger at him, jabbing it like it was a knife. “You best watch
yourself
, Mr Danford. After all, your brother has as much to lose as I do if this marriage doesn’t go through.”

“My brother would find another match, I assure you.”

“With two broken engagements in just two years? Society could be made to see that in a very unkind light.” Fitzgilbert leaned back, a smug smile across his round face. “I say this only to make you remember your place as quickly as I recall my own.”

“I know exactly what my place is,” Gray said as he turned and walked away.

He stormed out of the room with Fitzgilbert’s chuckle ringing in his ears. Rage bubbled up in him. Rage that this man would threaten his family, but also rage that he could treat his own granddaughters with such distain and disregard. It made everything Rosalinde did make so much more sense.

And it made him wish he could help her, even as he fought to destroy the one thing she wanted most. He only knew he couldn’t have both the things he wanted. At some point he’d have to choose. And someone he cared for would lose.

Gray strode down the hall from the backstairs. He hadn’t wanted to see anyone in his current mindset and so had gone the back route to the main floor. His mind still roiled with thoughts of his encounter with Fitzgilbert. The man’s cruelty and his threats were hardly to be born.

And yet they would have to be, for at least a little longer. Fitzgilbert would be at the supper table in an hour, smugly overseeing this engagement that suited his own purposes.

Which drove Gray even harder to explore the past of Rosalinde and Celia’s mother and see if he could find—

The thought in his head was cut off as he passed by the closed door to the music room. Inside, he could hear someone playing the pianoforte. It was a mournful song, but played impeccably. He was drawn to the sound and leaned toward the door to listen to it longer. But just as the notes wrapped around him, sank into him, there was a crashing, discordant sound of fingers mashing on keys.

He shoved the door open and found that the mysterious player of the music was none other than Rosalinde. And now she sat, head hung over the keys, her shoulders shaking. She obviously had not noticed his entry, his intrusion on her private heartbreak.

He had two options on how to proceed. He could quietly shut the door and never tell her that he’d seen her in such a state—or he could go inside and comfort her.

He was already moving into the room. It was too late to do anything else but whisper, “Rosalinde?”

She jumped at the sound of his voice and staggered to her feet to face him. She swiped at the tears which clung to her cheeks, and refused to meet his eyes.

“G-Gray,” she stammered, her voice thick with tears. “I didn’t hear you there.”

He reached into his pocket and withdrew a handkerchief. He held it out wordlessly. She hesitated, but then took it, her fingers brushing over the monogram his sister had stitched on the cloth some Christmas years ago.

“Thank you,” Rosalinde whispered before she turned away to gather her composure and blow her nose. “I’ll have it washed and return it,” she said as she tucked the handkerchief into her pocket.

“Come for a walk with me,” Gray said, uncertain why those words had burst from his lips. “In the garden.”

Rosalinde wrinkled her brow in confusion. “At dusk, in the cold?”

He nodded. “The night air will do us both some good. As long as you won’t be bothered by the scenery.”

She let out a laugh that was pained. “The garden is brown and dead now. That rather fits my soul at present.”

He moved on her, unable to stop himself. “You are the most alive thing I’ve ever known, Rosalinde.”

She blinked at this compliment and he could see her hesitation. He supposed he’d earned that. After all, he hadn’t been trustworthy, at least not in her eyes. She had to doubt his motives now. Motives he could hardly define they were so twisted in his own mind.

“Please,” he said.

She nodded slowly. “All right.”

He took her arm, guiding her to the foyer where he called for their coats to be brought. He watched as Stenfax’s butler, Taylor, assisted her with the same hooded red cloak she’d been wearing the night she entered the inn. Once he had left them, Gray turned toward her to button her jacket slowly. In silence, she watched every movement of his hands.

Finally, he took her hand and they went down to a parlor with an exit to the terrace and the garden down the stairs below. She was silent the entire time, just watching until they stepped into the cold maze of the dead garden.

“Why are you being so kind to me, Gray?” she whispered at last. “Is this an angle to take me to your bed again?”

He flinched at her cold assessment of his intentions. “When it comes to you, I am always thinking about having you in my bed,” he admitted. “But taking you for a walk tonight has nothing to do with that.” She gave him a look, and he smiled despite himself. “Very well, it has
little
to do with that.”

“Then why?” she pressed.

“I heard you playing the pianoforte and it drew me in,” he admitted. “I saw you weep and it brought out a desire to comfort you.”

She pursed her lips. “And if there is no comfort to be offered?”

He frowned at the idea that she could not be helped. It made him want to rip the world apart to find a way. Instead, he said, “Then perhaps a few moments to forget.”

“And how do you suggest that I forget?”

“We’ll talk about something else,” he said, guiding them forward once more. “You can tell me which of these dead flowers is your favorite.”

She laughed, and the sound warmed him to his center. He could spend a lifetime making this woman laugh. Feeling the beauty of it wrap around him tighter and tighter until there was room for nothing else but the pleasure she brought.

He shook those feelings away. They served no purpose in heaven or on earth.

“I would rather talk about you,” she said.

He looked at her from the corner of his eye. “Me?”

“Yes. You and I have gone about our entire acquaintance backward. We made love before we knew each other’s name, we hated each other before we knew the other. It seems time now that we truly meet.”

He shifted with discomfort at the idea that she wished to know him better. Just standing next to her made him feel vulnerable. Giving her more was…it was like arming an enemy with information on how best to destroy.

“And what about what I want to know about you?” he asked.

She shrugged. “You know I was married before, you know my grandfather raised me and my sister after our mother’s death—you know a great deal. And all I know is that you’re Stenfax’s younger brother and you have some kind of business to the north.”

“When you put it that way, it does sound unfair,” he conceded slowly.

“You and your brother seem as close as Celia and I…” She trailed off, and there was a twisting sense of pain to her tone. She swallowed and said, “You are lucky to have such a tight-knit family.”

He let his gaze slide away as he considered her statement. The truth about his family wasn’t something he shared. Hell, he hardly spoke of it with Felicity and Lucien. And yet he found himself longing to tell Rosalinde more. He tried to tell himself it was only to lower her guard. But it was more than that.

“We look close,” he admitted. “Felicity and Lucien and I are close, indeed. But our family isn’t as intact and wonderful as perhaps you picture it.”

She stopped in the path and turned toward him slightly. “No?”

“My father was a hard man. With vices and arrogance that did nothing to help refill our coffers. Oh, there were times he could be kind, at least to others, but with his family he was more often distant. He saw little value in his children except for the one who would take his place: Lucien.”

He heard the pain in his voice, the pain he so rarely allowed and never addressed. Rosalinde took his hand and squeezed, and it was like it opened the gate to feel everything he normally repressed. The agony spread open his chest and exposed his heart to the cold air.

He clung to her hand, holding it too tightly until the emotion faded.

“You had no relationship with him?” she asked.

He shrugged, able to pretend that truth had no meaning again. “Not unless I could stand behind Lucien and wait for whatever scraps the old man had left to give. Which was little.”

“But you don’t resent Stenfax for that,” Rosalinde said softly.

Gray wrinkled his brow. “How could I? Lucien didn’t want it that way. I even sometimes overheard him trying to encourage our father to pay me some heed, for all the good it did. My brother is my best friend, Rosalinde.”

He said it, knowing what it meant to her. Knowing she understood how far he would go, but also why he would do so.

Immediately he saw her appreciation for what his words meant. “You are lucky to have such close bonds with your siblings. Not everyone feels this way about their blood.”

“No, I know many who war with their brothers for position and power.” Gray shook his head.

Rosalinde nodded. “With women it is the same, although it is a different kind of power.”

“And yet you would do anything for Celia,” he said, watching her face. He asked because he wanted to know. He asked because her answer might help him in his quest. He hated himself for the second reason.

Rosalinde caught her breath. “Right now Celia may not believe that.”

Gray drew her closer in the cold and stepped out to make them move again. He wanted to know what Rosalinde would confess, and he thought she would be more likely to say difficult words when he wasn’t staring at her, making her question what he would do with the information she shared.

“Is that why you were crying?” he pressed gently. “Did you two have a row?”

She was silent for what felt like a very long time, as if she were considering what to do and say. “The truth affects you, I suppose.”

He arched a brow as he looked at her. “Does it?”

She stopped and fully faced him again. The cold had made her cheeks pink, and in the faint light from the house behind him she was pretty as she’d ever been.

“Celia knows about…about what has happened between
us
,” she whispered.

Gray’s entire body tensed and he released her, his hands fisting at his sides. “About you and me?” he clarified.

She nodded.

“About us sharing a bed at the inn the night we met, about us being together since your arrival,” he continued.

She nodded again, this time more slowly. “And she is upset with me,” she whispered.

Gray frowned. This put a new wrinkle on an already complicated situation. After all, Celia was aware of Gray’s disapproval of her. She might be able to use this affair against him as much as he was trying to use the truth against her.

“I’m shocked you would tell her about us,” he said, keeping his tone neutral.

Rosalinde dipped her chin. “You say Stenfax is your best friend. Well, Celia is mine, although I have let her down so many times.”

Gray thought of her grandfather’s words just a few hours before. Fitzgilbert judged Rosalinde harshly for some unnamed crimes, as well as for marrying beneath her station. If Celia felt the same, that only solidified Gray’s poor opinion of the young woman.

“How have you let her down?” he asked, his voice barely carrying in the cold.

She met his gaze, and he saw her hesitation. He hated it, even though he deserved it. “My marriage,” she said softly.

His eyes narrowed. It seemed it was just as he’d thought. “She didn’t like you marrying a man with no standing?”

“No!” Rosalinde shook her head swiftly. “You misunderstand. My grandfather is such a…he’s horrible, Gray. He may pretend to care when it suits him, but he doesn’t.”

Gray’s thoughts turned again to the dismissive words Fitzgilbert had had for the remarkable women standing before him. He’d wanted to smash a fist through the old man’s nose at the time. Now he wished he had when it was clear how much Rosalinde was grieved by Fitzgilbert’s lack of care.

“What does your grandfather’s treatment have to do with your marriage?” he pressed, turning them back toward the house.

She sighed. “I was angry, hurt by him and his slurs against me, against my mother. I met Martin Wilde, who was a shopkeep, and I knew he was beneath what my grandfather would want for me. I admit that was part of the appeal, to defy him.”

She lifted her chin as she said it and her face lit up with the defiance once again. It made her look like a warrior in the moonlight, and Gray had to fist his hand at his side not to touch her right there and then.

“So you married him, despite his standing,” he urged.

She nodded. “I did. I left my sister behind in a fit of pique. And that left my grandfather able to…”