“There’s no time for alterations, dear.” In contrast to Rose, whose stomach was churning with excitement, Mum calmly plucked petals. “I mean to leave tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow!” Rose dropped the stem in her hand. “Tomorrow?”
“There’s no time like the present,” her mother said with an enigmatic smile.
Normally, Rose might have been mortified by the implication that her spinsterhood was fast approaching. But this was no time to be touchy.
No, it was time to prepare.
She was going to court! Leaving her flowers on the table, she hastened to her chamber to pack.
FOUR
“WHAT A DAY.” Chrystabel slipped beneath the counterpane to join her husband in bed, sinking into the mattress as she relaxed for the first time in what seemed like weeks. “Thank heaven they’re married at last.”
“I suspect you’re really thanking heaven Lily’s virtue is no longer at risk,” Joseph teased, leaning up to kiss her lightly on the lips. He lowered himself onto an elbow, smiling into her eyes, his own a deep, sparkling green.
She pushed a lock of dark hair off his forehead. “Well, there is that,” she admitted. Her eldest daughter’s courtship had taught her the vulnerability of a girl’s virtue—and her own motherly duty to protect it with every stratagem she possessed.
Chrystabel was a woman who could learn from her mistakes.
“But mostly,” she added, “I’m just gladdened to see them happy at last. Everything worked out.”
“It usually does,” said her ever-practical husband.
She released a contented sigh. “Another wedding.”
“Another wedding night,” he responded with another kiss.
A tradition, their wedding nights. That was one of the reasons she so loved arranging other people’s marriages.
Chrystabel kissed him back, her hands on his warm, stubbly cheeks. “I’ll miss you,” she murmured against his lips.
“Where are you going?” He pulled back slightly in alarm.
“I’m thinking to take Rose to court at Windsor. With your permission, of course,” she rushed to add, knowing he would never deny her.
“Court? Do you expect that’s wise? The men there—”
“I’ll watch her like a hawk. And rest assured, there’s not a man at court I want for Rose. She belongs with Kit Martyn. He’s at Windsor as we speak, checking on a project—”
“Kit Martyn? You’ve mentioned him before. Chrysanthemum my love, I know you fancy yourself a matchmaker, but Rose has shown no interest—”
“Which is exactly why he’s perfect for her.”
Joseph lifted his head and searched her eyes in the dim, flickering light from the fire. “Come again?”
“You know how she is. As soon as she sets her sights on a gentleman, the act begins. The shameless flirting and flattery. Don’t you see? She’s doomed to chase away anyone worthy of her—unless he’s someone she thinks she doesn’t want. With Kit she’ll be herself. Charming, intelligent, sharp-witted….why, he cannot fail to fall in love with her.”
“I suspect he’s taken with her already,” Joseph said dryly. “But what good will that do if she doesn’t fall for him? We’ve promised her she can choose her own husband.”
“Making her fall,” Chrystabel said, “will be Kit’s problem, and I’ve no doubt he’s up to the task. I need only provide the opportunity.”
“You cannot push, Chrysanthemum.”
Her laugh tinkled through the darkness. “I would never. I know full well our daughters pledged to avoid me arranging their marriages. Yet I managed to match both Violet and Lily without either being the wiser, didn’t I? Have no fear, darling—Rose’s romance will follow suit. And she’ll have no idea I was behind it.”
FIVE
KIT STOOD in a corner of Windsor Castle’s soon-to-be new dining room, watching two carpenters affix carvings of fruit to the paneled wall. The piece, exquisitely worked by Grinling Gibbons, was made of supple lime wood, a fine material.
He wished he could say the same for the rest of his project.
His gaze went to the sagging ceiling on the side of the room that had recently been part of a brick courtyard. Jagged cracks ran this way and that, and bits of broken plaster littered the floor underneath. On his orders, men were hastily erecting scaffolding to support the damaged ceiling until it could be repaired from above.
All day, Kit had measured and figured, tearing out parts of the ceiling to search for causes, to find where his planning had gone wrong. It hadn’t, he’d finally discovered—the plans had been perfect. That was, if they’d been executed with the high quality materials he’d used in his calculations.
But Harold Washburn, his project’s foreman, had apparently not seen fit to order those materials, no matter that he’d been supplied with the funds. Instead, the new portion of the room had been built with inferior goods that weren’t strong enough to support the ceiling. Kit had found beams made of wormy wood that had obviously been hit by lightning, weakening it; and cheap, substandard plaster that might look fine on first inspection, but wouldn’t hold up over the years, sagging ceiling or not.
And Washburn, no doubt, had pocketed the savings. Making Kit look the fool.
Calculations in hand, he stalked toward the foreman. “Washburn!”
The older man swung around, his beady gaze hooded. “Aye, young Martyn? Have you a plan to repair the faulty addition?”
“Faulty?” Seething, Kit loomed over the balding old cur. Washburn may have had the advantage in years, but Kit had the height. ”The only thing faulty here is your honor—or appalling lack thereof. Do you know what the penalty is for bilking the Crown?”
Washburn had the gall to feign innocence. “Sir? What are these accusations? I would never—”
“Never again for me, at any rate,” Kit interrupted. He gestured with his rolled-up sketches. “Be gone.”
The man’s breath huffed in and out through a large nose crisscrossed with tiny red veins. “You think you can just dismiss me?” he growled.
“Would you rather be swinging from the gallows? Or buried under
