“Whooooooooo. Whooooooooo.” She’d drawn breath for another exhalation when footsteps sounded in Rose’s room down the corridor.
She barely made it back into the master chamber before her daughter’s door slammed open. “What was that? Who’s there?”
Unlike her sisters, Rose didn’t sound scared. Her voice wasn’t tentative and frightened. Aggravated would better describe it.
Rose’s footfalls paced the corridor up and halfway back before Chrystabel heard another door opening. Kit’s, thank the Lord. It had to be—his was the only occupied room left.
“What the hell is going on out here? I thought I heard a ghost.”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Rose said peevishly.
“Obviously,” Kit drawled, “you have never torn down an old building.”
“Obviously,” Rose returned, “you have a lively imagination.”
Kit only laughed. God strike her down, Chrystabel thought, if these two weren’t perfect for each other.
No lightning bolts came down the chimney.
“Are you hungry?” Rose asked.
“I could eat.”
There wasn’t a male alive who couldn’t find space for food, no matter how long since his belly was last filled. Chrystabel credited her daughter for knowing the way to a man’s heart.
But as they made their way downstairs, her own heart sank. A jovial family midnight snack was not what she’d had in mind for Rose and Kit. And she had few, if any, chances left to arrange another meeting before her daughter wised up and figured out what was going on.
A lot of terms could be used to describe Rose, but slow-witted wasn’t one of them. And Chrystabel knew well what would happen should her daughter discover that she and Kit were in league. The marriage would never occur.
She shut her door and made her way back to bed to wake her husband. If he knew what was good for him, he’d better not say he was hungry.
What she had in mind to ease her disappointment did not involve food.
FORTY-FIVE
AS KIT AND ROSE approached the kitchen, they heard laughter. Boisterous, rollicking laughter.
Kit peeked in the door to find nearly the entire Ashcroft family around a big, scarred wooden table. Pies, bread, and leftover dishes from supper littered the surface. Ale and conversation flowed.
Deciding he wasn’t hungry, he shut the door quietly, muffling the laughter to a dull roar. “I’ve changed my mind. Let’s go for a walk instead.”
Rose’s dark eyes looked huge in the light of the single candle she was carrying. “Outside? In my night rail in the dead of the night?”
“It’s been unseasonably warm. I’ll wait while you get your cloak.”
“We’ve no shoes!” she protested, making Kit look down in surprise. Suddenly he could hardly fathom that he was here in Rose Ashcroft’s home in bare feet.
Though her night rail and dressing gown concealed her body more effectively than the current fashions—court fashions most especially—there was something undeniably intimate about the ensemble. Something that made him belt his own robe more tightly.
“We can go upstairs and don shoes,” he suggested.
“I think not.”
For a moment, he thought she would open the kitchen door and join the impromptu party. It had been her idea to come down here, after all. Looking forward to some quiet time with her in this noisy house, he’d agreed—but perhaps her interest in food surpassed her interest in him.
Happily, in the end she didn’t disappoint him. “I have another idea,” she whispered, taking his arm to lead him away. “We can walk in my father’s orangery.”
“Your father grows oranges?”
“Not very successfully. That’s why he’s so keen to get that greenhouse.”
The orangery was a long, narrow chamber that occupied the entire ground floor of the west wing. “It used to be called the Stone Gallery,” Rose told him as they entered. There were candlesticks mounted on the walls at intervals, and she lit them as she walked. “I suppose that after you build the greenhouse we’ll call it the Stone Gallery again.”
Tall windows, dark now, lined the gallery along the west side and half of the east as well. The ceiling was intricately carved oak. Kit recognized it and the chamber as dating from Tudor times—a room the occupants would have used to take exercise in inclement weather. But now it was filled with a variety of trees and plants, all interspersed with statuary that looked like it had been brought from Italy.
“Would you like an orange?” Rose asked laughingly, pulling a small, rather shriveled example from a scraggly branch. “Don’t worry—they don’t taste as bad as they look.”
He peeled it as they walked, the black and white marble floor cold beneath his bare feet. “It’s quiet here,” he said.
“Yes.” She sounded amused at the observation. “It’s not easy to find a quiet place at Trentingham, is it?”
“You’ve a large family. But I like it,” he added, realizing suddenly that he did. “Even the noise. There’s a lot of life here. Vitality.”
He’d felt that lack of vitality since his parents’ deaths. He’d been busy, yes—but there was a difference.
“It’s real,” he added, tossing the peel into an empty clay pot.
“Real?”
He divided the little orange and handed her half. “Charles’s court, for example, is lively. But it’s forced gaiety, don’t you think? The liveliness here is real.”
“Ah. Yes. I see,” she said thoughtfully.
Popping the juicy, sweet fruit into his mouth, he hoped she also saw that court was a life she’d just as soon live without—because she’d have to if she married him. Even supposing he got his knighthood, he hadn’t the time to flit from one place to another at the whim of his monarch. He had his lifework to pursue.
And no matter that it was fashionable, he had no intention of living a separate life from his wife.
He heard her swallow. “Are you not happy, Kit?”
She sounded like she cared. He hoped it was as more than a friend. More than like a brother, but better. “I’m happy right now,” he said, licking his fingers.
“And Ellen is happy now.”
“I don’t want to think about Ellen.”
“But you must.” They’d reached the end of the gallery. She lit the
