Has she refused your proposal? Rand had asked.
No, and Kit couldn’t imagine her doing so now.
When her eyes fluttered open, looking dazed, he gave her a gentle smile. “I love you, Rose.” Watching her lips curve in response to those words, he drew a shaky breath. “Will you marry me?”
“Marry you?” Her eyes filled with pain and confusion, the pleasure turning to panic. “No. I…no. Good God, what have I done?” She shoved her night rail down and closed her dressing gown, fumbling with the sash before giving up and hugging herself miserably. “I’m sorry. I must go.”
She pushed past him and ran from the chamber, her bare footfalls pattering all down its long length. At the other end, he heard the door slam shut.
And then he was alone with the flickering candles and his tight throat and his pensive thoughts.
And his aching heart.
He’d known all along that she’d refuse him, so why was he so crushed and demoralized? And why had he taken things so far? Never mind that her mother had tacitly given permission, it had been wrong. He cursed himself roundly. He’d been weak. He wouldn’t let it happen again.
Damn Lady Trentingham for encouraging him. He’d always known that, as matters stood, he wouldn’t be considered good enough for an earl’s daughter.
Not by the daughter herself, in any case.
And just his luck, he’d chosen the one woman in England whose parents let her choose her own husband.
The candlelight that had seemed so intimate earlier now seemed too bright, too revealing. He slowly moved to douse the many small flames. He burned to tell Rose of his pending knighthood, but with his project deadlines approaching and all the problems, he was no longer confident of his chances. And for all he knew, a knighthood might not be enough for her, anyway. The Deputy Surveyor post was only a first step—it could be years before he raised himself further.
By then it would be too late for him and Rose.
Too, too late.
FORTY-SIX
ROSE SPENT A restless, tormented night. When she awakened, the note she found slipped beneath her door did nothing to ease her distress. ROSE, it said in the neat, all-caps printing she’d seen on Kit’s architectural renderings:
MUST CHECK PROGRESS AT HAMPTON COURT. PLEASE GIVE YOUR FAMILY MY THANKS AND ASSURE YOUR FATHER THAT THE GREENHOUSE WILL PROCEED ON SCHEDULE AS PLANNED. -K
There was nothing more. No “Dearest Rose.” No “I love you, Kit,” or even just “Love, Kit.”
Did he hate her now? Had she lost his friendship along with her innocence?
True, she was still a virgin, but her entire body heated when she remembered the liberties she’d allowed Kit last night. A hot, tingling ache spread, centered in that place between her legs where he’d touched her. Where he’d made her feel things she’d never felt. Never even imagined.
She washed and slowly dressed without help, so lost in her thoughts she couldn’t bear conversation with Harriet. I love you. She supposed she had no right to expect Kit to declare so in a letter when he’d said the words out loud and been met with her silence. And then gone so far as to propose and been met with a no.
Her first proposal.
The look on his face had nearly killed her. His words had taken her completely by surprise. She supposed, on reflection, that they shouldn’t have…
But she’d been expecting her first proposal to come from a duke.
Confusion was a weight in her chest. Did she love Kit? In the heat of the moment, it had been on the tip of her tongue to echo those three words. But she hadn’t, because she wasn’t sure, and in any case it wouldn’t matter.
He wasn’t the right man for her.
He’d had no right to expect a different answer. She might have reached the advanced age of one-and-twenty, but she wasn’t yet desperate enough to marry a commoner. She’d be a fool to do that when Bridgewater, a lofty peer of the realm, was likely to offer for her hand. She squared her shoulders as she headed down to the dining room for breakfast.
Happy as bees in a bed of flowers, her sisters and their families were already eating, having risen early to prepare for their journeys home. The elder Ashcrofts were conspicuously absent; after a homecoming, they often slept late. Rowan and Jewel chatted cheerfully, so focused on each other the rest of the room might as well have been empty.
Everyone in this house—everyone but Rose—was in love.
The conversation died as she scraped back a chair and plopped onto it. A footman offered a cup of chocolate, and she clenched it so hard her knuckles turned white.
“Where is Kit?” Lily asked.
Rose felt her jaw tightening. “What makes you think I should know?” she gritted out, suddenly visualizing herself biting her sister’s head off. She gulped the hot liquid, scalding her tongue. “He left a note. It seems he’s gone on to Hampton Court.”
“Oh,” Lily said.
“Did you hear a ghost last night?” Rowan asked.
Rose imagined biting his head off, too. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“Rose is right,” Ford put in.
He could live.
“I heard tapping,” Rowan insisted.
“Me, too,” Jewel said, gazing at him worshipfully.
That pixie-faced girl had fallen in love at six. Six! Off with her pixie head.
“We heard tapping and scratching,” Rand said. “Lily and I both.”
“And I heard a terrible scraping noise.” Violet turned to Rose. “Did you not hear anything at all?”
A whoosh. But she’d never admit it. She didn’t believe in ghosts.
Or marrying beneath her expectations, either.
FORTY-SEVEN
THE SUN WAS setting upon Hampton Court’s red brick when Rose and her mother arrived three days later. As they stood in one of Base Court’s covered galleries waiting for a palace warden to open their lodging, a woman came out of the apartments next door.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, one
