The Wallflower's Mistletoe Wedding

‘So often you will be heartily sick of me.’

‘Promise?’

‘Just try to keep me away.’ Rose finished the last stitch in the hem and stood up to give her sister a hug, careful not to muss her ruffles and curls. Lily smelled of violet powder and sweetness, just as she had when she was a child, and Rose had held her dimpled little hands to help her walk. She laughed to keep from crying.

‘You really should marry first, as the eldest daughter. That is the natural way,’ Lily said.

Rose laughed again. ‘Find me another Mr Hewlitt, then. Until I have just such a paragon, I would never be able to tolerate wifely duties.’

‘He is out there, Rose, I just know it! The perfect man for you.’ Lily drew back to stare most earnestly into Rose’s eyes. ‘You will find him when you least expect it, just as I did with Mr Hewlitt.’

‘I haven’t time for romance,’ Rose said, tucking away her needle and thread in her workbox. It was quite true. When their father died so suddenly and they had to leave their home for the cottage, they’d had a very small income that would keep them from starving, but there would be no carriage or smart clothes or abundance of servants. Rose herself did much of the work: sweeping, sewing, looking after the chickens, taking care of their frail mother. She didn’t mind very much; she actually quite liked the useful, busy feeling of tea to make and ironing of petticoats to finish. And her chickens were known to be the finest layers in the neighbourhood.

Their mother, however, did mind. Mrs Felicity Parker had grown up as gentry in a fine manor house, cousin to the ancient family of the Bancrofts of Barton Park, and expected more of the same from her marriage, only to be bitterly disappointed. She talked of it to anyone who would listen. All her hopes had long been pinned on the beautiful Lily marrying well. A poor curate had never been in her plans, no matter how kind and handsome he was, no matter how much he adored Lily. And Rose saw too clearly what happened when a woman had to trust in marriage, trust in a man. She wasn’t sure she could do it.

Rose sighed. She very much feared her mother’s plans might turn to herself now and this visit to Barton Park was part of them. As much as she enjoyed seeing the old house and meeting her cousins, she couldn’t let her guard down.

‘Are you quite well, Rose?’ Lily asked, frowning in concern. ‘You look as if you have the headache.’

Rose made herself smile and fluffed up the lace trim of her sister’s sleeve. ‘Not at all. It’s just a bit stuffy in here, don’t you think? We should make our way down to the party. Mr Hewlitt will surely arrive soon.’

With a squeal of excitement, Lily dashed out of the room, her gown floating and sparkling around her like angel’s wings. Rose took a quick glance at herself in the glass before she followed, to make sure she looked presentable and tidy.

Presentable and tidy were about all she could hope for, she thought wryly. Unlike Lily, she had not inherited their mother’s blond curls and pink cheeks, her petite plumpness. Rose was taller, thin to the point of sharpness, with light brown hair that refused to hold a curl no matter how long it was subjected to the tongs, and skin that had turned ever so slightly golden while working in the garden. Her eyes were not too bad, she thought, with a small spark of hopefulness. A green-hazel that looked emerald in some lights, when she did not have to wear the horrid spectacles. Sadly, those had become more and more necessary of late, especially when sitting up sewing in the lamplight.

She smoothed the sleeves of her gown and reached for her gloves. Unlike Lily’s new dress, Rose had redone an old gown of their mother’s for herself. The olive-gold satin, plain and lustrous with only a single row of gold embroidery at the hem, suited her much better than the current style for frothy pale muslins and ruffled sleeves, and her needle had managed to take in the fuller skirts and puff out the sleeves a bit, yet she feared it would attract whispers of ‘unfashionableness’ and pity for the poor Parkers.

‘Ah, well,’ she told herself. ‘Fashion is something you could never really aspire to, Rose dear.’

She laughed, straightened the ivory comb in her upswept hair, slid her creamy Indian shawl over her shoulders and followed Lily out the door.

The party downstairs was just beginning, the first arrivals sweeping through the front doors and gathering in the marble-floored hall, leaving their wraps with the footmen, calling out merry greetings to each other.

Rose peeked over the gilded banister to the scene below. She had always loved Barton Park, the home of her mother’s distant cousins, the Bancrofts, even though they so seldom got to visit. It was a beautiful house, not too small and not too grand, built on elegant, classic lines and filled with comfortable furnishings and plenty of books and art. A true family home for many generations, soaked through with stories and emotions and hopes. It had fallen into some disrepair for a few years, but under the care of the current owners, Jane, Countess of Ramsay, and her sister, Emma, it had found new life.

The gardens beyond the tall glass windows were equally lovely, especially on such a soft, warm summer’s evening. Chinese lanterns shimmered in the trees, lighting up the pathways and the colourful tumble of the flowerbeds as carriages bounced along the gravel drive to the waiting doors.

Rose studied the crowd, a laughing, beautifully dressed throng gathered around Jane and her husband, the magnificently handsome Lord Ramsay. Jane looked as if she had belonged there at Barton Park for ever in her elegant dark blue gown, shimmering with lavender beads. She greeted each new arrival with a happy cry, sparkling with laughter before she passed them to her younger sister, Emma, a blonde angel much like Lily in her grey satin gown. Emma, too, smiled, though it was quieter, more unsure. When they were children, Emma had been quite the daredevil, but now she had returned to Barton as a young widow, trailing something of a scandal in her wake. Rose quite adored her, even as she worried for her.

The growing throng appeared a bit of a blur to Rose without her spectacles, but she glimpsed Lily near the open doors to the drawing room, where the music was drifting out above the hum of laughter. Their mother stood beside her, the plumes of her striped turban nodding merrily as she laughed and chattered, but Lily didn’t seem to be paying attention at all. She bounced on the toes of her dancing slippers, searching each face around her eagerly before falling back again.

Oh, dear, Rose thought. Mr Hewlitt had probably not made his appearance yet. She tiptoed down the stairs and slipped into the crowd, intending to make her way to Lily and their mother. She was stopped when Jane spotted her.

‘Rose, my dear, do come and meet someone!’ Jane said, grasping Rose’s hand and drawing her forward. Jane was the kindest of women, but always most assiduous in her hostess duties. She would never just let a wallflower be a wallflower.

Rose flashed a quick smile at Emma, who smiled back uncomfortably. She looked as if she wanted to run for the safety of the comfortably shabby library as much as Rose did.

But then Rose turned to face Jane’s newly arrived guests—and froze. All thoughts of fleeing, all thoughts at all, were quite gone.

A gentleman had just stepped through the front door and what a gentleman he was. He looked rather like something Rose would picture in one of the romantic French novels Lily liked to read aloud in the evenings—a man tall, dark and mysterious. His expression was quite solemn and wary as he studied the crowd, as if he was thinking of possible battle lines rather than dancing.

He certainly did have the bearing of a soldier, lean and ramrod-straight, his shoulders strong beneath the cut of his dark blue evening coat, his sun-darkened skin set off by a plain white cravat. His hair, so dark it was almost a blue-black, like a winter’s night, waved back from his forehead, and his eyes were a velvet brown. He had a strange stillness, a perfect watchfulness, almost a—a menace about him, but one that was enticing rather than frightening. He was quite unlike anyone else she had ever seen.

‘Harry, how delightful you could come tonight after all,’ Jane was saying, once Rose could tear her attention away from the man’s mesmerising handsomeness and hear the roar of the party again. ‘We did hear you were off to battle in Sicily.’

‘A soldier has to keep busy however he can.’ The man smiled as he bowed over Jane’s hand and it quite transformed him. He went from wary stillness to sunny charm in an instant, a dimple appearing in his sun-browned cheek that made Rose want to giggle like a schoolgirl. ‘But it seems they don’t need my assistance at this very moment. How could I resist the chance to see you again, Lady Ramsay? It’s been much too long since you brightened the dull London ballrooms. Hayden is a beast to keep you away.’

Jane laughed and waved her lace fan at him. ‘Silly flatterer. I know you are merely counting the seconds until you can escape to the library for a brandy with Hayden and a talk about your beastly battlefields. But it’s lovely to see you again all the same, safe and sound. And you, Charles! Where on earth have you been keeping yourself?’

Rose was able to tear her gaze from the dark, poetic brooder for a moment to see another man standing just behind him. He was also tall, also handsome, with a cheerful smile and bright golden hair, and the same brown eyes as the first man. But though he was just as good looking, he did not have the same frightening magnetism.

‘Nowhere as useful as my brother, I assure you, Lady Ramsay,’ he said with a bow. ‘But I haven’t had a proper dance in ages and, unlike Harry, I miss it more than I can say.’

‘That is one thing I can promise here. I hired the best orchestra from miles around.’ Jane drew Rose and Emma forward. ‘Emma, Rose, may I present two of our neighbours? Captain Henry St George, who was a great hero at Waterloo, and his brother, Mr Charles St George. Gentlemen, this my sister, Mrs Emma Carrington, and my cousin Miss Rose Parker.’

Charles was the first to bow to them, with grand courtly flourishes that made Rose laugh and even had Emma smiling. ‘Ladies, I fear that unlike my dashing brother I am hero of very little except the billiards room, but I do claim some proficiency at waltzing, if you will do me the honour?’

Emma did laugh—the first time Rose had heard it since the young widow had returned to Barton—but Rose could still not find a way to tear her attention completely away from Captain St George. How very intriguing he looked, with his wry flash of a smile!

‘Do you live near Barton, Miss Parker?’ he asked, his voice low and deep, almost rough. He watched her closely, as if he listened only to her in the whole room.

‘Oh,’ Rose answered, and for an instant it was as if every word she had ever known flew out of her mind. She had to laugh at herself; it was quite unlike the sensible nature she usually prided herself on. Yet she comforted herself that no lady could surely be entirely immune from such a pair of eyes when they were focused so closely on oneself.

‘Not too far,’ she said. ‘We used to visit often when we were children, my sister and I, and hunt for treasure with Jane and Emma.’

He smiled, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘Treasure? That does sound intriguing.’

‘Oh, it was!’ she said, absurdly pleased to have ‘intrigued’ him. She found she wanted more than anything to make him smile that smile at her again. ‘It is a wonderful old tale, about the lover of a Royalist soldier, Arabella Bancroft, hiding a royal fortune on the grounds of the estate, in the hope she and her love would one day be reunited to spend it together. Or something like that. We were quite hazy on the details when we were children.’

‘And did you ever find it?’

‘No, not even a farthing. It’s just a legend, of course, but we did have some marvellous adventures digging for it in the woods. We would climb the trees and pretend we were the Royalists defending our fortress from Cromwell, with tree trunks for cannons...’ She suddenly remembered he was a true captain, a hero of the terrible carnage at Waterloo, and felt her cheeks turn warm. ‘Not at all like real battle, of course.’

A shadow flickered over his smile and he glanced away. ‘Much more fun, though, I would wager. Real battle is all mud and noise, I fear, Miss Parker. But trees and branches as guns—just fun.’

Rose nervously twitched her skirts into place, feeling terrible at reminding him of such things when he was meant to be enjoying himself at Jane’s party. Not for the first time, she wished she had some of Lily’s gift of easy laughter and chatter. ‘I am sure it was. I’m sorry for bringing up any bad memories, Captain.’

He gave her a wry smile. ‘The memories are always there, Miss Parker, but they don’t plague me on a night like this.’ He paused to adjust a glove. ‘And did they ever find each other again?’

‘Find each other?’ she said, confused.

‘Arabella Bancroft and her Royalist.’

‘Oh. No. He never came back. I think she married someone else in the end and abandoned Barton Park.’

‘Then there is hope the treasure is still out there.’

‘I never thought of it like that,’ Rose exclaimed. ‘Perhaps it is.’