Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 78100 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78100 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Dearest Rosalind,
I do not know what to think as I write this. I only know this will hurt you.
I cannot be the husband you need, the honorable husband you deserve. You should have married someone finer. Everyone knows it. I knew it but I married you anyway, scoundrel that I am. Forgive me for leaving you just before the ball. It’s a cowardly act. I’m bound for India and perhaps I’ll make it there this time, though if I go down again, it’s deserved.
I pray you will put aside your feelings for me and find some more deserving partner to bestow your love upon. You deserve so much more than I can provide.
There is nothing more to say, except goodbye.
Marlow
Rosalind closed the note, astonished beyond measure. “This cannot be real. It cannot.”
Everyone stared at her in grotesque pity. Elizabeth got into the bed beside her, taking her in her arms. He is lost…
Was this what her friend had meant, that Marlow had lost his mind? The note was a scrawled mess. He had been drunk. He had been lost indeed, to think for a single moment that he ought to leave her.
“He doesn’t mean this,” she said, forcing her voice out although it was breaking. She waved the note, throwing it back at her mother. “He can’t mean any of this. It’s not true.”
“We went to the docks,” said her father.
Townsend scowled. “Marlow booked passage on a ship to India last week, right after you returned to town. He departed yesterday, just at the time he pretended to run his errands.”
“No.” Her voice quavered in disagreement. “No, he would not. No. I would have known.” She shook her head. “No. He took nothing with him! Why would he leave with nothing?”
“Perhaps because he didn’t want you to know his plans.” Her father’s voice was firm, but kind. “We asked after the appearance of the gentleman who boarded. It was him.”
“And that letter? When did he write it? It looks like it’s been trod over by a horse.”
They just stared at her. Had he been visiting hotels? Living a dissipated lifestyle? But when? With whom? He had been with her every night, and when he’d been gone in the daytime, he’d never returned looking scruffy or drunk.
“I cannot believe this,” she insisted.
“Did he say anything to make you think he had these feelings?” her father prompted.
Rosalind thought a moment, staring down at her hands. “He said it a lot, that he wasn’t good enough for me. But he didn’t say it like this, like…like he would leave me. Why would he leave me?”
She thought back to their recent conversations, to their interactions just this morning. He had felt guilty. He’d frowned and said he was too coarse, but then he’d kissed her and made love to her.
Had the lovemaking been wistful, rather than sweet? Had it been a goodbye?
“He would not,” she whispered. “He would not. He would not. He would not.”
She was crying in front of all these people. It seemed all she’d done for hours and hours was cry.
“He would not go to India like this, without telling me. He would not leave me.”
Her mother said nothing, only pressed her lips together and turned to her father. She did not understand the look her parents exchanged. She didn’t understand anything anymore.
“He would not,” she insisted as Elizabeth embraced her, cradling her head beneath her chin. “He would not. He would not do this to me.”
“Shh,” said Elizabeth. She had said he was lost. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t be this lost.
“He would not do this to me,” she insisted, even as she sobbed like someone mourning the dead.
Chapter Eighteen
The Ball, Again
One Year Later
“There, sweet Sylvie,” said Rosalind, handing her drowsy babe into her nurse’s arms. “I do hope she’ll behave for you,” she added, smiling at the older woman.
“I’m sure she’ll be an angel as always, my lady.”
You are the angel, thought Rosalind. The nurse, engaged by her mother through recommendation, had been a godsend in the dark days after Sylvie’s birth, when Rosalind had felt the loss of her husband so strongly she could barely go on. The woman had forced her to hold her daughter, to smile at her daughter, to rise from bed “for the babe’s sake.”
Now, three months later, Rosalind was going through the motions of life for her precious daughter, but it wasn’t easier. Her well-meaning friends and family told her it would get easier, but she had yet to face a day when she didn’t remember her husband’s smile, his laughter, the way he could look deep into her soul while still flirting in the most shameless way.
“Well.” Rosalind picked up her fan and a shawl from the chair where she’d fed her infant. “I suppose I’ll go down among the other guests.”
“Have a wonderful night, ma’am. Don’t worry about the baby, we’ll be just fine.”