Page 6 of The Duke’s Masked Wallflower

“What is it?” Rosalie asked.

When her friend turned around, she quickly pulled down her mask. “I have just seen my mother,” Emily said, breathlessly.

“Is that such a terrible thing?”

“She is speaking with a gentleman.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Yes. Oh dear. That can only mean one thing. She wants to make an unnecessary and painful introduction to another boring gentleman she thinks I should marry.” Emily sighed dramatically and pressed her lips together. “I can’t stand it for a moment longer. Come with me, Rosalie. There is something I must tell you before it’s too late.”

She gestured toward the nearest door. It led into a parlor where some of the older ladies were eating and laughing, having, for the most part, discarded their masks. It was a large room but still much smaller than the ballroom. The chandeliers overhead were slowly dimming, the room filling with the sweet and woody smell of beeswax.

Emily sat down at an empty table in the corner, and Rosalie sat beside her. She pushed away the empty plate and cup in front of her and reached for Emily’s shaking hands on the table.

She did not need to ask what had happened. Only one thing, one person, could make Emily so jittery.

“It’s Thomas,” Emily whispered. “Did you know he was here tonight?”

Rosalie tapped her mask. “How could I know when we’re disguised?”

“I thought maybe I told you he would be here. Oh, it’s all such a mess. My head has been spinning for days,” she sighed. “He wrote to me two days ago and said he would be attending tonight. I saw him by the doors earlier, wearing some sort of ghastly black mask, but I have no idea whether he saw me. I think he was standing with his uncle. Yes, it must have been his uncle. There’s no one else who would have come with him.” Emily put her face in her hands. “What am I going to do?”

Rosalie’s heart clenched. She could not stand to see her friend in pain. “You can start by explaining to me what has upset you so much, and then you can tell me what I can do to help you.”

Emily sniffed. “Always so pragmatic and sensible. But you are going to wish you had never asked that.”

It would not be the first time, Rosalie thought miserably.

“He intends to ask for my hand tonight.”

Rosalie gasped. “What?”

“That’s why he wrote to me in the first place, to tell me that he had finally made up his mind about us, that he didn’t care that my parents do not approve of him, and that he plans to ask for me anyway, no matter the consequences.”

“That is a foolish thing for him to suggest, for both of your sakes.”

“Is it really?” Emily let her hands fall into her lap, where she wrapped them in the bright pink fabric of her gown. “You don’t know what it’s like to be in love, Rosalie. There is nothing in the world I want more than to be his wife. And the fact that my father cannot see past Thomas’s parentage is a wound of the sort I have never felt before in my life. I would not wish this pain on my worst enemy. He is not a bad man.”

Rosalie swallowed hard. There were many things Emily had said that hadn’t needed to be said, but it stung for her to talk about love so flippantly.

“I never implied that he was a bad man,” Rosalie replied.

“But you think the same as them, don’t you? You think that he is not worthy of me even if he isn’t bad, and that I would be making a terrible decision if I married him.”

The answer was not as clear-cut as Emily was making it out to be. Rosalie considered herself a romantic at heart, yes. Not to the extent of her mother perhaps, but romantic in the sense that she believed in matches that were meant to be. But for these matches to work, there needed to be some equality between each party.

Her mother and father shared a sense of humor and high spirits. Her sister Annabelle and her husband, William, had connected over their shared cultural interests and were equally good-looking. When she thought about every successful couple she knew or had read about, neither was taking too much from the other or receiving too little in return.

But Emily’s father was an earl, and Thomas’s father had been a collier. Emily was an English Rose while Thomas was tall and strong, but plain. Emily could speak three languages and play four instruments, while Thomas’s main interest was horses. Emily’s dowry was likely a sum taller than anything Thomas could imagine. It was only through his uncle, a shrewd investor who had married the widowed wife of a knight, that Thomas had even come to the attention of the bon ton in the first place, and they most often spoke about him as a curiosity rather than someone to be admired.

“That is a silly question to ask me,” Rosalie said after a moment of reflection. “It is partly my fault that you fell in love with him. If I had never invited him to join us playing blind man’s bluff at my parents’ garden party last year, you would never have met, and none of this would have happened.”

“But you did invite him into the game,” Emily said, leaning forward. “And I am so glad that you did, because that introduced us, and I love him, no matter all his flaws.”

“You intend to accept him when he asks you to marry him, I am guessing.”

“Without a doubt, yes.”