He sighed, and pulled up his own chair. “Listen. This party is making your sister crazy. Please, for all our sakes, don’t add to that right now. Okay?”
He was right; I knew it. Timing, that was the key. There wasn’t a chance that Ellie would forgive me when she was so stressed out. But maybe once the party was a success, after a couple of glasses of champagne…maybe that was the time to try again.
Because after being back at Rosewood for only a day, I already knew I couldn’t just leave again. Not without knowing I could come back.
Rosewood was home.
“How did Ellie get roped into being organiser in chief, anyway?” I asked. Maybe if I understood everything that I’d missed in the last two years, I’d be better able to find my own place there again.
“Self-preservation, mostly.” Edward shook his head, a half smile appearing on his face. “Isabelle was losing it over all the planning. She’s adamant that everything has to be utterly perfect. It’s just as well Nathaniel convinced her to elope the first time; she’d have been unbearable otherwise.”
I clasped my hands in my lap and considered how, in just a year and a half, this man had become close enough to my family to know all their quirks and secrets. And it was pretty clear that he, at least, knew my big secret, too. I hated the thought of someone I barely knew knowing the worst thing I’d ever done. No wonder he’d judged me so harshly when we met.
“Anyway, she was shrieking at your mother one day, something about the importance of centrepieces, when Ellie marched in, dragged Isabelle into the kitchen, sat her down at the table and started making lists.” Edward looked faintly nostalgic. “We were in there for three hours. I was in charge of making tea.”
“That sounds like Ellie.” But even as I said it, I realised that it didn’t sound at all like the Ellie I’d seen since I came back. It was the Ellie I remembered from five years ago. Was it only my return that had made her quiet and withdrawn? At least, until she blew up at me that morning.
“Usually, yes.” So Edward had noticed the change too.
“You seem to have grown very close to my sister,” I observed, trying hard not to sound too jealous. “To all my family, really.”
“I think they’ve all become a little claustrophobic, shut up in that house. Perhaps they just like having someone new to talk to.”
And it wasn’t like any of them were going to talk to me. But Ellie had clearly been talking to him. Maybe he could answer the questions I still had.
“Ellie told you…well, everything. Didn’t she? About me and…well. You know. Don’t you.”
Edward nodded, slowly. “I think it helped, having someone who wasn’t family to talk to about it.”
“But she told family too, some of them, at least.” I looked up at him. “Do you know who?”
“That’s what you were trying to find out?”
I glanced away. “Yeah. I just…wondered.” With an all-encompassing need to know.
Edward sighed. “I don’t know who she told what. And I’m not sure it really matters. I mean, the way things are between you… I’m pretty sure they’ve all guessed.”
I covered my face with my hands, wishing I could just disappear. “Of course they have.” And that was even worse. If they were just guessing, they were making up their own stories. They didn’t know how it was, how I’d felt about Greg, or how he’d felt about me. They didn’t know how sorry I was.
I couldn’t think about it for too long, or my heart might crack from the pain of it. I needed a distraction. Fortunately, Isabelle’s party was the perfect one. Everybody would be so caught up in the party, they’d barely have time to even think about me until it was over. And by then, I’d be on a train away from Rosewood again.
Jumping to my feet I paced across the dining room, staring at the giant table plan leaning against the table. “How many people are coming to this thing?”
Edward shrugged. “A hundred or so, I think. Maybe more.” A hundred people, the biggest party at Rosewood in years, and I’d not been invited. Why on earth had I thought I needed Ellie to tell me if there was a place for me at Rosewood? The answer was painfully clear already, just staring at the table plan.
“I won’t be on here,” I said, a little sadly, running a finger across the plan.
Suddenly, Edward was at my shoulder, a pen in his hand. “You can sit with me,” he said. And, before I could stop him, he’d inked my name in on Table 1, next to his, in firm, slanted handwriting. “There. You have a place after all.”
I smiled, for the first time in what felt like hours. Isabelle was going to hate that.
Still rattled by my conversation with Edward, I made my way down to Therese’s cottage in time for tea, and found my great-aunt warming the pot. “Oh good,” she said. “I was worried I’d have to come up to the house and find you, and I really would like to stay out of Isabelle’s way today.”
“Why?” I closed the cottage door behind me. “Party craziness?”
“Mostly.” She flashed me a quick smile. “Isabelle and I don’t have the best track record when it comes to parties.”
I perched myself on the edge of her kitchen table, frowning. “Really? How do you mean?”
Therese waved my question away. “Oh, you know. Anyway, I’ve got your outfit for tomorrow ready.”
“Excellent.” At least I’d have something beautiful to wear while I suffered through the party. “Thank you.”
“Make the tea and I’ll fetch it,” she offered, disappearing past the trunks of clothes in the hallway, towards her bedroom.
By the time the tea had brewed and I’d tracked down some plain chocolate digestives in the bread bin, Therese had returned, suit hanger in one hand, and a pair of bottle green stiletto-heeled sandals dangling from the fingers of the other. “You’re going to sink into the grass,” she said, depositing the clothes on the table and the shoes on the chair, “but it’ll be worth it. Necklace and earrings are in the clutch bag in the holder.”
“You’re a marvel,” I said, pouring her tea. “Thank you. Speaking of, can I hold on to the blue dress from last night a little longer? I thought I’d wear it again for dinner tonight.” Dressing for dinner might have a range of meanings at Rosewood – as evidenced by Nathaniel’s tendency to come down either in a dinner jacket or a bright orange jumper – but none of the officey clothes or jeans and tops I’d brought with me felt quite right.
“Absolutely not,” Therese said, clanking her cup down on its saucer. “Wear the same dress twice in the same company? Not a chance. I’ll go find you something else.” And, digestive biscuit clenched between her teeth, she bustled back off towards the bedroom again.
I felt a bit guilty, raiding Therese’s vintage collection in this manner, but the truth was, I really didn’t want to go to this dinner as myself. I wanted that feeling I’d had the night before, with my hair curled and my lips a bright red they’d never been before. The feeling that I was someone else, watching this family I had no ties to, no obligations. No guilt, I suppose, was the main thing. I just wanted to be someone else, until I was welcome back at Rosewood as myself again.
If I ever was.
Luckily, Therese wasn’t inclined to ask questions about my motivation; she was much more interested in helping me dress the part.
My outfit for the evening was of a later vintage than the previous one – a white, 1950s’ print dress with big red roses across a wide skirt. Therese pulled my dark hair back into a high ponytail and slicked red lipstick across my mouth. The off-the-shoulder style of the dress meant that she also confiscated my bra, leaving me self-conscious, until I put on the high red sandals and looked in the mirror; I looked like an all-American cheerleader. I looked entirely unlike myself.
“Perfect.”
Therese had chosen her outfit sympathetically, in a more sedate navy blue, but with her usual style of nipped-in waist and flared skirt. Together, we headed out to the terrace where the others were drinking gin and tonics in the early even
ing sunlight.
“You don’t look old enough to drink in that,” Nathaniel said, pouring me a gin and tonic anyway. He dropped a slice of lime into the glass with a flourish. He looked like he’d stepped out of a black and white movie, straight onto the Rosewood terrace. Tonight was a dinner jacket night, and I was glad I’d made the effort.
“I think she looks wonderful.” Therese squeezed me around the waist.
Nathaniel snorted as he handed me my drink. “You would. You dressed her.”
“She’s my doll,” Therese said airily.
Nathaniel turned to me. “You know, even when we were children, she loved dressing up her dolls. She once cut up my school tie to make a belt for one of them. Mother was not pleased.”
“But the outfit was fabulous!” After giving her brother a kiss on the cheek, Therese breezed off to talk to Edward, who was leaning against the trelliswork at the terrace’s edge, well out of the way. He caught my eye and raised an eyebrow, staring at my bare shoulders. I looked away, staring into my glass, as I remembered he’d seen much more than my shoulders when I lost my towel on the balcony the night before. Was he remembering the same thing, I wondered? I glanced back up, but Edward had been swept up in conversation with Therese, and I no longer had his attention.
I contemplated going to try and make nice with Mum and Ellie, but then I spotted the corner of Caroline’s bright yellow sundress dress disappearing into the Rose Garden, so I headed over for some less awkward conversation instead.