It wasn’t that she didn’t admire her uncle’s firm sense of principles when it came to public morals and civic duty; it was simply an inconvertible truth that those principles created a good deal of awkwardness for anyone who had to manoeuvre around them.
Without an enormous amount of faith, she looked from one small, scaley face to the other and pointed at the bed. “Stay here and don’t go anywhere.” She gave one last minatory look at them and then nipped through the door at speed, slamming it shut behind her.
She almost knocked directly into her favourite cousin, who was striding down the hall with confidence, not allowing unaccustomed skirts to slow her pace at all. “Careful!”
“Ha! Who are you running from in such a rush?” Georgie waggled her eyebrows meaningfully at the door, stopping just in time to avoid a collision. “Have you got your fiancé trapped in there, by any chance?”
“Don’t be absurd.” Rose made a rude face at her cousin before they fell into step, walking companionably down the long corridor. “You know we don’t truly have that sort of romance.”
“Hmm. I thought I knew that until yesterday.” Georgie gave her a sidelong look. “He’s a better actor than I’d expected, if he’s really only pretending to be smitten. Last night in the drawing room, when you were taking your turn at the pianoforte, he didn’t look down at his book even once.”
Rose ignored the wash of warmth that rippled through her at that news. Unlike Serena, she would not allow herself to be swept away by unlikely romantic dreams, so she replied quellingly, “He’s very good at following instructions and keeping confidences. That’s all.”
Unfortunately, there had been no more opportunities to share any private confidences with him after their breakfast the day before. Her uncle had swooped down to claim Mr Aubrey’s company shortly after Georgie and Miss Thomas’s arrival, and they had been surrounded by the rest of the family, under Aunt Parry’s gimlet eye, from supper onwards. There had been no excuse – that was to say, no reason – to risk another illicit midnight meeting.
“As you say.” Georgie’s steps slowed as her face drew into a frown. “But as far as keeping confidences ...”
“Yes?” Rose frowned, too, as she took in her cousin’s expression. “Oh, no. You haven’t told Serena the truth about the dragons?”
“Serena? Not in a thousand years. Good God!” Georgie’s face twisted up as if she’d bitten into something sour. “She’s already busy planning out ghost-haunted wedding breakfasts! I wouldn’t trust her with any secrets related to Sir Gareth.”
“Thank goodness.” Rose let out her breath. “I wouldn’t, either. I meant to tell you, two nights ago ...”
“No, I’m talking about Amina.”
“Who?”
“Ah, I meant Miss Thomas.” Georgie’s gaze slid guiltily away. “We ... went on quite a long walk yesterday morning, after we saw you. She gave me permission to use her given name.”
“And you told her about the dragons?” Rose came to a dead halt, gaping at her cousin. “She’s Sir Gareth’s niece! How could you—?”
“I haven’t told her anything about them! So you can stop glaring daggers at me.” Georgie rolled her eyes. “I’m just saying that she’s not like her uncle. Not at all.”
“You’re just saying that she’s knocked you senseless.” Groaning, Rose rubbed at her temple, where a point of pressure was beginning to thrum. “I knew it from the first moment I saw you together! Of course, she’s very beautiful and charming, but Georgie—”
“That is not what I’m talking about.” For the first time in their friendship, Georgie’s gritted words held real irritation. “I know you prefer to manage all of us, coz, but do me the favour of at least granting me some sense. I am not Serena, nor your Mr Aubrey, ready to do whatever you tell him for no more than a smile.”
Rose’s eyes narrowed. “Mr Aubrey would not do anything I told him if he believed it was wrong.” Oh, he might present a mild, abstracted, scholarly demeanour and allow himself to be led so long as that path didn’t clash with his deeper principles. However, not only had he held strong on keeping her uncle’s secrets, but she recalled that moment of unexpected sternness when he’d first warned her against speaking to Sir Gareth about dragons, and again when he’d insisted on inspecting Rhiannon upon his arrival at Gogodd Abbey. There was a solid core of strength lurking underneath that mild manner, along with an inherent kindness and a deep sense of loyalty. “He’s a good man.”
“And Amina – Miss Thomas – is a good woman,” Georgie snapped. “Good God, I would have thought that you, of all people, would empathise with her! Losing her home and her only remaining parent and then being shipped across the world to live with a guardian she’d never heard of before! That scoundrel didn’t even bother to come himself to escort her across the ocean, only sent his man-of-business, who sounds to me like a thoroughly nasty fellow.
“Then, when she did arrive in a new country, he only got her to sign paperwork for the guardianship in London, left her in a manky little set of rented rooms for a month with a single maidservant to keep her company, and finally summoned her to the middle of Wales without a word of explanation for why he’d chosen to buy a home here in the first place ... much less why he wasn’t bothering to do his duty and give her the debut her father had always promised.”
Georgie rolled out her shoulders in an angry shrug. “How can you not be outraged on her behalf?”
“I am,” Rose said quietly. “Of course I am. But ...” She bit her lip, trying to find the right words to make her cousin – who’d lived all her life surrounded by love and safety – understand what she herself had only recently come to know. “It’s because I can empathise with her situation that I don’t think we should ask her to stand against her uncle now. Principles are one thing, but when your whole world falls apart around you and then someone offers you a single chance at a safe harbour ... If you had any idea what I would do for all of you!”
“Oh, coz...” Georgie shook her head, but Rose forced herself onwards, fingers clenching at her sides.
“Once you know – truly know – how precarious every home truly is, you’ll do almost anything to protect the only one you have left.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about losing this home,” Georgie said. “You do know that, don’t you?”
What Rose knew, only too well, was that her kind, loving cousin still hadn’t understood her point at all ... but now was not the time to clarify it. Not when she still hadn’t managed a single line of her own Grand Plan for the future, and not when she needed to focus on protecting the dragons.
So, instead of arguing with Georgie’s statement, she released her breath in a sigh. “Please,” she said. “No matter what, just don’t tell Miss Thomas how we truly found these dragons. That is not a detail she needs to know, and how could it possibly do her any good? Learning it would only make things even more awkward for her with her guardian. Why make that relationship worse?”
“Mm ...” Georgie made an unhappy face, but she finally let the matter drop.
