Wooed by the Wallflower (The Perks of Being an Heiress Book 4) by Jillian Eaton

Author:Jillian Eaton [Eaton, Jillian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Lady Ellinwood received the news of her granddaughter’s engagement with far less enthusiasm than Rosemary had been expecting.

It wasn’t that she’d wanted her grandmother to jump and shout for joy. She did not desire a broken hip on her conscience. But she did feel that a little bit more than “that’s nice, please pass the blanket, the carriage is chilly” was warranted. After all, it wasn’t as if she had announced she was marrying a baker or a doctor or–even worse, at least in her grandmother’s eyes–an entrepreneur.

Sterling was a duke.

And even though Rosemary genuinely wouldn’t have cared if he was a baker or a doctor or a candlestick maker, the small child still living deep inside her had wanted to see a flash of approval in Lady Ellinwood’s sharp blue eyes. Maybe (as farfetched as it seemed) even a congratulatory embrace.

She should have known better.

When they arrived back at the house, her grandmother promptly excused herself and went straight to bed, leaving Rosemary feeling oddly deflated. What was the point of having something exciting happen to her if she had no one to share the excitement with?

That night was one of the rare times she wished with all of her might that her mother were still alive. That she had a comforting lap she could rest her head upon as she shared all of her hopes and doubts and dreams. That she had someone to stroke her head, and gently kiss her temple, and whisper to her just before she drifted off to sleep that it was all going to work out.

Instead, all she had was Sir Reginald. Who was surely better than no one, but a squirrel wasn’t a mother or a father or even an aloof grandmother, for that matter. Which was why she was so elated the next day when Joanna and Evie came to call.

As luck would have it, Lady Ellinwood had stepped out earlier in the morning for tea with her embroidery circle, allowing Rosemary to receive her cousins in the parlor without any undue strife (so long as they left right before luncheon).

“Would you care for anything to drink?” she asked brightly. “There’s both cold tea and lemonade. Or hot tea and coffee, if you’d prefer. At the beginning of next month, our cook will begin boiling and mashing apples for cider. It’s an old family recipe that I’ll have to share with you. The trick is to add the nutmeg–”

“Before you strain the apples so that it soaks straight through the skins into the fruit,” Joanna finished with a smile. “We’ve always made our cider the same way.”

It was such a small connection. Inconsequential, really. But Rosemary’s heart swelled nevertheless because it was yet another thread connecting her to a family she hadn’t even known existed four months ago. And family meant everything, especially to someone who hadn’t gotten to experience the full breadth of what it was to belong to something larger than yourself.

“I didn’t give much consideration to who

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