Page 92 of Claiming his Cursed Duchess

After a minute or two, there was a soft knock at her bedchamber door and Rosaline called for her cousin to enter—knowing that it would be Genevieve coming to check on her.

“You are looking very pale,” Genevieve said as she bustled inside. “Are you sure I cannot tempt you with any food? You have been eating like a bird since you came here.”

“I am not hungry, but thank you.”

Genevieve frowned, sighing heavily. “Will you not tell me more of what took place? I promise not to tell Wilhelm, if you would prefer. I do not enjoy seeing you like this.”

Rosaline’s eyes remained on Wilhelm below them and Genevieve’s found him also, her expression softening as a little smile played across her lips at the sight of her husband.

“I am so sorry to intrude upon your lives like this,” Rosaline muttered.

“I have already told you it is of no matter. This house can bear another person within it, and you got to meet little Charlotte. And I would much rather you were here than in London with that oaf.”

Rosaline could not help laughing. “You have not met him, Genevieve.”

“I do not need to. Anyone who can make you look so sad is no friend of mine.”

Genevieve sat down beside her on the window seat, taking Rosaline’s hand in her own.

“Please, Rosaline, what has happened? In your last letter you sounded as though things were improving.”

Rosaline chewed her lip looking outward at the bright, cloudless sky.

“You know that our marriage was hasty,” she said tentatively, and Genevieve nodded. “Well, I have now discovered the reason for it.”

“Which is?”

“Adam was blackmailed by my uncle. I do not know the reason behind the blackmail, Adam would not tell me, but I can only believe that it was to finally be rid of me. Their scarred burden, thrown to the wolves so that they could live their merry lives.”

“That ink-blotted ghoul! What could Lord Claridge have to blackmail the Duke of Oldstone with?”

“I do not know, but it must be something very grave indeed.”

“And you left when you discovered the truth?”

“Ileftwhen he would not explain himself. He told me I should be grateful for my status and that I could never expect anything more than a marriage of convenience.”

Genevieve’s expression grew grave. “The heartless cur! I would have thought that you would be pleased to be apart from him.”

“I am,” she protested, but her cousin arched an eyebrow in response. “What?”

“A woman who is happy to be parted from her husband behaves very differently to you, Rosaline. You seem…well…lovesick.”

“Lovesick? Pah! You yourself called him a heartless cur,” Rosaline scoffed disdainfully and stood up, twisting her fingers before her as she began to pace.

Genevieve sighed. “I did call him that, yet seeing you like this… It does not feel to me that things are altogether decided between you. If you had entirely turned away from him, you would not be so melancholy.”

Rosaline did not wish to believe her, but her cousin’s words struck at a chord on her heart—a piece of her that did not wish to abandon Adam altogether, despite everything that had passed between them.

“When Wilhelm first approached me,” Genevieve continued, “he did not have the purest intentions either, you know. He wished to use the curse against his enemies and make them fear him byour marriage. It was only spending time with me that changed his mind as he grew to love me.”

“Adam does not love me,” Rosaline said vehemently.

“But do you love him?”

She stopped in her tracks, turning slowly back toward Genevieve, unable to speak.

“How quickly your mind turns about. Just now you hated the man,” Rosaline protested.