June 1763: Part One
349 Words
June 1763: Part One
By the beginning of June, the squirrel was eating from Rose’s hand and Fenmore had permission from the steward to take a week’s leave. He was going to Falmouth—a journey that would use most of his savings—to find out about sailing to America. On the morning before he left, Rose tiptoed into her dressing room and took the case containing her godmother’s rubies down from the shelf.
Boyle was eating breakfast downstairs with the other servants, but even so, Rose’s chest was tight and her palms damp with sweat. She unlocked the case and raised the ebony lid. Inside, on a bed of white satin, nestled a set of rubies: necklace, brooch, bracelets, and a pair of eardrops. Bloodred stones set in gold.
Rose removed the brooch hastily, locked the case again, and replaced it on the shelf. She ran on tiptoe back to her bedchamber, hid the brooch in her escritoire, behind the bottles of ink, and slid back into bed, where her breakfast awaited her on a tray. Her heart was galloping in her chest.
Rose gave the brooch to Fenmore at the lake that afternoon, while the water lapped at the pebbly shore and the folly gleamed white in the sunlight. Now that his departure was imminent, fears churned inside her. What if he was set upon by footpads? What if he was pressed into the navy? “Be careful, Fenmore.”
“I’ll be back before you know it, Countess.”
But her fears refused to be quelled. When Rose looked at Fenmore, she didn’t see a servant, she saw a friend, the only person she trusted in this world. If anything happened to him . . .
She stood on tiptoe and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. “Please be very careful.”
Faint color rose in Fenmore’s sun-browned cheeks. “I will, ma’am. Don’t worry your head about me.”
But once Fenmore was gone, it was impossible not to worry. The week passed with excruciating slowness. Rose’s anxiety intensified as each day crawled by—and alongside the anxiety, growing robustly, a flourishing weed in a garden of pale and anxious blooms, was doubt.
What if her trust was misplaced?
What if Fenmore took the brooch and never came back?
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