Cherrybrook Rose by Tania Crosse

sweetest smile, Rose went on irritably, ‘Mr Chadwick, this is my dear friend, Miss Cartwright. Her father’s a prison warder.’
    A stiff smile tightened Charles’s lips as he raised his hat. ‘Miss Cartwright,’ he managed to grate with affected pleasure. ‘You will forgive us, but I was just about to accompany Miss Maddiford to her home.’
    But Rose rounded on him with barbs of rancour in her voice. ‘I’m quite capable of seeing myself home, thank you, Mr Chadwick! Besides, Molly . . . Miss Cartwright and I have not seen each other this week, and I should like to converse with her. In private, if you please,’ she added frostily as she swung her leg over Gospel’s neck and alighted on the ground.
    Charles merely bowed his head politely. ‘Then I shall wish you both good day. But I should be obliged if you and your father would honour me with your company at dinner tonight at my hotel. I shall send a carriage for you both at, shall we say, seven thirty?’
    And before Rose had the chance to force a word from her gaping mouth, he turned the chestnut mare and disappeared at a brisk trot towards the said hotel.
    Rose’s cheeks puffed out with indignation and she stamped her foot with an irate grunt as Molly giggled beside her.
    â€˜Oh, Rose, you do look quite funny!’ she chortled.
    â€˜I don’t know why
you’re
laughing! That bumptious, impudent prig didn’t like the idea of my having friends among the—’
    She broke off, her lips twisted with shame, but Molly only shook her head. ‘The working classes?’ she suggested, linking her arm through her friend’s. ‘I don’t mind you saying it, for ’tis true. We’m hardworking, honest people, and proud of it. We cas’n help it if we wasn’t born with money. And I bet
he
works, only in a different way. And he looks as if he’s took a shine to you, Rose!’ she teased with an admiring twinkle in her merry green eyes.
    â€˜Well, he can take his shine somewhere else, the insufferable, boorish—’
    â€˜Handsome, polite, well-heeled gentleman!’ Molly finished for her. ‘You should be flattered, Rose! And thankful! I wish someone like that would show an interest in
me
,’ she ended ruefully.
    Rose bit her lip, the tang of remorse bitter in her mouth. Yes. To Molly, someone like Charles Chadwick would be manna from heaven. But no one of his ilk would ever look at her, pretty though she was, for anything more than a swift dalliance. Rose knew she should be grateful, for though her father made a decent living, they were still miles away from Mr Chadwick’s league, and if his intentions truly were honourable, he would be considered by the circles he moved among to be marrying beneath him.
    The thought clouded her brain, her forehead corrugated as she walked arm in arm with her friend, Gospel’s reins trailing from her other hand. Perhaps she should give Charles Chadwick another chance, and this time do her utmost to be civil and draw on her better nature.

Five
    â€˜R ose?’ Henry prompted gently over his plate of sausage, bacon and scrambled egg, for Florrie believed a man should go to work on a hearty breakfast.
    Rose was staring blankly at the cup of tea she had been stirring for the past five minutes, her own plate untouched. Her father’s voice startled her for they had been sitting in silence and she threw up her head with a jerk. ‘Sorry, Father?’
    â€˜We were talking about Mr Chadwick, as I’m sure you remember. You must give the poor man an answer of
some
sort. You’ve kept him waiting long enough.’
    His words were soft, compassionate, and the groan in Rose’s heart deepened. Charles had returned to London after extending his visit to nearly a fortnight, almost every minute of which he had spent at Rose’s side. But it seemed he could not concentrate on his affairs in the capital,