“You could not keep secrets from your beloved daughter, could you?” she retorted.
The Earl looked at her with bemusement.
“You know I could never deny you anything, my dear,” he said. “Except for that which I do not have to give.”
“So, the Specter has never told you his true identity?” she asked, feeling more than a little disappointed.
“No, he has not,” her father said. Rose thought that he sounded a bit disappointed, too.
“Why do you not make him identify himself?” Rose asked. Her frustration at not knowing who the Specter was growing rapidly. She would not admit to herself just then that the continued mystery was also drawing her in even more.
The Earl laughed again.
“He has proven to be quite trustworthy over the years,” he said. “He is very clever and pleasant, and most definitely a man of his word. And his business transactions have been quite beneficial to the theater. Not to mention his talent.”
Rose frowned at her father.
“Do you mean that his money has been beneficial?” she asked crossly
Her father looked at her in confusion.
“Why are you suddenly so interested in the Specter?” he asked. “As I recall, you have had little at all to say about him before now.”
Rose blushed. She had not meant to be so blatant with her interest in the masked man. She cleared her throat and gave her father a bright, warm smile.
“Oh, it only irritates me when there is a mystery that I cannot solve,” she said truthfully.
“Well, my dear, our Specter is not a character in one of your stories,” her father said with a laugh. “I do not believe he wishes to be as easily understood.”
Rose laughed with her father.
“There is one man I met who was not a complete boor,” she said, changing the subject.
“Oh?” her father said, all traces of his teasing demeanor vanishing.
“Yes,” Rose said, measuring her words and the emotions behind them very carefully. “And he was quite possibly the least insufferable person I have ever met.”
“Is that so?” her father said with a hearty laugh.
Rose looked at her father and nodded, stifling a giggle of her own.
“Yes,” she said. “I believe you know a Lord Elbrook?” She had phrased the words as a question, but she knew that her father already knew Daniel Eaton.
“Ah, yes,” her father said, suddenly sitting upright in his chair. “He is the son of the Marquess of Bickenhall.”
“Yes,” Rose said.
“Well, what was he like?” the Earl asked, full of an earnest interest.
Rose laughed at her father’s enthusiasm.
“As I mentioned, he was by far not the most insufferable man I have ever met,” she said.
Her father smiled, but his focus remained unchanged.
“And for you, my dear, that is saying something,” he said.
“You cannot tell me that you do not find most of the ton superbly stuffy and boring,” she said teasing.
Her father’s face became dreamy, and she did not need to ask to know that he was thinking of the widow.
“Yes, you are quite right, my dear,” he said. “But you still have not told me what you think of Lord Elbrook.”
Rose blushed again. She meant to keep no secrets from her father, but she did not wish to give him any hope that she had found someone, anyone, with whom she believed there might be a good match, at least until she herself was sure. However, as she thought about Daniel, she could not deny the charm that had entranced her, even now, so many days after their meeting at the theater.
“Who says I think anything special about him, Father?” she asked, trying once more to sound casual and calm, as she had when discussing the Specter.
“You do, my dear,” her father teased. “You are the one who mentioned him, are you not?”
Rose flushed furiously. Her father was right, of course, but she was cursing herself for being so flustered about the young gentleman.
“He was very kind,” she said honestly. “And very polite and well spoken.”
Her father nodded.
“Yes, I have had some business dealings with the Marquess in past years,” the Earl said. “He is rather direct and blunt, but he is a good man. I have heard that young Lord Elbrook takes after his father in that regard.”
Rose remained silent for a moment, thinking back to how suavely Daniel had bumped into her to save her from her grand discomfort as she spoke to that older gentleman.
“He is quite confident, to be sure,” she said, her own voice sounding far away as she drifted in the memory of their interaction and conversation.
“Yet you do not say that as if it were such a terrible thing,” her father said, his tone cautious but not disapproving. As though trying to rein in any jubilance that might frighten his daughter away from the subject, the Earl began casually sifting through the letters that had amassed on his desk in his absence.
“No,” she said. “In fact, I would say that it suited him quite nicely,” she said.
“Yes,” her father said, more distractedly than before as he carefully studied one of the letters he had opened. “He does seem to be quite the gentleman.”
“He certainly offers far more tolerable company than any of the other men I have met recently,” Rose said, not without a hint of bitterness.
“Speaking of other gentlemen,” the Earl said, still preoccupied with the letter in his hand. “Did you meet anyone else of note?”
Rose thought again of the Specter, but once more she decided that she was not yet ready to tell her father about meeting him. The more she thought about it, she hesitated to ever mention it to anyone. Although nothing untoward had occurred, the two of them had been alone on the veranda, and word of their private, though accidental, meeting, could cause quite the scandal.
“Oh, I do not even remember the names of all the men that I met,” Rose said truthfully. “They were all either pretentious, boring, or self-centered.”
The Earl nodded, finally glancing up from the paper in his hand.
“Well, here is something that you might find of interest,” he said, holding out the paper to his daughter.
Rose took it, her brow furrowing.
“What is this?” she asked, even as she began reading the words on the page.
“It is an invitation,” her father said. Rose noticed that his voice sounded calculatedly blasé and disinterested, but his face seemed ready to light up at brightly as the midday sun.