Romancing His English Rose (Entangled Scandalous) by Catherine Hemmerling Page B

had in their marriages. And, really, she had known for a long time that hers was not a love match. How could it be, considering the match was arranged when she and Simon were but children? Infants even, in her case.
    So, she would try not to love him and he would be good to her. She could live with that…right?
    Right.
    Having put her feelings back in order, Rose tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear and walked determinedly back into the parlor where she found Simon examining a small hand-crafted ceramic figurine rather intently.
    “I’m back,” Rose announced.
    “Oh good,” Simon replied, turning to face her. “I have a question for you.”
    “Yes?” Rose said, looking at him uncertainly.
    “What kind of animal is this?” Simon held up the figurine he had been examining with a confused look on his face.
    Rose moved closer so that she could get a better look at it, although she was quite sure she already knew what he was holding. “I believe it is a cat.”
    “A…cat?”
    “Yes, a cat. Surely you have seen a feline before?” Rose said with some irritation, not liking where this conversation was surely headed.
    “Yes, Rose, I have seen a cat before,” Simon responded drily, “however, this particular feline has no tail.” He turned the figure around in illustration.
    Of course, Rose did not need to be told about the missing tail, for she, herself, had sculpted the small object when she was a young girl.
    “Neither did the cat from which I drew inspiration,” she replied.
    “You had a cat with no tail?” Simon said in disbelief.
    “There are, in fact, entire species of cats that are born without tails,” Rose informed him haughtily.
    “And was your cat one of these species?”
    “Ahhhh, no, not really,” Rose confessed, deflating somewhat. “That particular cat lost its tail in a rather tragic, er, furniture accident.”
    “Furniture accident? Oh, this I have got to hear,” Simon replied, crossing his arms.
    Rose rolled her eyes. “It’s not that interesting, really.”
    “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”
    “Fine.” Rose sighed. “When I was about eight or so my room was, like the rest of the house, packed with an excess of mismatched furniture, decorative items, and various types of knickknacks…and frankly I was having repeated nightmares of being buried under a pile of shelves, dressers, art, and any other number of things.”
    “So?” Simon prompted, with a roll of his hand.
    “So I decided that I needed to redecorate the room…myself.”
    “Where does the cat fit into all this?”
    “Not very well, clearly,” Rose said with a sly smile. “Mr. Chauncy—”
    “You named the cat after your butler?”
    “Yes. Mr. Chauncy was proper, elegant, and completely condescending—”
    “—just like any good butler,” Simon finished with a smile.
    “Exactly!” Rose grinned. “Anyway, Mr. Chauncy was apparently sleeping in one of the cabinets I was moving and, when he realized it was being moved, he sprang out of the thing and scared the wits out of me. Which, of course, caused me to drop the heavy piece…”
    “And you dropped it on his tail?” Simon asked incredulously.
    “Not exactly,” Rose hedged. “I dropped it on the floor and it tipped over onto a pile of the other furniture I was removing. The pile fell over and one of the pieces—I was never quite sure which—landed on his tail, injuring it to the point that it had to be removed.”
    Simon stared at Rose in astonishment for a moment, before breaking into riotous laughter.
    Rose planted her hands on her hips and said, “It is not funny! I don’t think Mr. Chauncy ever fully forgave me; certainly he never slept in my room again.”
    That just seemed to make Simon laugh even harder.
    Rose glared at him, but she realized he was unable to notice her look, doubled up as he was, so she turned on her heel and stomped over to the settee where she plopped down and waited for him to come to his