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Archie gulped as if it would help him physically swallow his pride as he knocked on the door to Rosie’s room. He had considered asking Charlotte or Lucy for help; they were his sisters after all, and would probably not make as much fun of him as Rosie would. But given that they were ten and seven years older than him, they might very well act more maternally than friendly. And what he needed now was a friend. Teasing and all.
“Enter,” Rosie called from within.
“I am not going to enter your boudoir. You will have to open the door and step outside,” Archie called, hoping that her brothers Frederick and Samuel and their wives, who occupied the rooms next to hers were not there at the moment. He did not want them teasing him about this later.
The door was opened, and a smirking Rosie looked at him.
“What?” she demanded.
“I...” Archie began.
Just say the words. She might be relentless, but she is also what you need at the moment.
“I need your help,” he forced out.
As expected, Rosie cackled gleefully.
“Well, well, well. I will mark this in my diary as the day Archibald Montagu finally acknowledged my superior wisdom and sought out my advice.” She smirked.
Archie only rolled his eyes.
“Would you mind accompanying me to the gallery or some such place, where you will be able to share your wisdom with me?” he drawled to take the edge of his words.
“It would be my pleasure, good sir.” Rosie grinned and curtseyed. She retrieved a shawl from her room and then entered the hallway. “Much can be said about your father’s estate, but it is bloody cold,” she told him, as she closed the door.
They talked about heating systems and plumbing for much of the walk to the gallery. Rosie had had her late husband’s estate, which now belonged to her eight-year-old son, remodeled in the last three years.
“You have been busy,” Archie commented without thinking.
“Yes, I need to stay busy,” Rosie muttered and pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders.
It was in little glimpses like this, that Archie was reminded just how deeply Rosie was still hurting from the loss of her husband. He considered apologizing, her perhaps offering some kind of benign reassurance that everything would one day be better, but they arrived in the gallery and Rosie turned to face him, her expression steely and determined. Clearly, she did not wish to pursue the topic any further.
“Now what can I offer my advice on, you poor sod?” she asked cheerfully.
Archie sighed and walked to the window and looked at the gray day outside. Behind him were the paintings of his forefathers. He could practically feel their gazes on his back and how they all thought that they could have resolved the matter much more swiftly than he had been able to. He had tried to speak to Cecilia for two days, following Henry’s advice, but she was effectively avoiding being alone with him. He supposed he could have cornered her and forced her to talk to him, but it would hardly benefit his case. Hence why he was now desperate enough to need Rosie’s help.
“Let me guess, you and Cecilia have fought, and you need my help figuring out how to apologize to her. It is really quite simple: Since you are the man, you need to agree with her on everything. Even if she is wrong,” Rosie stated behind him.
Archie turned towards her and leaned against the windowsill.
“Oh, and you are an expert in marriages all of a sudden?” he drawled to hide his astonishment at how correct she was.
Rosie huffed a breath.
“I wouldn’t say I’m an expert, but I was married for nine years, remember? And my understanding is that if you are not walking around in a happy daze for at least the first couple of months due to all the... well, satisfaction of needs, then it would seem that there is a problem.” She was fiddling with the ends of her shawl as she spoke, but her tone of voice had not changed.
Archie did not answer, but tried to work out exactly how many people were aware that needs were not being satisfied and saw it as a problem.
“Fine, I acknowledge your superiority in this matter,” he sighed and paused for a moment, contemplating exactly how much to tell her. “I... I have been trying to apologize to her for the past couple of days, but she is constantly avoiding me...” He sighed again and fought the urge to rub his face as he uttered the next words: “How do I make her listen to me?”
Rosie seemed to grow an inch and she practically radiated with joy. She leaned against the windowsill next to him and asked:
“Well, what have you tried so far?”
“Tried? I have asked her to have a conversation in private. Since she is a reasonably thinking woman, I had thought she would grant me that wish,” Archie could not help but drawl, then thought better of it, when he saw Rosie’s expression change. “If we were in the city, I might buy her something: Jewelry, flowers, sweets.”
Probably all of them, he added in his mind but did not dare say it out loud.
“All I can do here is... ask my mother for a piece of jewelry to give her, have the head gardener give me flowers from the hothouse, and have Cook bake her something...” Archie’s voice trailed off and his gaze met the almost menacing one of his grandfathers on the opposite wall. Archie imagined how he tipped his head in a mocking gesture to indicate that he had certainly never had problems of this kind.
His musings regarding his grandfather meant that it took him a moment to realize that Rosie had not answered straight away. When he turned to look at her, she was studying him with an open-mouthed expression.
“I am not certain you have any idea who you married,” she told him in a low, almost ominous voice, as she narrowed her eyes. This did not bode well and if it had not been for his need to be reconciled with Cecilia, he would not have tolerated such antics. As it was, he waited almost anxiously for her to go on. “Let me tell you this: I was truly happy to learn that you had married. Despite always being surrounded by people, I have always had the idea that you might be lonely. I thought – I hoped – that you had found someone who understood and complemented you. And having met Cecilia, I was certain that you had.” She paused but Archie felt no need to confirm or deny her theories, which was probably why she went on. “Of course, I always imagined you would find some larger-than-life fiery redhead that you had to chase down and who you were constantly fighting, but where you knew that those fights would always be resolved in the bedroom.”
Archie sent her a sideways look. Besides the oddly specific hair color, he was usually attracted to more outspoken women and as such had imagined that if he married, he would end up with someone like that. Feisty and opinionated where their arguments would lead to an explosion of passion in the bedroom. Not someone gentle and self-doubting as Cecilia.
An image of how he had rested his head on her bosom after they had made love and she had gently been combing her fingers through his hair appeared. At the time he had simply enjoyed the sated feeling and their light, drowsy conversation, but he realized that the fiery redhead Rosie spoke of, the woman he had imagined, would probably not take the time to do so for long. But that as much as the physical intimacy was what he missed.
“Cecilia is not one to scream at me,” he told her.
“No, I sense that. I am glad that you at least recognize that as well. What I don’t understand is why you have not set your plan into motion?”
“Which plan?”
“The one with your mother’s jewelry, the flowers from the hothouse, and having Cook bake something for her.” Rosie held up a hand when Archie was about to protest that it was an absurd idea. “I repeat: Do you have any idea who you married? The fiery redhead would not have given you the time of day if you gave her one of your mother’s jewelries, but I guarantee you that Cecilia will at least listen to you.”
Archie studied her for a moment. He was only used to apologizing to fiery and passionate women. Women who wore their feelings as clothes and had no problem shouting about them in public. Cecilia was the complete opposite. Not that she was not passionate, but she was only in private. She would never scream at him in public; even when she was the most upset, she was able to control her emotions. He had seen so that day at the inn. Rosie might be right, that the ways he was used to apologizing would not have worked on Cecilia, or not nearly as effective as the alternative that he had only come up with out of necessity.
“I suppose you are not going to tell me what the problem is?” Rosie interrupted his thought.
“No,” Archie bit out and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Would simply agreeing with her to make up with her be so horrible?”
“I have no idea what she wants,” Archie stated without thinking.
“I cannot believe you!” Rosie exclaimed, taking a step back from him and facing him. “Are you wallowing in your own problems because you could not be bothered asking your wife her opinion?”
Archie clenched his jaws for a moment.
“I have been trying to ask her opinion for the past two days,” he grumbled.
“Fine, follow my advice and then she might – I repeat might – speak to you. Since you will not tell me what you have done, I have no way of discerning whether you should do more. Or she should in fact let you wallow in misery for a few more days – or weeks. And now I will consider my wisdom shared and go spend time with more intelligent people – my children.”
With that, Rosie strode out of the gallery.