Rosalind’s head came up with a squeak of surprise, her curls quivering. “He did?” she gasped, thoroughly distracted from her sets of five. “At the palace?”
“No, at my home,” Vix said, scooting closer. “He stole into my carriage and followed me home, Rosalind.”
She gasped again, covering her mouth with both chalky hands, smearing little crescents of pink from her fingernails on her cheeks. “Did anyone see?”
“Not until Teddy found him asleep on the sofa this morning,” Vix replied, and then started to giggle, dropping her face in her hands.
“Oh! Oh!” Rosalind cried, also giggling, leaning forward to grip at Vix’s wrists. “Oh, and was it glorious? Did you feel butterflies?”
Vix shook her head, blinking up at the other girl. “Yes, I think I did. Isn’t that stupid?”
“Stupid? No!” Rosalind cried. “He is a knight and you are going to marry him and he followed you home and kissed you! Vix, I would just die. I would die straightaway!”
“But you have kissed a man, haven’t you?” Vix said, looking at her through her fingers. “You had a beau. Back in Scotland?”
“Oh, yes, but he doesn’t count,” Rosalind said, sniffing and shaking her head. “No, tell me about Sir Ambrose.”
“Rosalind, he is the most absurd man,” Vix said, lowering her voice like she feared the tallies might judge her. “He is petulant and dramatic and vain. I do not know why I enjoy him so, but I cannot seem to help myself.”
“I suppose love can be like that,” Rosalind whispered back, honoring the fear of the nosy tally marks. “A bit nonsensical.”
“Love? Infatuation, perhaps. Attraction, certainly,” Vix said, shaking her head and sighing. “I do not know.”
“Would it be so terrible?” Rosalind pressed. “To fall in love with your own husband?”
Vix opened her mouth and then closed it again, frowning. “I do not know,” she said. “Perhaps.”
Rosalind nodded and did not argue, only squeezing Vix’s wrist in sympathy before dropping her hands back into her own lap.
“Was it a good kiss?” she asked, after they had sat in silence for a moment, contemplating the question.
“Oh,” Vix said with a sly little smile. “Yes. Good enough to ruin a life.”
“Well, then,” said Rosalind with a shrug, “why bother worrying about anything else at all?”
CHAPTER 11
It was two days until his wedding and Ambrose Aster had never gotten so much mail in his godforsaken life.
“Who are all these people?” he had demanded of Zeller, throwing a handful of invitations up around the breakfast table that morning like confetti. “What do they want of me?”
“Your company, Herr Ambrose,” the German had replied without moving so much as a mustache hair. “I believe.”
“Nonsense,” Ambrose retorted. “Where is my bride? She can open the rest.”
“Arriving at luncheon, to continue the decorating,” Zeller answered, brightening visibly. “Did you see the new settee?”
Ambrose had taken his pastry into the parlor at that point to finish it in silence and surrounded by dust and fading drapery.
He did not so much hear her arrive, some hours later, as he felt it in increasing degrees of unwanted sunlight coming in through windows that had not been opened in years. The rays of it creeped over his floorboards and under the parlor door,scratching between his toes with such annoying persistence that after a while he had no choice but to emerge and hunt her down, wherever she was and whatever she was about.
Several doors had been left open, allowing a cheerful and frankly offensive early-summer breeze to wind its way briskly through the house on the back of all that glowing sunlight. It was enough to make the old wallpaper feel poorly about itself.
“Vix!” he called into the halls. “You scheming enchantress! Which room are you violating!”
“In here!” she answered, singsong and unbothered, from some door he’d never opened, then in a lower voice, likely to Zeller, she said, “Yes, I think the daffodil print is a bit too pastoral.”
He frowned, glancing at his reflection in a table that had absolutelynotbeen polished the last time he’d come down this way some months ago, and ran his fingers over his head as he nudged the indicated door open with the toe of his boot.
