To be his first kiss.
Oh, dear.Her preoccupation was beginning to become a problem.
“Christabella,” said her eldest sister Pru, cutting through her thoughts. “Where is your mind wandering to now?”
To delicious, tempting, entirely wicked thoughts.
As usual.
She grinned at Pru, unashamed. “Wandering near and far, as always.”
“To thoughts of the book,” her sister Eugie guessed.
As was their customary habit, the five Winter sisters had descended upon a single chamber to prepare themselves for the afternoon’s drawing room festivities. In this instance, they had settled upon Pru’s for their tête-à-tête.
“There is nothing wrong withThe Tale of Love,” she told Eugie, giving her sister a forbidding frown as she sank her earbobs into place. “Reading it has proven most enlightening. For all of us, I daresay.”
Pink cheeks and guilty silences met her words.
Just as she had supposed.
“I only glanced at it,” offered Bea, the youngest, by way of explanation.
“Yes,” Christabella reminded her sister, “but you have gone and fallen in love with Mr. Hart, and as the two of you have been looking quite cozy recently, I doubt you even have need of the book.”
Bea’s cheeks deepened to a guiltier shade of scarlet. It was no secret she and their brother’s right-hand man, Merrick Hart, were wildly in love. But her chin tipped up in a show of defiance anyway.
“I have no notion what you are speaking about, Christabella,” her youngest sister said. “Have you been reading more of those silly books?”
“There is nothing silly about the books I read,” she informed Bea. “There is, however, something very telling in the color of your cheeks. Your hair was quite mussed the other day when I saw you leaving one of the salons. Mr. Hart was not far behind you.”
“It is wicked of you to suggest anything untoward occurred,” Bea said, but she was blushing even more.
Christabella grinned. “I approve, of course. You must know that, dearest. You and Mr. Hart make a delightful couple, and the two of you are so in love, I am quite envious.”
“You do make a beautiful couple,” Eugie agreed.
“Disgustingly so,” added Grace, the most pragmatic of all the sisters.
“Wonderfullyso,” corrected Pru, the eldest of them all, and the de facto leader of their coterie.
Grace grumbled something about love seeming to be a pestilence.
“How can you think of love in such cruel terms when you are being wooed by a rake?” Christabella asked her sister.
She was curious. Grace had the handsome rakehell, Viscount Aylesford, chasing after her.If only, sighed a voice inside Christabella. There was nothing more delicious than a beautiful man with a bad reputation, as far as she was concerned. To have one interested in her would be delightfully wicked.
“I am not being wooed by him,” Grace reminded her. “He has settled upon me as his feigned betrothed, and he has stolen our book to do it.”
“That particular volume is one of my favorites,” she allowed, “but I trust you will find the means of seeing it restored to me.”
“One way or another,” Grace said grimly.
“Enough of that,” Eugie interjected. “I am missing an earbob. Do you see it?”
Christabella and her other sisters exchanged knowing looks. Eugie had been distinctly disheveled upon her arrival at Pru’s chamber. And flushed. And breathless. The Winter sisters had all seemed to be getting into mischief this Christmastide—Christabella the exception, of course.
Her lack of success at finding a rake to kiss her prodded Christabella into action.
