Lady Rosalie’s eyes seem to glint in the dim fitting room. She bites at her lip and glances at the curtain. Then she leans in to whisper, her breath warm on Catherine’s ear. It sends a shiver straight down to Catherine’s toes.
“That would mean war,” she says huskily.
Catherine swallows hard. “Aren’t—aren’t we already at war?” she whispers back.
It’s heady, and intimate, andexciting.
“Our mothers clearly are. But we’ve yet to formally declare, wouldn’t you say?”
Catherine can feel herself flushing, the tone of Lady Rosalie’s voice dancing across her body, every nerve ending alight in a way she’s never experienced from a conversation. Or... possibly ever, actually.
But she can’t let herself be clouded by whatever this feeling is. By Lady Rosalie’s beauty there in the shadows. She has to stay strong. She has to match Lady Rosalie quip for quip.
“Oh, well, if it needs a formal declaration, then we’re at war,” Catherine manages, her voice trembling just a hair.
Lady Rosalie’s lips curl in the most delicious smile. “War feels good.”
Catherine finds herself nodding. It does. This feels good. Whatever the hell this charged, combustible, sparkling tension actually is.
“What do you think of this for the flowers?”
MissRaught’s voice splits the silence and Catherine and Lady Rosalie wrench backward from each other.
It’s awkward. Oh, it’s awkward.
Lady Rosalie hesitates for a moment, her body going taut, before she stands and strides over to MissRaught, like nothing at all has happened. Like the air around them isn’t still crackling.
Does she do this a lot? Declare flirtatious war with new friends? So often, it’s easy for her to put that mask in place in an instant?
Because Catherine’s pulse is still thrumming. She tries to school her features as MissLinet exits the fitting room, thanking Madame Florent over and over.
A declaration of war over Mr.Dean isn’t... exciting. Not like this. It’s a challenge. It’s a gauntlet. It’s not... thinking about how Lady Rosalie might look in that back changing room without her clothes on.
She’s had thoughts like this before, of course. In passing. Momentarily.
When she and Millie, one of the farmer’s daughters, kissed behind the barn when she was fourteen, it felt like this—shimmering and simmering and consuming. But it passed. It had to. It was abundantly clear that the kiss meant more to her than it did to Millie. Millie thought it a lark. And Catherine thought—well, she didn’t think. Hasn’t thought. Hasn’t focused on it in years.
The pounding in her chest, the heat at her throat, the tingling in her fingers every time she and Lady Rosalie touch—it’s absolutely, thoroughly inconvenient, and confusing, and startling. Of all people, why isLady Rosaliethe first person she’s felt this for as an adult?
She’s meant to be stealing her suitor. They’re in competition. They’re atwar.
Lady Rosalie looks over her shoulder from the front of the shop, the light catching her face in a way that makes her almost glow.
Holy shit, is she in trouble.
Chapter Seven
Rosalie
Even with most of her flowering trees and vines not yet in bloom, Aunt Genevieve’s garden teems with verdant leaves and bushes. Divided into three long sections, the garden extends off the back of Uncle Walter’s townhouse along the Royal Crescent, stretching all the way to the other side of Church Street.
In the first section just beyond the back patio they’ve set six round tables covered in white linens and arranged for a formal tea. Aunt Genevieve and Mother usually sit out here to gossip, sipping lemonade spiked with whatever Uncle Walter has pulled from the cellar. Sometimes Father even joins them. Those are Rosalie’s favorite afternoons, listening to Father and Aunt Genevieve bicker and tease each other while Mother sits there smiling.
But Mother’s not smiling today. Instead, she’s leading a parade of maids around the tables, pointing out little mistakes while Aunt Genevieve watches from the patio, smirking.
For her own sanity, Rosalie walks back into the second section of the garden. Aunt Genevieve has had a large platform erected beneath the enormous oak along the eastern wall of the garden where Rosalie used to curl up to read as a girl.
Around the platform, easels with canvases and paint sets have been arranged in a horseshoe, each with a dainty chaircovered in white linen behind. Today, they’ll be capturing the likeness of the young society gentlemen, who will be posed on the platform.
