Then again, keeping it bottled in her head isn’t doing anything to persuade her treacherous heart and desire. She almost kissed the girl in a cloakroom, for God’s sake.
Maybe it would be safer with Christopher to keep watch—to save her from trying something with MissPine and seeing her married off anyway. Or worse, discovering MissPine is more like most people than she seems. Rosalie probably imagined the want in her eyes in the dim light of the cloakroom.
“Am I so obvious?” she asks, her voice barely more than a whisper.
Christopher squeezes her arm. “Only to me. Everyone elseis far too wrapped up in their own affairs. Well, everyone except Aunt Genevieve.” Rosalie looks up at him in surprise. “Her painting does rather give it away.”
“When were you in my room?”
He laughs. “I wanted to go through your new books and Mother was going on and on about the walk.”
“She’s gotten rather zealous about it,” Rosalie agrees, putting worries about Aunt Genevieve away in the box in her head for later.
“Mother has told you to pay MissPine little attention and make sure she spends her time with Mr.Sholle, and you’ve talked with her every moment he wasn’t within earshot. You never disobey Mother.”
Rosalie blinks. “I disobey her all the time.”
“Not when it counts,” Christopher insists. Rosalie shrugs, unsure of how to take his razor-sharp observations. “So you must really like her.”
She wants to protest, wants to argue, but there’s something so absurdly comforting about Christopher justknowing.
“It’s dreadful,” she says, leaning into him dramatically.
Christopher laughs and bends his head to rest on hers as she slumps against his shoulder. “It seems rather fun to me,” he says.
“Fun?”
“The two of you flirting right under Mr.Dean and Mr.Sholle’s noses with neither of them any the wiser?”
“It is a little bit fun,” she admits in a whisper. Christopher laughs, the sound ringing around them. “Mother’s going to kill me, though.”
“She wouldn’t be too upset, would she?”
“If Miss Pine not only doesn’t marry Mr. Sholle, leaving Mr. Dean available for me, but I also forsake him to... what,run away and live in some city boardinghouse with another woman?”
“Oh, please, I’d put you up in a hovel, don’t be dramatic,” Christopher says, and Rosalie can’t help but laugh. “Mr.Sholle is a poor prize for the funny, bright, engaging MissPine, even putting you aside.”
“We’re putting me aside?” she asks, affronted.
“I’m just saying, you couldn’t have given the poor girl even achanceat happiness? Mr.Sholle is so—”
“Perfectly adequate?” Rosalie supplies.
“Yes! Should she be consigned to a life of matrimony, MissPine deserves someone far more interesting. As do you.”
“Are you perhaps a little sweet on MissPine too?” Rosalie finds herself asking.
She wouldn’t blame him. How could anyone not be?
“Are you admitting you’re sweet on her?” Christopher returns gleefully.
“I— We are talking about you and your hypothetical crush now, not me.”
Christopher narrows his eyes and Rosalie endeavors to stare back menacingly. Which is so much more difficult now that he’s gone and gotten even taller than he was just last year, while she stays annoyingly petite.
“I would never pursue a lady who interests you,” he says seriously. “Unless you needed me to for appropriate cover, of course.”
Rosalie blinks, punched in the gut by his sincerity and kindness. She can do nothing more than lean up to kiss his cheek.
