Catherine nods, lip between her teeth, and Rosalie sighs. She doesn’t know. Were one of them a man, they’d be having thismoment after already committing to a lifetime together. There would be no questions, no varied outcomes. Marriage. Children. Forever. They’d get to know each other afterward, and hope they still liked each other.
“Maybe that’s it,” Rosalie mumbles.
“What’s it?” Catherine asks, a hint of panic in her voice.
Rosalie scooches up to plant a firm kiss to her lips, then pulls back to meet her eyes. “We get to know each other.”
“What?”
Rosalie sits up, waiting for Catherine to shift up as well, resting against the pillows with Rosalie in her lap.
“If you were a man, we’d get married before we really knew. Stuck together forever. But us, what we have—maybe it’s lucky? Maybe it’s beautiful that we get to be together just to be together. Not chess pieces to be traded for a business deal, not a prize to be won as the season’s catch. I like you, you like me, and that’s enough for now.”
Catherine considers her and Rosalie smiles back, a lightness in her chest she’s never felt before.
“Just... kiss in secret, and find ways to be alone together—”
“And very, very naked,” Rosalie adds.
Catherine giggles. “Just kiss, and be naked, and spend time together... until what?”
Rosalie shrugs. “Until we know what comes next. Until we’re ready to... ask for help with what comes next. Until we have enough money or power or... whatever... to decide what comes next for ourselves.”
“You’re okay with not knowing?”
All her life, Rosalie’s been told she’ll marry rich, have a bunch of babies, and then make suretheymarry rich. She’s never wanted that future, not ever, not once. This—with Catherine—whateverit is—isn’t nearly the same answer. There’s no finality. No goal to strive for. No race to run.
She feels so free. So incredibly, incandescently free, to be exactly who she is with someone who likes her just as she is. To be naked and unashamed and happy.
“It’s not not-knowing. It’s choosing to find out together,” she says, a surge of joy coursing through her.
“Choosing to find out together,” Catherine whispers, a smile blooming slowly across her beautiful cheeks. “I like that.”
“I like you,” Rosalie says, her voice light, a giggle bursting forth.
Catherine giggles back, reaching out to draw Rosalie in. “I like you too. So very much,” she whispers, before crashing their lips together.
And then they do just as Catherine says. They kiss, and they touch, and they choose together to forgo sleep to see the sun rise out the window, wrapped in each other’s arms. Bare, and free, and together.
Chapter Sixteen
Catherine
She wishes they were still in bed. Wishes she were still waking, naked, peaceful, and lightly sweaty, with Rosalie wrapped around her back, arm tight over her stomach. Wishes she could still roll over and kiss her soft lips, hold her close, and glide her hand down—
“Now the chapel was fully demolished by 1707, but we still have records of the art dedicated to Saint Blaise, from which this folly now gets its name,” Mr.Tarton says, marching them around the folly castle that rises out of the deep green in an enormous clearing.
Nearly four stories of gray ashlar stone, the castle has three towers surrounding a central turret, all with parapets and designs in limestone set at intervals. There are a number of inlaid crosses on each tower, and big arched windows.
Catherine should be fascinated by the history, but she can’t stop sneaking glances at Rosalie, imagining her as a roguish knight, dressed in full riding gear. The kind of tiny knight no one would mess with. The kind of knight who could sweep Catherine off her feet, save her from brigands, take her back to one of the cottages through the surrounding forest, and ravish her.
Rosalie seems to know Catherine’s thoughts are far, far from architect Robert Mylne and Gothic Revival architecture. She keeps stopping to stare up at the towers, a hand on her hip, herother at the back of her neck, or stretching out to point toward something, beckoning Lady Jones’ attention.
It’s thoroughly distracting, and the slightest bit cruel, which just makes Catherine long to pick her up and slam her (gently) against the rough stone and take her mouth.
“He can go on, can’t he?” Lady Jones asks, leaving Rosalie to her fetching perusal of the large cross on the nearest tower. “I think I’ve heard this speech about fifteen times.”
Catherine forces herself to look up at Lady Jones. “You visit often, then?”
