wouldn't insult her. She supplied some for him, and it wasn't difficult to see that she was insulted.
"Common perhaps? Peasantlike? Suitable only for Gypsy vagabonds?"
"There is no need for you to take offense, Anastasia. Your clothes were perfectly fine for the life you were living on the road. But you'll be living differently from now on. It's as simple as that."
She was frowning now, not at all placated. "Are you going to have trouble, Christoph, dealing with what I am?"
"What you are?"
"That I'm a Gypsy?"
"Half Gypsy, or so you've claimed."
She waved that aside. "I was raised as a Gypsy, not as a Russian. I may not think or do exactly as most Gypsies, but I am still one of them."
He came over to her and put his arms around her. ''We are not having our first light."
"We aren't?"
"No, we aren't. I forbid it."
She leaned back to stare into his eyes. "I will make some allowances to accommodate you. You must do the same for me. In such a way we can come to agree on everything in the end. Fair enough?"
"You have a unique way of looking at things that I think I can get quite used to. For right now, shall we agree to raid the kitchen?"
"If that is what it takes to obtain some breakfast, certainly." She waved her arm toward the door with a flourish and a bow. "After you—Lord Englishman."
He rolled his eyes and pushed her in front of him so he could swat her backside playfully. "No more of that. Christoph will most definitely do."
She giggled. "If you insist."
It was too much to hope, really, that they would continue to get along perfectly, yet a few days or weeks wouldn't have been too much to expect—rather than the time it took them to walk downstairs that morning.
Thinking back on it, Christopher allowed that he could have been more tactful. But guarding his words was simply not his habit, especially among his friends. Who else, after all, would he feel like bragging to about his splendid acquisition than his closest friends?
Walter and David were that, but he could have wished they hadn't appeared in the hallway below just as he was coming down the stairs, Anastasia's hand in his, though she was a few steps behind him. And both men couldn't help but notice them, of course, when that flashy gold skirt of hers was like a beacon in the dark.
"What's this?" David asked, eyeing Anastasia, though his question was for Christopher. "So that's where you went off to last night?"
"Taking her back to her camp?" Walter surmised, then with a grin, "We'll come along."
"Not exactly," Christopher corrected. "I'll take her later to collect her belongings, but she'll be staying with me from now on. She's agreed to let me keep her."
"Oh, I say, d'you think that's wise, Kit?" David asked. "She's not exactly typical mistress material."
Anastasia yanked her hand out of Christopher's at that point, but with David's remark in his mind, he barely noticed. "What has typical got to do with it?" he asked. "I've had 'typical,' David, and lose interest in it in a matter of days, same as you do. Which certainly won't be the case with my Anna here. Besides, I didn't ask her to be my mistress to introduce her to society, so it hardly matters whether she's typical or unique, now does it?"
"Er, not to be the bearer of dire tidings, old chum," Walter remarked. "But I'd say your Anna is about to take your head off—metaphorically speaking."
Christopher spun around just in time to receive a resounding slap across his cheek and watch Anastasia hike her skirt and run back up the stairs. "What the devil was that for?" he called after her.
But she didn't stop, and a moment later he heard the door slam shut to his room. The entire house likely heard it, actually.
"Bloody hell," he muttered.
Behind him, David was tactfully coughing into his hand, but Walter was outright chuckling. "No, indeed, nothing typical about that a'tall. Though it might help you to know, Kit, that she began frowning as soon as David introduced the subject of mistresses."
"Sure, blame it on me," David grumbled.
