Chapter Nineteen
“What were you thinking?” Reed demanded the minute Rose walked into her own front hall from an exciting cooking class on slow-simmered soups.
Considering all the things swirling in her life at that moment, Rose kept her mouth closed. Any one of a number of her thoughts could prove damning.
“Into Father’s study. Now,” Reed said and turned on his heel.
She nearly stuck her tongue out at the back of his head, but she was too old for such behavior — no matter how satisfying.
“Close the door, please,” he said as soon as she entered a step behind him.
Such dramatics, she thought, while shutting it firmly.
“Yes, dear brother. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Don’t you ‘dear brother’ me. Are you trying to get yourself killed? And what about my wife? How dare you bring Charlotte into this!”
Stuff and bother!He knew.
“You’ve spoken to Finn.”
“Indeed I have,” Reed intoned. “This is not the simple matter of my taking some papers over for the man to sign, is it?”
Rose looked at her shoes. Such a lovely shade of turquoise, peeking out from under her hem.
“Well?” he asked.
“You seem to know everything. What do you want me to say?” Then she looked up at him as it dawned on her that he’d actually met her husband.At last.
Despite her brother’s expression of abject displeasure, Rose couldn’t help asking him, “What did you think of him? Did you like him?”
Reed stared at her as if she’d truly lost her mind. What’s more, he stayed mulishly silent.
Stepping forward, Rose took his hand. “Doesn’t he speak well with a lovely cadence? And he’s clever, didn’t you think so? Were you taller than him, or he, you? I can’t tell. Did you walk together? Did you notice his limp? He didn’t have that before he went away I still haven’t asked him—”
“Silence,” Reed ordered.
She pressed her lips together to stop herself speaking, chewing her lower lip while she waited.
With an expression of exasperation, her brother wrenched his hand free. “Stop being a gadfly. We are not here to discuss the merits of Mr. Bennet.”
“Oh, but we could be,” she persisted. “After all, I married him. Can I not be a little curious as to your opinion of him?”
He rested his backside against the desk, his long legs stretched out in front of him, and crossed his arms.
“Well?” she persisted, suddenly dying to know something of Reed’s opinion.
“Oh, all right!” he snapped. After a few moments, he said, “Bennet seems to be a forthright individual. Quite surprising, considering his treatment of you.”
Rose waited. And waited. Reed stared her down.
“Is that all? I asked you—”
Her brother raised his hand to halt her. “I neither liked him nor disliked him. I was, however, angry that he has put you in danger. He speaks as any normal human does, I suppose, except with a slight accent, mid-Maine, I’d warrant. I believe we were of a similar height though we did not stand back-to-back and examine our reflections and postures in the mirror.”
Rose giggled at the notion.
“I noticed his limp, yes, when we walked to the police station.”
