“Is so,” Kate countered in the silly way only sisters can manage. “I should dearly love to fall in love with someone.”
“You were in love with Lord Martin not three years ago,” Evie reminded her. “And look what that got you.”
“It got me my first kiss,” Kate countered. “And I rather doubt I was in love with him. In retrospect, I believe I merely had a long-standing tendre for him.”
Evie couldn’t think of anything else to say but, “You told me he kissed like a fish drowning on land.”
“He does, or did, which is why I no longer have a tendre for him.” She scooted a little closer. “Have you kissed McAlistair?”
And a great deal more. “Yes.”
“And?”
Sophie’s appearance at the door kept Evie from responding.
“What’s all this?” Sophie asked.
“Evie’s in love with McAlistair.”
“Kate!”
“Well, you are, and you would have told her.”
True and true. “You could have given me the opportunity to do so for myself.”
Completely unrepentant, Kate leaned over to deliver a kind pat to her knee. “I’ll leave it to you to tell Mirabelle.”
“Thank you so much.”
Sophie sat down on the other side of Evie with a dreamy sigh. “Hmm. McAlistair. He’s a fine one to look at, isn’t he? All that dark and broody…” She waved her hand about. “…what have you.”
That statement was met with wide-eyed silence. Sophie blinked at her friends. “What?”
“You’re married,” Kate said. “Happily married.”
Sophie studied the gold band on her finger. “Oddly enough, it hasn’t struck me blind as of yet.” When the other women only continued to stare—Kate in a fascinated sort of way, and Evie with a slightly suspicious scowl—Sophie laughed and dropped her hand. “A happily married woman can appreciate a handsome man without being attracted to him. I suppose you’ll discover that for yourself soon enough,” she added to Evie.
Though her scowl remained in place, suspicion was replaced by misery and frustration. “Not if things continue to progress as they have been,” she grumbled. “He told me…he told me I need keeping.”
The pouring of outrage that followed went a very long way toward soothing Evie’s pride. She suspected some of the outrage was a direct result of—and perhaps targeted at—Whit and Alex’s own brand of keeping for the last two days, but a shared indignation only added to the sense of camaraderie.
The three spent the next hour sharing Evie’s tray of food and condemning all men for their monstrous arrogance.
It was most satisfying.
And it was most disappointing when Kate announced it was time for her to seek an early bed. Evie couldn’t imagine trying to sleep at present, and she certainly didn’t care for the idea of sitting up alone without the laughter of her friends to distract her from the ache in her heart.
But she couldn’t ask Kate to stay. Not when she’d ridden all this way only to learn she’d be turning around and riding all the way back the next day.
“I suppose you must be exhausted,” Evie commented to Sophie when Kate had gone.
“Rather. But I wished to discuss something with you before I find my own bed.” She cleared her throat and gave Evie a hard look. “I was downstairs in the parlor with Mrs. Summers just now, and she told me the single most unbelievably, outrageously, ridiculous thing.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Matchmaking, Evie?” Sophie huffed out a breath. “Honestly.”
“Well, it’s not as far-fetched as all that.”
“It’s more. However did you come up with such an implausible theory?”
“Implaus—” She gaped, simply gaped. “I heard them, with my own ears, discussing the deathbed promise to Rockeforte, the threatening letter they would send, my intended rescuer—”
“The promise?” Sophie started at little. “You know of it? All of it?”
“Yes…well, nearly all.”
“Oh.” She blinked rapidly for a moment. “And you heard them plotting to send you a letter like the one you received, and a gentleman to rescue—”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” Sophie repeated and turned narrowed eyes in the general direction of the parlor. “She neglected to mention that bit.”
It wasn’t a bit; it was the whole bloody thing. “What did she tell you?”
Sophie had the grace to wince. “Only that you’d taken it into your head that the whole affair was nothing more than a ruse to see you matched. She never quite got around to mentioning why.”
“You could have asked.”
“Yes, well.” Sophie fidgeted a little. “Questioning her doesn’t come naturally to me.”
“You’re a duchess,” Evie pointed out.
“But she was my governess. Also, she gets that look. You must know the one I mean. With the haughty brows and…” Sophie titled her chin up and stared down at Evie. “Not quite an accurate impression, I’ll grant you. I haven’t the nose for it. But—”