“You are fighting,” Amanda remarked at her side.
It had never occurred to Violet that he might miss her, too. Her heart skipped one beat, then another. As if he were her lover, not just the man she’d conspired with for the last five years. They’d never touched—not more than the accidental brush of an elbow, and even that she’d tried to avoid. But in their own way, they had been closer than lovers, more intimate than friends. She’d shied away from that, too, but she still missed him. She missed him dreadfully.
She couldn’t admit it without choking on her words, and betraying how much she did actually care.
“Very well,” she muttered. “I’ll go.”
But she wasn’t fooling anyone present. Sebastian smiled in relief and Amanda let out a breath.
“Brilliant,” her niece said. “Now kiss and make up.”
Violet jerked back. Her niece hadn’t meant it like that. She hadn’t been talking about a lover’s kiss, but a kiss of friendship. Still, the word made her think of Sebastian’s lips, his smile. The smell of him in the air, so indescribable, so unlike anyone else. He smelled like comfort. She could sit next to him and breathe him in.
There were some boundaries that one dared not cross, and thinking about kissing one’s best friend was one of them.
Sebastian shrugged and his nose wrinkled.
“Not that,” Violet said.
He spoke at the same time she did. “How about we just make up?”
And then—because they were talking atop each other again, knowing precisely what the other was thinking, Violet found herself smothering a smile.
She’d been awful. He deserved more than her grumpiest sentiments. She didn’t know how to navigate this new phase of their friendship…but she would never forgive herself if she didn’t make the attempt. She let out a long breath.
“We must be off.” She glanced at Sebastian. “I don’t have time for you any longer.”
“Aunt Violet!” Amanda protested, as Violet took her wrist and led her away. “How rude! What would people think of you, if they heard that? Even if he is a rake.”
Violet didn’t care what Amanda thought. After all, it was her parting sentence that had put that brilliant smile on Sebastian’s face. He knew what she meant.
There was, after all, no point to using a code if everyone understood it.
VIOLET SAT IN HER MOTHER’S AIRY BACK PARLOR, perched on the edge of her seat, wishing she were anywhere else.
She’d come here immediately after she’d returned her niece to her sister, after she’d seen Sebastian. Her mother was worried about some kind of scandal. If her mother knew what Violet had been doing over the last five years, this was not going to be a pretty conversation. If she didn’t, that meant her mother had some other worry on her mind. Still, she’d promised Lily, and once she’d made that promise, there was no point delaying the visit.
Her mother sat across from her. Her needles clicked at a furious pace; her eyes were trained on the sky-blue wool that flew through her fingers.
“Mama,” Violet said for the third time. “I had hoped to have a—”
“Not now, Violet.” The Dowager Baroness Rotherham had a deep, guttural voice, one that could issue commands that made servants and daughters alike jump to do her bidding. “If I lose count, I’ll have to redo the whole row.”
“It’s important, Mama.”
Her mother continued knitting, unperturbed.
Violet sighed. Of course she was less important than finishing the row.
Her mother still did not look up. Instead, her needles clacked together more loudly. But after another few moments of silence, she spoke. “The Ladies’ Guide to Proper Deportment says, and I quote, ‘A lady does not engage in any of the following behaviors: sighing, rolling her eyes, slamming doors…’ The list goes on, as I am sure you recall. Do you flout the precepts of proper deportment because you wish to put me to the blush, or is it just boorishness on your part?”
All that, and she hadn’t lifted her eyes from her knitting.
Violet felt a corner of her mouth twitch. “Mama, you wrote the Ladies’ Guide.”
An eyebrow rose. The baroness finished one last stitch and then laid her work—a short, blue scarf—aside. “I see no reason to alter my words simply because I committed them to print in the past. Quite the contrary. I labored over them once already. Why should I exert myself to express an identical sentiment in an inferior way?”
If Lily had been here, she would have a hand on her hip now, a foot tapping. She’d start scolding their mother, and afterward, when she and Violet had left the room, she would have made some sort of comment about how cold Mama was—how she could not even be bothered to greet her own children with pleasantries.