Libba didn’t even realize she had begun to smile at it, perhaps her first smile in days, until her brother’s voice at the door startled her out of her reverie.
“You know, when we were children, Hattie taught us a word for what you’re doing,” he said, looking fairly amused himself at their voices floating in. “Do you recall it?”
“Schadenfreude,” Libba recited. “Sometimes I think I was supposed to be born a Prussian.”
Malcolm huffed in amusement, striding into the room and collapsing on the corner of her bed nearest to where she was satat the desk. “Do you know any Germans, Lib?” he asked, raising his brows. “Because they are thoroughly entrenched in the London banking system and I’ve met quite a few. Their central cultural tenet is… well, can you guess?”
Libba blinked at him. “Chocolate?”
He grinned at her. “Punctuality.”
“Ugh,” she said, wrinkling up her nose. “They’d love Harcourt, then.”
“Then why don’t we build a bloody hothouse?!” Ruby shrieked, dragging both Lennoxes back to the sounds from the window. “Do you know how?!”
“I do,” Errol replied easily. “Or at least who to go to to have one assembled, but if we do this, Ruby, you need to keep it filled.”
She scoffed in such a way that Libba could feel the toss of her hair, even through the brick of the wall. “You think I’ll struggle with that, Errol? No, of course you don’t. Oh! You wanted to show me that giant turnip.”
“Oh, that’s right!” Errol returned, suddenly bright. “We should let it keep growing and then carve it up for Samhain.”
Libba chuckled, dropping her eyes along the shaft of light and pulling them back across the room to her brother. “Do you think they’re ever going to…?”
“Doubtless,” he replied immediately. “When they are eighty.”
“Oh, that would be a deliciously tragic turn in a play,” she said. “But very boring here in reality. We might have to force it one day.”
“What’s that?” he asked, nodding at her jagged star of failed salutations rather than acknowledging this very sensible and inspired suggestion for family meddling. “You’ve penned verse in concurrent circles? Are you writing in code? Oh, or is it a prop?”
“No! It’s nothing!” she snapped, far more tersely than she had intended to, balling the paper in her fist. “Just errant thoughts.”
He frowned at her, eyes flicking down to the little cannonball of parchment in her fist. “Something is odd about you lately,” he observed, scratching at his jaw. “I know you’re up to something. You won’t tell me, will you?”
She shook her head. “I won’t.”
His expression softened, almost wistful. “You used to tell me everything,” he reminded her. “Where’s that Libba?”
“She’s about to turn twelve and find out you threatened the first boy she was ever sweet on,” she said with a sniff and a lift of her chin. “That Libba was many Libbas ago. In fact, she was still Elizabeth.”
“Now, that isn’t true. I threatened the first boy who broke her heart,” he corrected. “There is a difference.”
“There might be,” she allowed. “But my way or yours, it still betrayed my confidence by alerting said boy and all our mutual acquaintances to the fact that I was not only hurt, but that I go running to big brother for everything.”
He frowned. “All right. Are you… Are you sweet on someone new?”
She scoffed, cutting her eyes to him. “Certainly not. And if I were, I would not tell you. But I am not.”
He was still frowning. “You wouldn’t tell me? Why not?”
“Precedent?” she suggested, giving a little laugh. “Mal, you lack discipline in matters of discretion.”
“I lackdiscipline?” he repeated, aghast. “No one has ever accused me so!”
She rolled her eyes. “Have they accused you of being clenched up so tight, you can chew on your own ribs?”
He glared at her. “They have not.”
She smiled back, slowly, in just the way she knew annoyed him, until he laughed, stood, and dropped a very hard kiss on the part in her hair.
