“Mm.” Charlotte’s eyes had narrowed to bright, delighted slits. “For anyone. Naturally. Any woman at all whose arms happened to be bruised. He would fly into a rage over Mrs Moorfield’s arm, would he?”
“That is not—I did not say arage?—”
“You did rather imply a confrontation in the street.”
“I only meant that he is protective by?—”
“Lucie Fields.” Charlotte reached over and gripped her knee. “Look at me. Look at me.” She pressed both palms to Lucie’s cheeks and held her there. “Stars above, you are practically aflame.”
“I am warm,” Lucie protested with a laugh, batting her sister’s hands away. “It is stuffy in here.”
“Nonsense.”
“Charlotte—”
“Lucie.”
Lucie heaved a sigh and met her sister’s gaze. Charlotte was staring at her with an expression of such barely contained delight that Lucie wanted to pull the blanket over her own head and never emerge.
“How long?” Charlotte asked.
“How long what?”
“How long have you been in love with him?”
The silence that followed was enormous. It filled the study. It pressed against the walls and the window and the writing desk and the armchair with Lucie’s dress hanging over the back of it.
“I …” Lucie began, and then could not think of where the sentence was supposed to go.
Charlotte waited. Patiently.
“He is … I have … there are feelings,” Lucie managed, which was perhaps the most inadequate sentence she had ever produced.
“Feelings,” Charlotte repeated.
“Yes.”
“For Kazrian Rowanwood.”
“… yes.”
“And he?”
Lucie looked down at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap, and let out a long breath. “He has made his feelings rather … clear.”
Charlotte’s hands flew to her cheeks. “Lucie! He—does he love you?”
The word landed in the quiet room like a bell struck in a closed space, and Lucie felt the sound of it move through her long after it should have faded.
There was never anyone else.
She nodded, a small, tight movement. “I believe so. Yes.”
“He loves you,” Charlotte said faintly.
“Yes.”
“And you love him.”
