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“It sounds likely to me,” Rosaline said, prompting Gretchen to nod eagerly in agreement.
“No, no it is not possible.” Chloe stepped away from the door and began to pace restlessly, unable to find peace now that her heart was all in a flutter. “Leo spoke of marriage the other week, I thought he was putting me on my guard.”
“What does that mean?” Rosaline asked.
“I thought he was saying there was a young lady he was interested in. I thought any day now he was going to walk in through this door and declare that he was betrothed to another woman.” Chloe was well aware she was speaking quickly, with a kind of wild panic, but she felt unable to stop herself.
“Chloe . . .” Rosaline exchanged a look with Gretchen, who nodded, urging the other seamstress on. “Are you sure Lord Felton was not referring toyou?”
“Me?” Chloe abruptly stopped walking, nearly colliding with another of the tables. “Oh, this clumsiness is catching today!”
“We’d noticed,” Rosaline said with a giggle, earning a quick dark look from Chloe, before she returned to her pacing.
“He can’t have meant me.” Yet she hoped he did. Chloe replayed the conversation in her mind. It was then she realized that Leo had never said he intended to marry another woman. Chloe had just taken what he’d said of wanting to marry as a kind of warning.
Oh lord, how could I be so blind?
“Chloe, you should have been here a few minutes ago. Had you seen what I saw . . . I am not sure you would be so quick to believe Lord Felton has no feelings for you.” Rosaline spoke rather slowly. “Lord Felton was nervous, to my mind. He knocked into that table in his hurry to leave, and he bought you that gift!” She waved a hand at the sketchbook that Chloe was holding flat to her chest. “It is much more personal than flowers.”
“As beautiful as they are,” Gretchen acknowledged, lowering her hand from one of the blooms. “The other gentlemen were very dapper.”
“That they were.” Rosaline nodded in agreement.
“I am not interested in hearing about them. Tell me more of Leo,” Chloe said hurriedly, aware that both girls’ eyes widened. “What?”
“You seem eager to circle the conversation back to him,” Rosaline explained with a shrug. “And you call him Leo.”
“We are friends.”
“Only friends?”
“I . . .” The words faded on Chloe’s tongue. She hadn’t spoken of her feelings to anyone, not even to Maeve. She thought she would do, at some point, but Maeve was so busy these days, with her writing and young Nathan, there wasn’t much time for sharing secrets.
Should I share my secret with someone else?
Chloe’s eyes rested on Rosaline and Gretchen who stood very still, clearly waiting for her to say something.
“I do care for him,” Chloe practically breathed out the words, then turned away, hiding her expression from her friends. “Of course, I do! But this . . .” She gestured to the mess he had made. “It is all so confusing.”
“Oh, a romance!” Rosaline bobbed on her toes and clasped her hands together. “Who doesn’t love a good romance?”
“Agoodromance?” Chloe laughed at the idea, turning back round. “Rosaline, if you are right about this, then Leo and I are dancing around each other, not knowing what to say to one another. That is not good. It’s bad, very bad! Clearly, neither of us can see what is right in front of us. That’s, of course, assuming you are right about this.” Chloe paced back the other way. “What if we’re wrong? What if Leo is just being a friend and was trying to protect me from gentlemen’s advances that he saw as unwelcome?”
“Why would he see them as unwelcome?” Gretchen’s question left Chloe dumbfounded. She turned in another circle, lowering the sketchbook enough to look at the spine and her name engraved there.
It is the kindest gift.
Such warmth and love for Leo spread in her, that Chloe wished she could turn back time. She longed to be in her seamstress’ room above the stairs with Leo beside her, when she had given him that pocket watch. Perhaps if the conversation had gone a different way, things could be so different now. When he had asked if she had a gentleman in her thoughts and had ever thought of courtship, what could have taken place if she had told Leo that he was the only one she could imagine courting?
“If this is Chloe for the rest of the day, Gretchen, you might have to pick up behind her,” Rosaline said with a laugh.
“What? Oh!” Chloe had managed to walk into another table. Cursing, she gathered up what had dropped off the table, finding only a moment to laugh at herself.
I am becoming as clumsy as Leo!
“What is happening to me?” She stood straight again. “One moment of possibly thinking Leo might look at me as I do him, and I am suddenly not in control of where I put my feet.” Chloe fell still, uncertain where to go now in case she knocked anything else over. “Are you certain of this, Rosaline? Gretchen? When you saw Leo just now . . . did you honestly think he had come here with courtship in mind?”
Rosaline and Gretchen exchanged a look, a rather nervous one.
