Page 26 of Miss Dramatic
“If Roland trains carrying my weight, he’ll have an easier time with a lighter jockey on the race courses.”
Caroline drew Roland to a halt and glowered at the person she’d once called her favorite sibling in the whole world. “Are you planning to leave again? Will you one day ride Roland straight to Bristol and take ship for America? I bet he’d win every race in every colony if you did.”
They call themselves states now.“I thought you all knew where I was, Caroline. I believed you were refusing to reply to my letters, that you’d closed ranks against me. I envisioned you larking about Bath and Lyme Regis and buying out the shops in London. The lawyers lied to me as skillfully as they lied to Mama and Lissa. I am sorry, and it won’t happen again. They aren’t our lawyers anymore, and I’m not going anywhere.”
She urged Roland to resume his progress. “See that you don’t.”
A world of injured feelings lurked in those words. If Gavin hadn’t spied his youngest sister in her tree, how much longer would she have nursed that pain in silence?
“You look like Lissa when you’re in a temper.” Gavin hadn’t noticed the likeness before.
“My hair is too red. Her hair is Titian. I have freckles.”
“Because you don’t bother with a bonnet, and red hair is unique. Of all the guests Lissa has invited, I’ve seen none with red hair.”
“Grandmama keeps telling me it’s time to put my hair up. She says that as if putting my hair up won’t send Di into fourteen takings and three fortissimo F minors. Do you know, Diana has a calendar counting down to Easter of next year? She crosses off the days, one by one, and makes Trevor speak French with her. She’s getting quite good at French too.”
Gavin saw with painful clarity how badly Caroline’s universe had been knocked off its pins and that he’d delivered the first, hardest blow to her sense of security. And no, he hadn’t known about Diana’s calendar, though he’d conversed with her in French enough to have seen that change sitting in plain sight.
“As the head of the DeWitt family, I declare you old enough to put up your hair if you want to, Caroline. I will even insist upon it if you ask it of me. Diana can take out her F minors on me for making the decision. Do you want to put up your hair?”
Say no. Say you are much too young to put on such airs.
“I’ve been practicing,” Caroline said, turning Roland onto the path to Twidboro Hall. “I can manage a bun, provided I use a thousand pins. My hair is so thick.”
“Amaryllis started off with two thousand hairpins. We had to send a wagon to London for them, and when she made her come out, her slippers alone required a pack train.”
The smile Caroline bestowed on him broke his heart. Part girl, part former girl. Not a grown woman, but some fey, fetching creature who’d once been Gavin’s baby sister.
“You should write a comedy,” she said. “Di could pen you an overture, and you could cast me in the boy parts. I’ll tell you something else for free, brother of mine.”
Nobody else called him that. “You’ll tell me I have the smartest, kindest, most wonderful sisters in the world?”
“I’ll tell you that when you came back from your pint of cider with Mrs. Roberts, you didn’t have that restless, unsteady, getting-ready-to-bolt look on your face.”
Ye gods, Mayfair Society was in for a shock a few years hence. “Was I making sheep’s eyes at her?”
“No, and she wasn’t making them at you, but you both rode right under my tree, twice, and you never saw me, even though I waved at you and Roland shied. I think Mrs. Roberts likes you, but you mustn’t marry her if that means you move to Hampshire and I will never see you again.”
Caroline had tried for a teasing tone, but Gavin’s heart knew better. “If I did marry Mrs. Roberts and moved to Hampshire, you would always be welcome to visit, and if you decided to disdain my company, I’d kidnap you by dark of night and spirit you away on my fire-breathing steed.”
“You are so silly.” Relief lurked behind a fine showing of sibling exasperation.
“That is no way to address the head of your family, Miss Caroline.”
She stuck her tongue out at him, tapped Roland lightly with her heel, and—sitting half aside in a man’s saddle, only one foot in a stirrup—cantered off without a backward glance.
In another year, she might be too adult to attempt that bit of mischief. Gavin desperately hoped not, and he made a promise to himself that he’d ride out with Caroline and with Diana, separately, at least once a week.
Assuming they had the time to spare him.
As for that bit about manly humors being out of balance, the reasons to tossour marquessinto the Twid just kept adding up.
“I don’t understand why Mr. DeWitt didn’t warn you, is all.” Timmens spoke around a pair of hairpins, both of which she then jammed into Rose’s chignon.
“Ouch.”
“Sorry, ma’am, but we can’t have you coming undone in company.”
