Lady Be Reckless (Duke's Daughters #2)(43)

But now she was also thinking about the man she knew about and absolutely could not solve, and she suspected she would be thinking on that topic for a good long time.

And she would never see him again.

“Olivia?” Now Pearl sounded concerned.

“Yes, of course,” Olivia replied, trying to return to her usual efficient tone. “We can deliver the shifts and we can also stop in to see the children. It’s been over a month.”

“We’ve been too busy with all these parties,” Pearl said, making it sound as though she would rank parties just below stubbing one’s toe or drinking cold tea. Though for Pearl they were; she was too shy, too restless, to want to sit in a room filled with people she barely knew and likely wouldn’t want to.

If only Society had more energetic events, possibly held outside, Pearl would be a lot happier. But until the best families decided Mayday poles and dances held in fields were the most appropriate way for them to show their being at the top of the social world, that likely wouldn’t happen.

Though the thought of some of those ridiculous lords in over-snug trousers trying to waltz among bales of hay was rather amusing.

“We should never be too busy to take care of people who need it,” Olivia replied. Feeling her chin lift in her usual stance of combat.

It was only Pearl, but she couldn’t allow her skills to diminish. She never knew when some misguided man would tell her that children much preferred to work than have to go to school, and she would have to show him—in explicit and excruciating detail—why he was wrong.

“Of course not,” Pearl replied drily. “Oh no, look!”

She held up the topmost shift on the pile, which was now shredded at the neck with a few cat hairs indicating what had happened. “I thought I reminded you to put those in a box so the kittens couldn’t get to them.” She turned to look at Olivia. “You’re not normally this careless. Is something going on? Something I should know about?”

“Uh,” Olivia began, only to stop when Pearl’s face lit up and she flung the shift back on the pile to run over to Olivia’s bed and hug her.

“Something did happen! What happened? Did you finally realize you don’t really love Lord Carson? Was it when you were spending time with Mr. Wolcott? Did you fall in love with Mr. Wolcott? I have to say, I prefer him to Lord Carson. Lord Carson is always so serious and preoccupied. If you ask him a question like ‘Do you want sugar in your tea?’ you get the feeling you’ve just interrupted the course of progressive history. With Mr. Wolcott, he always seems as though he is grateful you’ve asked him about how he takes his tea.”

Olivia bit her lip at Pearl’s statement; obviously Mr. Wolcott was grateful because so few people treated him with courtesy. Or the kind of discourtesy with which she had shown him last night. She couldn’t keep herself from wincing at the memory of it.

“There was something.” Pearl narrowed her eyes at her sister. “You have to tell me. Or I’ll ask Ida to pretend we’re in chancery, and she can be the magistrate. You know you can’t withstand Ida asking questions.”

The thought made Olivia flinch. No, she did not want her most analytical sister asking questions that would reveal that Olivia had basically thrown herself at Mr. Wolcott. Well, thrown her lips at his lips, to be more accurate.

She leaned over to look under her bed, locating two of the four kittens and scooping them up into her lap—they protested with ridiculously cute meows.

One of them, Snapper, began to knead her gown, his tiny claws getting stuck in the embroidery of her day gown. She kept extracting him from it, and he didn’t seem to be ruining anything—yet—and the joy of having two little furballs of love on her lap was worth a slight disarray of her gown, which was the one she kept for visits to the lesser neighborhoods she visited anyway.

The other kitten curled up into a ball on her thigh and promptly fell asleep, Olivia scratching its head.

“Yes, they are very sweet, but you cannot evade the questions through the use of feline subterfuge.”

Olivia looked at Pearl in surprise. “Have you been spending more time with Ida lately? ‘Feline subterfuge’ sounds like something she would say in court, actually.”

Pearl laughed. “No, I was just reading The Mystery of the Urn, or one of those kinds of books, and I thought I’d try speaking that way in real life.” Her expression became haughty. “Do you surmise I would be sufficiently able to persuade those persons of lesser intelligence and education of my undeniable ability to counteract any such attempt by another cat or cat-like animal to ravage ladies’ unmentionables?”

“You mean convince people you can keep the cats away from the rest of the shifts?” Olivia replied, laughing at Pearl’s absurdity. “I think so. Have at it, sister.”

Pearl got off the bed to take the shifts out of the cats’ way, and then returned to the bed, crossing her arms over her chest. “And now you have to tell me.”

She did. She would have to. It often felt as though something hadn’t truly happened unless she could tell her twin all about it.

They would have to discuss that in the future if or when one of them got married. But meanwhile, Olivia could tell her twin most of this.

“I kissed him.”

Pearl nodded slowly, encouraging Olivia to continue. “You kissed Mr. Wolcott, to be clear. You did not kiss Lord Carson.”