They executed this one perfectly, which was to say, they didn’t fall down.

“You were saying,” he prompted.

She looked up at him with faux severity. “I should claim to have forgotten my train of thought.”

“But you won’t.”

She made a sorry little face. “Oh, but I think I have forgotten.”

“Sarah.”

“How do you make my name sound like such a threat?”

“It doesn’t really matter if it sounds like a threat,” he said. “It only matters if you think it sounds like a threat.”

Her eyes grew wide, and she burst into laughter. “You win,” she said, and he was quite sure she would have thrown up her hands in defeat if they had not still been depending upon one another to stay upright.

“I think I do,” he murmured.

It was the strangest, most awkward waltz imaginable, and it was the most perfect moment of his life.

Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

Several nights later, well after dark

in the guest bedchamber shared by

the Ladies Sarah and Harriet Pleinsworth

“Are you going to read all night?”

Sarah’s eyes, which had been speeding along the pages of her novel with a most pleasurable abandon, froze in place upon the word forsythia. “Why,” she said aloud (and with considerable aggravation), “does that question even exist in the realm of human activity? Of course I’m not going to read all night. Has there ever even existed a human being who has read all night?”

This was a question she regretted immediately, because this was Harriet lying in bed next to her, and if there was anyone in the world who would respond by saying, “There probably has been,” it was Harriet.

And she did.

“Well, I’m not going to,” Sarah muttered, even though she’d already said as much. It was important to get the last word in a sisterly argument, even if it did mean repeating oneself.

Harriet turned onto her side, scrunching her pillow under her head. “What are you reading?”

Sarah pushed back a sigh and let her book fall closed around her index finger. This was not an unfamiliar sequence of events. When Sarah could not sleep, she read novels. When Harriet could not sleep, she pestered Sarah.

“Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron.”

“Haven’t you read that before?”

“Yes, but I enjoy rereading it. It’s silly, but I like it.” She reopened the book, planted her eyes back on forsythia, and prepared to move forward.

“Did you see Lord Hugh tonight at supper?”

Sarah stuck her index finger back into the book. “Yes, of course I did. Why?”

“No reason in particular. I thought he looked very handsome.” Harriet had dined with the adults that evening, much to Elizabeth’s and Frances’s chagrin.