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“And do you like it?”
“Some of it.” She glanced at James before she could stop herself, and something warm moved into his eyes, and Charlotte made a small sound into her cup that Rosalind chose not to hear. “I like rooms where people do not try too hard. The Danforths’ house. The Allertons. I like people who laugh before they decide whether they ought.”
Miss Lennox pointed at herself. “I qualify.”
“You do.”
“And Miss Mayfield does not.”
“I laugh,” Miss Mayfield protested. “After consideration. It prevents waste.”
Rosalind laughed, and it came easily now, and the talk went on without asking anything useful of her. Miss Lennox had a cousin who had proposed to the wrong sister at a house party in Kent and been corrected before breakfast. Miss Mayfield had an aunt who believed every illness could be cured by more blankets. Charlotte had quarreled with her brother that very morning, because Stephen had spent twenty minutes choosing a cravat before going to call upon Phoebe and then claimed not to care how he looked.
“He changed it three times,” Charlotte said.
“He is in love,” Rosalind replied, and those words came easily too.
Charlotte blinked at her. “You say that very calmly.”
“I have had evidence.”
James lifted his cup. “I have been told evidence matters.”
“It does.”
“And what does the evidence say of me?”
The table went quiet. He had asked it lightly, but not entirely lightly, and Rosalind looked at him and did not reach for a deflection.
“It says you walked through the middle of a ballroom when the wall was shorter,” she replied.
His gaze held hers. “Then I am content with the evidence.”
Miss Lennox let out a breath, and Charlotte grinned. “Do not encourage them. They have only just begun.”
Color climbed into Rosalind’s face, but she did not look away.
Another tray came toward the crowded table, and the waiter hesitated over it, looking for a place to set it down. Rosalind’s body moved before her mind did — and then she stopped herself, hands in her lap, and watched the man shift the sugar bowl, move the dangerous plate half an inch inward, and find his room without her.
Miss Mayfield said nothing. Neither did Charlotte.
“It appears he knows his work,” Rosalind said.
“I had every confidence in him,” said James.
“You did not even see him until I moved.”
“I had confidence in you, then.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No,” he said. “It is better.”
She busied herself with the orange biscuit, because she was allowed to do that. Eating a biscuit was not work.
When they rose at last, Miss Mayfield went to settle the order for her mother’s supper, and Rosalind stood too. “I should go with you. There will be quantities to confirm.”
“My mother’s housekeeper sent the quantities in writing.”
