No one could defy Christopher—not even Evelyn.
Hearing the noise behind them, Christopher and Charlotte turned their heads. Christopher immediately pulled his hand back from Charlotte and shoved it into his coat pocket, his tone colder than the winter wind.
“Where were you?”
Evelyn’s voice was weak, her breath barely visible in the icy air. “There was something important I had to take care of.”
Christopher’s eyes swept over her pale face, his jaw tightening. His hand flexed inside his pocket, betraying the storm of questions swirling in his mind.
Who had she gone to see? Why was she back so late? And why was she wearing so little in this kind of weather?
But when he finally spoke, the words came out stiff and unforgiving. “Do you know what you did wrong?”
Yesterday, Evelyn had shocked everyone by lashing out at Charlotte, using crude, biting words that left Charlotte shaken—so shaken, in fact, that it triggered a mild heart episode.