Chapter 3
In Which There Is Much Wooing-By-Proxy

The wooing-by-proxy began within the next week.

This had apparently been enough time for the news to spread that Edwina Sharma, runway model, hottest girl in her grade and probably any other grade, would not date anyone without her sister Kate's approval.

So the Neanderthal minds of Grosvenor's male population collectively decided that they they had to romance Kate- by proxy, of course.

She received teddy bears (cute), chocolates (which Kate and Gen split while an envious Edwina looked on), and floral bouquets of every extravagant variety- some presented to her with a flourish in the middle of the hallway (with phone numbers for Edwina surreptitiously slipped in as well), and others placed carefully at the foot of her locker.

One, from Anthony Bridgerton at that, had been hand-delivered by a courier in the middle of a statistics test. Thank God Mrs. Harrisford had found it romantic rather than a distraction. Kate thought he was trying to sabotage her GPA.

Then there were the invitations- to parties, shows, and even a couple clubs that had caused Kate to gasp like a scandalized grande dame while Gen laughed hysterically.

It's not that Kate was a foreigner to wooing; She'd dated a couple guys, except none of them went to Grosvenor because she didn't think she could handle dating rich boys and all the baggage that came with them.

So this style of romancing was quite the novelty to her.

But if Kate thought they guys trying to buy their way into Edwina's affections were bad, it was nothing compared to the ones who talked to Kate.

"Kevin," Kate found herself telling on particularly irritating suitor before Lit on Thursday, torn between exasperation and amusement, "you can't just ask Edwina out through me-"

"-No, you have to send a bouquet every day to Kate like the rest of us plebs," Anthony Bridgerton deadpanned as he took his seat in the desk behind Kate.

"Hey, my mom's never been happier with the amount of flowers I'm bringing her," Kate agreed before turning to Anthony.

"I've been meaning to talk to you," she told him in as menacing a manner as she could.

Unfortunately, Anthony only smiled. "Katharine, you're in literally all my classes," he observed pleasantly, which only made her want to throttle him more.

Kate plowed on, "Why is my sister sitting with you at lunch every day?"

Anthony shrugged. "Guess she likes me more than you thought."

"Yeah right," Kate scoffed. "What's really going on here? I swear to God if you try anything on my sister-"

Anthony interrupted her tirade, "-Why don't you join us and find out?"

Kate frowned. "What?"

"Join us at lunch, Sharma, and you can see I harbor no ill-intentions, or whatever," Anthony said, sounding like the guy in a period drama who absolutely harbored ill-intentions towards some poor debutante.

But before she could point that out, Gen collapsed into her seat next to Kate.

"I saw your locker!" she said breathlessly. When Kate looked questioningly at her, she added, "I thought I was late because I was scoping out the goods."

"At my locker," Kate confirmed wryly, to which Gen nodded. This was, of course, referring to the small shrine that had developed at her locker every day, gifts and people alike, all attempting to declare their eternal love, their undying adoration (or whatever) for Edwina Sharma through her sister Kate.

"So…" Gen asked teasingly, "any of them have a chance?"

Kate snorted. "Ugh, as if. It's not even like they've tried to get to know Edwina or what she likes. They've just thrown expensive bouquets and a bunch of fancy invites at my face."

"Can you imagine if you ever told them the kind of guy Edwina actually likes?" Gen smirked.

Kate couldn't help but grin at that.

You see, to say Edwina liked nerds was an understatement. Her first celebrity crush was on Adam Brody of all people- the dude who played Seth Cohen the O.C.- and she'd quietly dated a mathlete, a valedictorian, and a champion debater in rapid succession before she started modelling. But as soon as she'd signed that contract, suddenly, people expected her to go out with a different kind of guy, the sort who was probably a future member of a yacht club, rather than the more intellectual sort she preferred.

"If that ever got out," Kate whispered back, "Edwina would probably be surrounded by a bunch of dudes misquoting Kant or Plato."

"Ew, you know what they'd say?" Gen giggled. She deepened her voice and said in scratchy, pubescent boy-tones, "Sup girl, you wanna do naked gymnastics with me?"

Kate's entire body shivered with visceral distaste. "That is," she said, wincing, "the exact opposite of what Plato would have wanted. It was supposed to lead to the equality of the sexes through desexualizing the nude body- not them boning on the gym floor!"

It was only immediately after this pronouncement that Kate realized the entire class was staring at her.

"Anything else you want to share with the class, Sharma?" Anthony muttered behind her. Kate flushed, but stared resolutely ahead as Mrs. Rothwell waltzed in just as the bell rang.

Hopefully their teacher hadn't heard her… right?

"Okay!" Mrs. Rothwell said cheerily, "I introduced your semester project last class, and I want you all to start working on them immediately with your partners."

Gen turned to Kate at this and mouthed, "partners?" to which Kate replied, "duh."

Mrs. Rothwell continued, "Alright, so let's get some equality of the sexes going by doing opposite-sex pairings."

Okay, so Mrs. Rothwell heard her too.

The class tittlered, and Kate could only groan and cover her face with her hands.

This was a big mistake.

"Mrs. Rothwell, me and Kate will be working together," Anthony said loudly behind her, and Kate's head shot up just as their teacher agreed enthusiastically.

"What the hell?" she turned and hissed at him.

Anthony flashed her what would have been a devastating smile (not that Kate noticed) had she not been trying resolutely not to smother him with his own bookbag. "Looks like I'll be seeing Edwina a lot more now," he told her.

Kate didn't even have a response for that one, which was, quite frankly, shocking.

Oh he was good, she instead fumed silently.

We'll assume Grosvenor Prep is so posh they make high schoolers Plato's Republic.

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