Victoria picked up a framed photograph on her desk of Ralph and his best friend posing in their smashing Royal Air Force uniforms. The best friend was Lawrence Grayson, her brother. Ralph DuPont was the man to whom she was engaged to be married. Victoria had lied that the RAF pilot in town for only a night was her brother, but it was true that he’d be leaving for Virginia in the morning. Ralph’s father was seriously ill in Williamsburg, the reason he’d been given temporary leave. If Beaumont Fournier had been informed that Ralph was her fiancé, the Frenchman might have—would have—waved that consideration aside as of no consequence. So what? But a brother on humanitarian leave from the RAF for such a precious little time…well, that was a different matter entirely. How could the author in good conscience and taste demand her company?

There had been no time for a wedding after Ralph had slipped a ring on her finger in February just before he rejoined his Eagle Squadron. Elopement was out of the question. Their families would have murdered them. “This may not be fair to you, Vicky, tying you down like this, and if you should have reason to change your mind before I get back…” he had said.

“Never,” she said. “Never, never, never.”

Of that, she would never be surer of anything in her life. She had been in love with Ralph DuPont almost since she could walk. She had simply found no reason not to be. Long before she was old enough to appreciate and respond to him as a man, he had won her heart merely by treating seriously his best friend’s little sister through all her stages of growing up. Those had been cherished times, the moments in her childhood and adolescence when he had veered off from Lawrence’s company to allow her to introduce him to her doll, her hamster, to show him her new pair of roller skates, the fort she had supervised building out of Christmas trees, the A she had made in English composition. He had listened to her and not brushed off her dreams and aspirations as those of a silly schoolgirl. If Lawrence had paid her any mind, he would have seen that there was nothing silly about his younger sister. It had been Ralph who had encouraged her to try her hand at foil when she was still in junior high school. Victoria had found that after stolen moments alone with him, she’d felt suddenly, devastatingly lonely once he had gone.