It was unfair to say they were kissing when Lady Sarah Prestlefield walked, or rather tiptoed, into the salon, Sophie thought bitterly. They had kissed, and kissed, but at that moment they were merely standing very close together, and Patrick was rubbing his finger across the curve of her lower lip. She was looking at his face in a rather bewildered way, conscious that her cultivated urbanity, her sophisticated manner of dalliance, had entirely deserted her and that in fact she couldn’t think of anything clever to say.

“Merde!” Sophie whispered, shaking off the memory. She could hear her father’s distant bellowing from the antechamber of the Brandenburg house, undoubtedly shouting for her to hurry. She knew exactly why he was in such a rush. Her father had started a new flirtation with a young French widow, Mrs. Dalinda Beaumaris, and probably had an assignation at the ball.

The thought steeled her resolve. It didn’t matter that she had been sobbing every night for a month since rejecting Patrick Foakes’s hand. The important thing was that she was right to reject him. Remember the shadow of relief that crossed his eyes when she disengaged her hands in the library the next morning and politely said no, she told herself fiercely. Remember that.

She was not going to have her heart broken by a libertine, the way her mama had. She was not going to turn into a bitter old woman, watching her husband circle the floor with Dalindas and Lucindas. She might not be able to stop her future husband from chasing other women, but she could certainly control the extent to which she cared about the matter.

“I am not a fool,” Sophie said to herself, not for the first time.

Hearing a scratch on her door, she stood up.

“Enter!”

“His lordship would be very pleased to greet you in the antechamber,” said Philippe, one of the footmen.

Sophie had no illusions about the wording of the actual message. Her father had bawled to Carroll, “get that chit down here!” and Philippe had been dispatched by a nod of the butler’s head. Carroll’s portly demeanor and his French sense of dignity precluded delivering messages of this sort.

She smiled. “Please inform my father that I will join him directly.”

As Philippe backed out the door, Sophie picked up her fan from the dressing table. She paused again in front of the mirror. What looked back at her was an image that had set fire to gentlemen’s hearts all over London, had inspired some twenty-two proposals of marriage and numerous intoxicated compliments.

She was small in size, only coming up to Patrick’s shoulder, Sophie thought absently. And her wispy silver dress emphasized every curve, especially those of her breasts. The fabric stiffened above its high waist, making it look as if she might fall out of the inch of material.