She could write Sebastian a letter, apologizing and admitting she’d been wrong. But would he even read the thing?

She could pay Sebastian a call tomorrow and tell him she would like to go to the Hazeltons’ ball with him after all. But would he even see her? He’d packed her up and shipped her off. What made her think he’d take her call?

She could arrive at the Hazeltons’ ball and ask him to dance. Then, she could tell him she was no longer angry with him, and in fact, she was exceedingly sorry and desperately in love with him and had made a huge, awful mistake. After all, she was desperately in love with him. And she had made a huge, awful mistake. Only the odds of him dancing with her at the ball were probably the same as him taking her call and she’d risk embarrassing him by making a scene. And that was if he even bothered to attend the Hazeltons’ ball.

Oh, perhaps she’d simply begin with a letter. It was somewhere to start at least. It might not be grand, but it was better than nothing. Wasn’t it?

Wait. She had one more rule to make, didn’t she? Her third rule could be that he had to hear her out, give her a chance to explain. No. That was nonsense. He’d already released her from the bargain. He no longer cared about their silly rules.

A letter it was.

She flung back the covers and slid out of bed, heading for the small writing desk in the corner. She’d barely gone halfway when she tripped over a lump in the rug. Ouch. Rubbing her foot, she knelt, feeling in the dark for the lump. It didn’t take long to discover that a floorboard was out of place. She’d caught her toe on it.

She made to press the board back into place when a memory overtook her. She stood again and hurried back to the bed where she lit the lamp, then returned to the floorboard. She flipped the edge of the rug out of the way and set the lamp on the floor next to the offending board. She pulled the wooden plank out of its place and flipped it over. There, scratched into the wood, were letters she’d nearly forgotten. V loves S. She’d written them nearly a decade ago as an extremely certain-of-herself fifteen-year-old after a night spent talking to Sebastian in the mews behind the town house.

He’d been nineteen then and had come over to play a card game with Justin and the grooms while her parents were hosting a ball. She’d sneaked into the stables to take a mount to the park while the ball was going on. Only instead of escaping with her horse, she’d been forced to hide in the darkness of an empty stall for what seemed like ages because she hadn’t expected her brother and his best friend to have planned a game of cards in the mews that night. She’d been trapped there until the card game disbanded. And when it finally did, she was so ready to leave she’d hurried from her hiding spot only to rush out the door and straight into none other than Sebastian.