As much as she hated to admit it, and would never tell her sister, but Beryl was right about . . . love. Not that she didn’t intend to love Nikolai one day. It hadn’t seemed at all important at the beginning, but now, well, she was thirty years of age and it might be wiser to marry a man she already loved as opposed to one she planned to love. As she was not getting younger, it seemed rather foolish to waste time waiting to fall in love. There was, as well, always the possibility she would never love him at all. And while she did like him, did she wish to spend the rest of her days merely in like? Aside from anything else, shouldn’t one feel more than a mere tickling when a man kissed her palm in a most seductive manner? Shouldn’t that make her ache and yearn for more?

Still, she should kiss him properly before making any decision, even if she suspected she already had. One never knew really. Why, a proper kiss could change everything.

Regardless, the very least she could do was give Nikolai the kind of Christmas he expected. There was surely no need to reveal the truth about her family to him. She wasn’t entirely sure she could trust him to keep it secret. It was a most amusing story, after all. But she certainly couldn’t marry a man she couldn’t trust.

She sucked in a sharp breath. Good Lord, she would be a laughingstock if this got out. She would never be able to hold her head up in society again. While Nikolai was a charming man, honorable and a decent sort, who knew what might happen if she rejected his advances or, worse, his proposal? Men who had been spurned were not the least bit rational and sought vengeance in all sorts of unpleasant ways. While much more like Beryl than Delilah in terms of propriety, she had made a considerable effort to make certain her reputation wasn’t nearly as colorful as her twin’s. But once it got out that she had orchestrated this massive deception—and then hadn’t married the prince, after all—why, no one would believe it was she who had turned him down. She would not only be a joke, but a pathetic joke at that. Even worse, escapades like this tended to become legendary. The Brighton Incident would pale in significance. She would be in her dotage and would still no doubt hear whispers behind her back about the extreme and futile measures poor Lady Lydingham took to snare a prince.