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in the least.”
    Unless her own actions ruined Serena…
    Grace squeezed her arm gently. “You may not be worried about your sister, but you are worried about something. Your eyes are quite wild. Won’t you tell me what it is?”
    Isabel hesitated. She had always been open with her friends, but now she wasn’t certain she could confess what she had allowed to happen in the library.
    “Please tell me you aren’t still worried about that book,” Grace whispered when Isabel hadn’t filled the silence after her question.
    Isabel swallowed. The book. Oh, the book was the least of her worries now, though she did find herself thinking of it from time to time, wishing she could have explored it more closely.
    “No,” she forced past suddenly dry lips. “I returned it last night.”
    “Oh.” Grace’s face fell unexpectedly, almost as if that news brought her some kind of disappointment. “I see. Then I suppose you’ll now return to your normal ‘duties’?”
    “Hmmm,” Isabel murmured, noncommittal as she thought of the question.
    After a night like last night, could one go back to some kind of normalcy? In time, could she force herself to forget that kiss?
    Suddenly Grace’s hand tightened on her arm and her friend gave her a little shake. When Isabel looked at her, she found Grace was staring at her in obvious concern and undeniable curiosity.
    “What is wrong with you, Isabel?” her friend hissed below her breath. “You are acting so strangely, I’m becoming alarmed. Shall I call for a doctor?”
    Isabel drew in a breath to reassure Grace of her health, but before she could say the words, the veranda doors opened wide and Lord Lyndham stepped onto the stony terrace with his friend Lord Northfield right behind him.
    All words died on Isabel’s lips at the sight of him, and the world slowed to half time as she stared. He said something to the crowd at large, but Isabel didn’t hear it. She was too focused on the fascinating way his lips moved. Now that she had felt them against her own, they were all she could see or think about.
    “Isabel,” Grace growled.
    She turned to look at her friend. Her best friend. The one person who had never judged her, not even when she’d confessed her darkest feelings or her deepest urges.
    Grace knew more about the world than she did, and it was clear Isabel was wildly over her head in this situation. Her only hope was to tell Grace what had happened and obtain her help in forgetting that kiss.
    But Serena was coming toward her now, flanked by the Marchioness of Crestwood and her charge, a maiden niece named Jessica or Jesabel or Jocelyn or some such thing. Once they arrived, there would be no whispering the truth, and Isabel feared her head might explode.
    She turned back to Grace. “I must tell you something in the strictest of confidence.”
    Grace drew back from the wildness Isabel was certain was all over her face. Then she nodded. “Very well.”
    “Last night—” Isabel shot a look over her shoulder.
    Serena and the others had been briefly waylaid by a conversation, but they were still almost too close for her to finish her tale. She quickened her words.
    “Last night when I returned the book, Seth…” She bit back a curse. She must stop thinking of him and referring to him by his given name. “ Lord Lyndham discovered me.”
    “Again? You are unlucky,” Grace laughed.
    Isabel ignored her friend’s chuckle. “We kissed.”
    Her friend’s laughter trailed off and now Grace stared at her. Isabel shifted. Her friend’s expression was impossible to read. Grace just looked at her, even and emotionless, as if she was taking in what Isabel had said.
    Serena and her party were steps away now, but that didn’t stop Grace from finally speaking. “And how was it?”
    Isabel’s mouth dropped open in shock. “That is what you are asking me? That is your response?”
    “Hello!” Serena said with a warm smile as she reached the two women.
    Isabel shrugged off