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rest of her life.
    Kisses could be wonderful. A man could be intriguing. She’d been numb, but now she’d been kissed into awareness.
    She laughed to think such silly thoughts--even as she thrilled from head to toe all over again. She closed her eyes, but it was a long time before the dark eyes foremost in her thoughts slipped into her dreams.
     

Chapter 6
    Phoebe sat back in the chair in Olivia’s dressing room, watching her younger sister with contemplative eyes. Something had happened last night to Olivia; Phoebe was convinced of it.
    There had never been a more dramatic change in a person. She knew she was completely right in thinking this, for even Olivia’s little maid, that Mary Kate, had been disapprovingly watchful at her mistress’s giddy mood this morning.
    “What do you think?” Olivia asked Phoebe, each hand tugging forth the hem of a dress in her wardrobe for display. She had yet to change out of her nightclothes. “The rose, or the peacock?”
    “Olivia, surely the peacock is an evening gown?” Phoebe cried, rather shocked.
    Olivia cocked her head on one side, and nodded. She giggled, pulled down the rose gown, and reached to undo the ties of her nightrail.
    Phoebe rose to help her sister. “You are gay today,” she said, steering the conversation in the direction she wished it to go.
    “Am I?” Olivia asked, throwing her sister a bright smile that acknowledged the fact.
    “Why, one would believe you to be in love.”
    Olivia laughed again, merrily. “Oh no,” she assured her sister, shaking her head and smiling as though at some private joke.
    This was not missed by Phoebe, who was all the more intrigued. Nor had she missed that Olivia had said nothing toward the fact Phoebe had come to call, and so early. Good heavens, when was the last time she’d called on Olivia? But she’d been burning with curiosity upon waking, wondering why Olivia had been at Lord Quinn’s masquerade. Once her children had been settled with nanny and tutor, she’d come at once.
    “Do you know, it has been ages since we’ve gone to the market, or the shops, or had a modiste come to us,” Olivia said as Phoebe finished with the last button on the rose muslin.
    “Gracious, it has. Since Mama was yet with us,” Phoebe confirmed.
    “Do you have time to spare? Shall we go? Let’s not wait for a modiste to come to us, let us go to her,” Olivia cried, smiling at her sister’s reflection in the cheval glass opposite where they stood.
    “By all means,” Phoebe agreed.
    She didn’t add that Olivia would have some trouble being rid of her until she got to the bottom of the mystery.
    ***
    Olivia wasn’t unaware of her sister’s keen eyes upon her. She simply was unconcerned by the fact. Phoebe couldn’t know what kind of an evening she’d spent.
    Having such a rich secret was enough to make a statue grin, let alone a woman who not only could say she was young, but one who had begun to believe it again last night. She’d wanted to throw off the mantle of death and grief, and she’d done it. Now it seemed impossible she could ever have allowed the past to hold her back, pin her down, make her something other than she really was. She’d been living a lie, and it had taken some soul-blooming moments in the dark to make her not only reach beyond it, but know she must continue on her new path.
    She knew exactly where she would start in this renewed life of hers: kisses. She would go out into the world, and she would flirt, and she would let men kiss her, time and again, until she’d had enough of kissing.
    It might be awhile , she thought.
    “Why are you smiling?” Phoebe asked.
    Olivia shrugged, and tucked the smile away, not least because she wondered if all kisses were as affirming as his had been…
    Phoebe handed her a fichu, intended to be secured around her shoulders and tucked into the front of her gown, but after a moment’s thought Olivia put it aside. She was showing a little bit of décolletage,