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“What are you two doing?” Emily asked in a furious whisper as she approached her sisters. Amanda quickly hid her hands behind her back. “What do you have there?”

“Nothing,” Amanda said.

Emily counted it among her blessings that the twins were terrible liars.

“What do you have?” she repeated, putting more menace into her tone.

Rose sighed in disappointment as Amanda returned her hands to her front, uncapping them to reveal…

A frog.

Emily didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or groan. In the end, she did none of those things. Instead, she stepped closer, blocking the sight from the rest of the room. Her first instinct had always been to protect her sisters—and always would be.

“Why,” she asked, the question sounding vaguely desperate, “do you have afrogin aballroom?”

“We found him on the veranda and didn’t want him to get squished,” Rose supplied as if this were a reasonable answer.

“Why were you on the veranda without a chaperone?” Emily asked.

Amanda pouted. “Well, Emmy, you know you’re not a proper chaperone, don’t you? You aren’t married.”

If Emily hadn’t been terrified of losing sight of the frog—a frog!In aballroom!—for a single second, she would have closed her eyes at that comment. Yes, despite her best efforts to fashion herself into a proper chaperone for her sisters, she remained unmarried. She knew Amanda didn’t mean to be unkind by reminding her of this failure, but it did still sting a bit.

“Besides,” Amanda continued blithely. “There were plenty of chaperones out there. We went out there to talk to Lady Averton, after all.”

“Lady Averton is seventy-four years old,” Emily said, confused. What business could her sisters have with a woman some fifty years their senior?

“Yes,” said Amanda happily. “And shesmokes. She had a cheroot. A cheroot, Emily!”

Emily stifled a sigh and began composing a mental lesson for the next day:Things One May Do When One is a Very Old and Very Rich Dowager but which One May Not Do When One is an Eighteen-Year-Old Debutante Who Wishes to Marry.It was part of an ongoing series of lectures that Emily had begun in a so far fruitless attempt to preserve her own sanity.

But now was neither the place nor the time.

“Right,” she said tiredly. She wassoexhausted. Was it normal to feel this tired at her age? Certainly, it wasn’t. “Fine. Well, in the future, please put the frog somewhere that is both safe and outside. For now, let’s return him to the outdoors, so he can resume his happy, froggy life.”

“I have a partner for the next dance,” Amanda said, having the decency to at least look a bit abashed about this.

Emily turned to Rose, only to find the other girl had the same look on her face. “As do I,” she said.

“What were you planning on doing with the frog while—?” She cut herself off. Did it matter? She put out her hands, cringing slightly. “Fine.Fine.Give it to me.”

“Goodbye, little froggy,” Amanda whispered, pressing a kiss to its little head. Emily’s gorge threatened to rise, but she accepted the slimy package, careful not to let it escape her grasp in the transfer. The last thing she needed was for the blasted frog to get loose in the ballroom.

She struggled to keep a pleasant look on her face as her sisters’ dance partners retrieved them, trying hard to ignore the squirming movement from between her cupped hands. When her sisters were occupied with the quadrille, she heaved a sigh of relief before laughing at herself.

Oh yes. Now all that remained was the simple matter of smuggling a frog from a ballroom undetected. She shook her head. Say what one would about her sisters, but life was never boring when they were around.

CHAPTER 2

“There’s nothing there, you know.”

Benedict frowned briefly as his friend Evan, the Marquess of Ockley, and resumed brushing at his jacket. Benedictknewnothing was there, technically speaking. He just merely wanted to…restore himself to order after the interaction with that dreadfully outspoken young lady. Sadly, however, no one had yet invented a manner of brushing off one’s mind, so fussing with his jacket would have to do as far as soothing actions went.

“You really missed your calling as a valet,” Evan went on, completely ignoring Benedict’s scowl. “There’s still time to change careers. Perhaps it will bring you joy.”

“You propose,” Benedict asked dryly, “that I give up being an earl to become a valet? Whose valet would I even be?”

Evan shrugged. “Perhaps you and your actual valet could switch places. Let him be the Earl of Moore, and you can be…what’s your valet’s name?”