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There was also his physical stature, which Grace had found to be—not unpleasant.

Frances was still peering at her curiously.

“Nothing, I suppose,” Grace said in response to her friend’s query. “Or rather, I suppose I’ll get married.”

Evan swore into his teacup, long and fluid and inventive in his epithets. Frances was quieter, though she still looked worried.

Grace was wrong, she realized later, not to pay more attention to that worried look.

In the days preceding her wedding, she was kept busy doing all the things that, truth be told, her mother ought to have helped her with—ensuring her trousseau was in order, confirming with the seamstress that her dress would be ready in time, packing up the things that she’d move with her to her husband’s house.

Penelope Miller, however, never the most assertive of women, had, Grace learned, become even more passive in the years of her daughter’s absence. Though she dutifully joined her daughter on all her errands, Grace felt acutely aware that she was the one leading the charge, so to speak. If she’d left matters up to Penelope, Grace would have ended up moving to her marital home with naught but her old cotton nightgowns.

A quick inquiry led her to discover that the duke’s London residence was just on the edges of Mayfair—a shockingly remote location for aduke, and a far cry from Graham House’s location in Grosvenor Square—but not out of the realm of respectability. Perhaps she’d even like living in a slightly less central location, she allowed. Fewer prying eyes. And the duke’s house might beslightlycloser to Evan and Frances’ new townhouse than was Graham House.

“Silver linings,” she reminded herself.

What this meant, when pulled all together, was that by the time Grace was ambushed by her friends, it was the morning of the wedding itself.

She looked up from her dressing table to find all three of them looming behind her with fierce frowns on their faces.

“Good Lord,” she gasped, pressing her hands to her bosom. She was only half laced into her stays, thank goodness, or else she’d have injured herself with the force of that breath. “Don’tsneak upon people like that. Goodness!”

Diana crossed her arms. “You’ve been hiding from us,” she accused.

Grace turned in her seat to look at them. “I have not,” she protested. “I was arranging everything. You might have noticed, but I’m getting married today.”

She gestured to the light blue dress with silver embroidery that lay draped, ready and waiting, over the end of her bed.

Diana narrowed her eyes. “Yes, strange that you did not speak to us about this wedding. Don’t you find it strange, Emily?”

Emily, too, crossed her arms. “I do indeed find it strange, Diana,” she confirmed.

Grace gave them a quelling look. “You’re being ridiculous,” she scoffed. “I’ve just been occupied. You know that there’s alwaysplenty to do before a wedding, and I didn’t have much time to do it all.”

Frances nibbled on her lower lip, and Grace realized, with a jolt of surprise, that her friends weren’tannoyed.They wereconcerned.

“It’s all going to be fine, you know,” she told them. “I’m not upset about it, not really. Do I wish my father had been a bit less high handed? Yes, of course. But he’s been like this for more or less my entire life, so I’ve had time to get used to it.”

“I guess,” Emily said gently, dropping her arms back down to her sides, “what we’re wondering is why you aren’t upset. I mean…you don’t know anything about this man.”

This might have beentrue,but Grace did not think it wasfair. By now, she knew how her friends had all ended up married, after all—even if she tried not to think too hard about the details, in Evan and Frances’ case.

“You,” she said, pointing to Diana, “also did not know your husband when you married him—excepting, I might add, for the fact that you thought he was descended from a murderer.Mymurderer,” she tacked on, just for a bit of extra emphasis.

“You—” She turned on Emily. “—foughtyourhusband tooth and nail before you were married because he thought himself interested in yoursister. You were then, as I’ve been told, married under the auspices of scandal.”

Finally, she turned her accusatory finger to Frances. “And don’t even get me started on you.”

Her friends looked chagrined—though, in truth, not nearly as much as Grace would have hoped.

Diana, naturally, was the first to break back to her natural mulishness.

“Andrew and I kissed before we were wed, I’ll have you know. You and this Montgomery person haven’t evenspoken, if Frances is correct.”

“Benedict and I kissed, too, now that I think of it,” Emily said musingly.

Frances was gazing at the ceiling with interest. “I’ve never kissed anyone,” she said. “Certainly not anyone’s brothers. In fact, I don’t even know what kissing is, but please don’t tell me. I enjoy the mystery.”