Fran dropped the pins she held on the dressing table with a clatter and turned away, muttering a prayer.
“My lady, you did not tell me of this.”
“I didn’t?” Amelia sobered enough to start taking down her hair herself while Fran paced. Her head ached, and her lips throbbed. Such a wicked sensation. She was impulsive and often wild, but she wasn’t a woman who sought male attention. She’d never felt bodily urges to be intimate with someone. She’d assumed it was because she hadn’t met the right person.
Until tonight. Until Graham kissed her. Now her whole body needed touch. She needed things she could not explain.
Fran approached her, cupping her face. “What have you done, Amelia Jane Clark?”
The use of her middle name, her mother’s name, snapped her out of the fog. “What? Oh, it just happened yesterday afternoon. But it isn’t real, you see. My aunt and Nelson were being pushy, as usual, and I just blurted out that Graham and I were engaged. She was already threatening to move in with me while my brother was away on his pretend journey. But with Graham as my fiancé, she won’t, and she can’t pressure me to marry Nelson—at least that was the idea. But what about my brother? Has anything happened while we were gone?”
“Petrov gave him more broth.”
Amelia sighed with relief.
“Finish your story.”
“Well, tonight we had to act engaged, but it did not go well. There was tension between us from the start. Then there was Julia Whistler, Lady Foxcroft, who was whispering with Mr. Blakewood during the music, and he was ignoring me. My aunt used it to insinuate that he was only marrying me for my inheritance. Then we got home and fought. I told him... I told him he needed to do better at pretending to like me. He said something about experience and knowledge that I still don’t understand.” Amelia bit her lip. They remembered the feel of Graham’s, and her panic rose all over again.
They’d kissed. If she licked her lips, would she taste him? She picked up a cloth and wiped her mouth.
“Continue, please,” Fran said as she finished taking down Amelia’s hair and brushed it out.
“He said he would kiss me. That doing so would... make us appear more as a couple because then we’d have shared something. Does that make sense?”
“Of course it does.”
“Does it? How?”
Fran smiled. “When a couple has shared intimacies, there’s always a look about them. They’re always taking peeks at each other, smiling like idiots, looking for any excuse to be alone. It’s obvious when two people are in love.”
Amelia scooted around to face Fran. “But we’re not in love. How do we become a convincing couple? We need to make this last as long as possible, long enough for my brother to recover.”
“So, Mr. Blakewood kissed you. Did you kiss him back?”
“Yes, what else was I supposed to do?”
“How did it make you feel?”
Amelia blushed. “All sorts of things.”
“Such as? Revulsion, bitterness, nausea?”
Amelia frowned. “No. Pleasant things. I felt warmer, tingly.” Her eyes widened. “What does that mean?”
Fran’s eyes danced with humor. “It means he can give a proper kiss. Not all men can.” She said it with a wink. She cocked her head and looked up at the ceiling. “Aye, Mr. Blakewood is likely talented at a lot of things. He’s got big hands. And the quiet ones are always the most...” She drifted off as she studied Amelia. “Never mind.”
“No, tell me. What does it mean?”
Fran poked her nose. “It means you enjoyed the kiss.”
“And?”
“And that’s all. Why do you think that new maid Millie West has a new man every week? She enjoys the chase, and she enjoys being caught. She’s not a woman who loses her heart. She just likes to get to know a man. If you know what I mean.”
“No,” Amelia argued. “There is nothing clear about any of this!”
Fran sighed and lowered to her knees, face-to-face with Amelia. She took hold of Amelia’s hands.
