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Dupeski, fortune teller extraordinaire, to tell our fortunes in
the hopes that we shall find success in amour.” Giles finished
with a grand flourish, introducing from the shadows a ravenhaired woman dressed in luscious multicolored skirts.
    “Your friends, my lord?” She asked in a Russian tinged
accent, sweeping the group with a white smile framed by red
lips. “Who shall be first?” she flirted.
    “I am” Alain volunteered with his characteristic impulsiveness, thrusting out his palm as Irina settled on the step
next to him.
    She ran an experimental finger over his palm, caressing
the lines. “What do you want to know, my lord?”
    Tristan’s thoughts drifted away from Alain’s fortune as
the gypsy’s words were drowned in a wave of laughter from
the group. He looked at each of his friends in turn and felt
an all too familiar pang of loneliness deep in his chest. He envied them their closeness. He envied them the years they’d
had together before his arrival into the tight-knit coterie. He
envied them the last seven years he’d been absent from their
presence, pursuing his own official and unofficial activities
on the Continent for the Crown.

    Tristan shifted his position on the balustrade where he sat,
drawing himself further into the darkness, away from the
shafts of light spilling out from the ballroom. He could see
Giles, his golden head thrown back in a deep, honest laugh,
his warm brown eyes sparking with mischief as he playfully
ribbed Chatham. In a moment, the teasing passed. Chatham
threw a warning look to Giles as Irina moved to take his palm.
    Tristan sighed. How he’d missed them all! His selfimposed exile had transpired in a vacuum of loneliness. He’d
missed Giles constantly organizing their entertainments.
He’d missed Chatham with his distinctively soft, clipped
aristocratic voice that women fell in love with everywhere.
He’d missed Alain, his best friend, most of all. It had been
too difficult to think about Alain without also thinking of
Isabella-a very good reason why one shouldn’t fall in love
with one’s friend’s sister. He had learned that lesson too late.
    Tonight, as Queen of the Heavens, she embodied the sun,
dressed as she was in a high-waisted gown of bronze silk
with tiny puffed sleeves banded in black velvet. Her honeycolored hair was piled high on her head in thick ringlets, a
few trailing down to brush the almost bare expanse of her
shoulders. Around her slender neck hung a topaz pendant
which was designed to emulate the sun. He was filled with
an unexpected and entirely inappropriate impulse to trace
her body with his hand from the column of her neck to the
topaz jewel that rested just above the swell of her breasts.
    He shifted, trying to exorcise his growing discomfort.
Seeing her yesterday had affected him more than he could
have imagined. The incident in the garden had nearly
unmanned him. The evening’s festivities with their overt
themes of love had done nothing to alleviate his situation.
Isabella had been true to her word in assisting him with his search for a wife. She’d been by his side most of the evening,
guessing at which Eligibles were cloaked beneath the dominoes. But not even the beauties she’d encouraged in his direction had been enough to distract him from her presence or the
recent memory of her touch when she’d held his hand by the
fountain. Tristan shifted again and made to slip further into
the shadows but Giles’s voice broke into his reveries.

    “Tristan, give Isabella your domino, she’s left hers inside.
We all know you’re a furnace anyway.” Giles ordered with a
goodnatured laugh, referring to the inordinate amount of
body heat Tristan managed to generate regularly, even in the
middle of a winter night. Tonight, Tristan wished he weren’t
quite so hot-blooded. A dash of cold would be welcome to
subdue his more heated thoughts.
    The object of his ungentlemanly discomfort was