Happily, however, she and her sister would be together for the next fortnight. She wasn’t about to give up her spot among the potted palms for a man who thought women were mere ornaments. Someone to decorate his arm and nod in awe while he waxed on about horses or hunting. She’d had her share of suitors, but each one had been looking for a reserved, genteel wife. Everyone said Lily’s turn was coming, but so far, no prince had appeared. Lily couldn’t have been happier for Fiona, but she missed having her at home. Over the last few months, Lily had watched wistfully as her older sister fell in love and married a handsome earl who adored her. But if the dance floor were a metaphor for life, she was still lingering on the perimeter, squished between the potted palms and a wall of matchmaking mamas. Lily had heard Fiona’s reassurances before. “You’ll find someone who makes your heart beat faster and who admires your generous, adventurous spirit.”
“It’s only a matter of time,” Fiona sympathized.
“Much to my chagrin, no.” She found it ironic-tragic, really-that the authoress of The Debutante’s Revenge, the column that had scandalized proper matrons and dutiful chaperones throughout London with its salacious advice and provocative drawings, had never been properly ravished. “ Have you kissed someone?” she asked, a conspiratorial grin lighting her face. She lifted her gaze from the paper and swept an auburn curl behind her ear. “‘If she so wishes, every young woman on the marriage mart should experience a real kiss-the sort that starts with a brush of the lips but progresses to knee-melting pleasure,’” Fiona read, nodding as though she was impressed. Noting Fiona’s widened eyes and arched brow, Lily braced herself. She wanted her sister’s opinion on this week’s installment before delivering it to the newspaper’s offices. Miss Lily Hartley plucked a silk pillow off the settee in her sister’s drawing room and hugged it to her chest, carefully observing Fiona’s expression as she read the paragraphs Lily had drafted that morning for their wildly popular column in the London Hearsay. “Read the forbidden books-the ones hidden at the back of the top shelf that will surely make you blush-for they are, undoubtedly, the most edifying.”
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