I couldn't concentrate on the work in front of me. I must have read the same line three or four times and I still didn't understand what it was I was reading. I pushed the offending document away and leant back in my chair, massaging my eyes against the headache that was forming.

I knew exactly what the problem was, or should I say who. Priscilla, Lady Beaumonde. I'd barely slept after our tête-à-tête in the garden grotto and the altercation still bothered me. Nothing about last night made any sense to me. Her behaviour was so completely out of character that if I hadn't witnessed it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it.

And then that kiss.

I was totally in the wrong to kiss her that way, but common sense had departed and my baser urges had taken over. The feel of her pressed up against me, the way that, for just the briefest moment, she had melted against me, the taste of her lips and the softness of them against mine… it had to have been one of the most electric kisses of my life and it had been over far too soon.

And then there was the slap. The sting of her hand connecting with my cheek had chased any amorous feelings from me and replaced them with the hot fire of anger and humiliation. Thankfully I hadn't charged after her and had cooled my heels in the grotto until I had myself under control (and the redness from the slap had dissipated). I went back to the ball, but Priscilla was long gone and to be truthful, I hadn't expected her to go back there.

The door to my office opened and Louis walked in, a cheerful look on his face and he was whistling.

“Good morning brother dear,” he said as he dropped into one of the chairs opposite my desk.

“Why are you in such a good mood? I thought you were yet another victim of the infamous Beaumonde sisters.”

“Not at all. My evening ended far better than it began.”

“Oh yes? Found another unsuspecting subject to fawn over?”

“Of course not. Bianca and I sorted out our differences and everything is back to rights between us. Which brings me to the reason why I am gracing your office this morning.”

“As opposed to the fact that you are required to be here anyway to fulfil your apprenticeship duties?” I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Yes, well, you've had me working for the evil Majordomo for the last week and that has given me no time to complete the duties you require of me.”

“Indeed. But your indentured service is at an end and now I will require you to attend me. I am inundated with work for the wedding and my usual duties are getting further and further behind.”

Louis sighed as he leaned back in the chair and crossed one leg over the other, resting his ankle on his knee. “Fine. But you will continue to help me woo Bianca, won't you?”

“How do you propose I do that?”

“By keeping Priscilla occupied, of course.”

“I'm afraid that is not going to be possible,” I said, pulling the documents from earlier towards me and looking down at them with unseeing eyes.

“What do you mean? Why not?”

“What do you care? Last night you told me the deal was off.”

“That was before Bianca and I made up. Now it's even more important that you keep Priscilla occupied, especially with the Baron on the hunt.”

“I thought the Baron was betrothed already?”

“Exactly,” Louis said with an air of satisfaction.

I sat back and glared at him. “You are making no sense whatsoever.”

“Well, let me explain it so that you can understand. If I keep Bianca busy and you keep Priscilla busy then the Baron will have no chance to court either of them.”

“What? Why would he want to court the Beaumonde sisters when he already has an understanding with his betrothed’s father?”

“Because Priscilla is his betrothed.”

I stood to my feet and glared down at Louis. “What are you yammering about? The Baron told me he was betrothed to a woman named Katerina.”

Louis shrugged, “Well, I don't know about that, but Bianca told me that the Baron and Priscilla had been betrothed since she was quite young, but something happened and she demanded her father call it off. Of course neither her father nor the Baron took any notice of what she wanted and they are now here to make sure the agreement is fulfilled.”

The whole thing was making my head spin and I wasn't sure I could make heads or tales of the story Louis was telling. “So why was Bianca at the ball with the Baron?”

“Because the Baron told her that he didn't care which sister he married as long as he married one of them.”

I ran a hand through my hair in frustration. “That is ridiculous. Women are not interchangeable, but that is the least of what is wrong with this entire situation. Surely Lord Beaumonde would not force his daughters to marry against their will?”

“According to Bianca, her father is anxious for the agreement to be honoured. He was against both the young women coming here to work for the Queen and won't be happy until they are both married off.”

I paced around the room trying to make sense of the whole ordeal. It just seemed so medieval and I couldn't imagine my Priscilla bowing to her father’s unreasonable demands.

I sighed. She wasn't my Priscilla.

“As much as I want to help, there is nothing I can do.”

“Why ever not?”

“Because after last night I doubt Priscilla will ever speak to me again.”

I sipped from the glass of water on my desk and swallowed down another two ibuprofen. Thankfully, Meredith was acting as the Queen’s PA today and I was able to hide in the relative quietness of my own office.

I woke feeling like I had been run through the mill backwards. My mouth had been pasty, my head thumped and my eyes were gritty and sore. I hadn't been able to face food and my morning coffee had done nothing but turn my already sour stomach, nauseous.

It had been my own fault, I knew. I had let Piérre get to me and made the mistake of trying to smother my feelings with copious amounts of alcohol. All that had done was make the situation worse and leave me feeling like I would rather die than get out of bed.

But I had rallied and here I was, at my desk, trying valiantly to get some work done and forget about what happened last night. Not that I was having any luck with that and the worst of it was that I wasn't even thinking about how to extricate Bianca from the clutches of that evil man, but I was thinking about what had happened later, in the garden.

Dom and the way he had kissed me was all I could think about. Slapping him had been an act of self preservation. It was either that or let myself fall into his arms and that was something that absolutely could not happen. I’d had my fill of so called romance and I wanted nothing to do with it. Piérre had disabused me of my naïve feelings towards love and marriage and despite the attraction I felt towards Dom, I was not prepared to be burned again.

Besides, whatever was between us had to be purely physical. A normal chemical reaction that happened when two people of the opposite sex worked closely together. There was nothing more to it, nothing deeper, nothing romantic.

And I was angry at him anyway. How dare he kiss me like that! How dare he lay his hands uninvited on me! He should've known better and controlled himself. He should have restrained his desire and he deserved the slap I gave him. I refused to believe that the kiss I had given him earlier had given him a reason to kiss me back.

The fact was, he had rejected my overtures towards him, which had hurt like the blazes, but which I should have been prepared for. For him to then kiss me like he did, it was reprehensible. He took advantage of my weakened state and used it to his advantage.

No matter that the kiss had lit my entire body on fire. The man had a way with his kisses, but I wasn't going to think about that. I wasn't going to dwell on his forceful, yet tender kiss and the way he held me just so. I wasn't going to think about how bereft I felt when his body was no longer pressed against mine.

“Priscilla dear!”

I winced as Bianca came into my office all bubbly smiles and sunshine. Didn't she realise that I had wrapped a storm cloud around me and was relishing in the gloom?

“Bianca, please. Use your inside voice.”

“Oh dear, you look awful. Are you ill?”

“No, it's just a headache.” I looked up at her with suspicion. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm here to work, of course,” she replied smiling prettily at me and causing my own face to rearrange itself into a scowl.

“Why?”

“Well, isn't that why you brought me here, against Papa’s wishes I might add.”

I sighed and massaged my temples. She was right, but the thought of dealing with her today was enough to make the dull ache in my head explode into something much worse.

“Ms Montague has no more work for you?” I asked hopefully.

“Oh, I dare say she would find me work if I asked,” she scowled and then smoothed her face into a smile once again, “But I thought my time would be much more productively spent working with you. So what can I do?”

There was no help for it, I would need to give her a job to do. I handed her a box of printed place cards that had been delivered earlier. There was five hundred of the blessed things and I had been dreading the job of going through each an every one and making sure that the spelling was correct. I handed her a list and sent her over to the couch and coffee table to work.

“You need to match each name on the list with a place card,” I said tiredly, “And you need to make sure the spelling of the names are correct.”

Her smile drooped as she took in the pages of names. “All of these?”

“Every single one,” I replied.

With much less grumbling than I had anticipated, she set to work, leaving me to get back to my own work.

We had been working steadily for about half an hour when she spoke again.

“So, you and Dom…”

“There is no me and Dom and you should address him as Lord Chancellor.”

“Louis told me you had lunch together the other day.”

“It was a working lunch. Neither of us could spare the time to eat so we worked while we ate.”

“And he told me that Dom was quite interested in finding you last night.”

“Lord Chancellor,” I reminded her, “And he was just wanting to make sure I was fulfilling my duties.”

“So there’s really nothing going on between the two of you?”

“No, Bianca, there is nothing going on between us. We are barely civil to each other.”

“I thought things were getting better.”

“Look, what's all this really about?”

She shrugged and her cheeks flushed pink as she brought her attention back to the job she was doing. “I just thought that maybe you liked him and that was why you were resisting Piérre’s offer.”

I rolled my eyes, Bianca was still so young and naïve it was almost painful to see.

“I rejected Piérre’s offer because I am not in love with him.”

“But you were, once.”

“Yes, well, things change. Piérre wasn't the man I thought he was.”

“So what about Dom, I mean, the Lord Chancellor?”

“There is nothing but a working relationship between us and there never will be.”

“I just don’t understand her,” I said to Louis as we walked through the hedge maze. We had managed to get away from our siblings to steal a few moments alone so we could work on the problem of Priscilla and Dom.

“What don’t you understand?” he asked.

“I don’t understand why she won’t admit her affections for your brother. I’ve seen them together and whenever she has been in his presence of late, she wears a smile and I haven’t seen a smile on her face for a long time.”

“I have to admit that Dom is the same. When his wife died, he became a different man and I’ve noticed lately that the old Dom is making a comeback. The only thing that has changed is your sister so I can only conclude that she is the reason for his much improved mood.”

“So what happened last night to change everything?”

“Well, you turned up there on the arm of her betrothed,” Louis said and I could detect a note of unhappiness over the events of last night.

“They did argue,” I said thoughtfully thinking about the furious conversation I saw, but didn’t hear, between Priscilla and Piérre.

“Dom and Priscilla? What did they argue about?”

“No, Priscilla and Piérre.”

“You don’t think she still wants to marry him, do you?” he asked cautiously.

“She told me this morning, in no uncertain terms, that she wouldn’t be marrying him.”

“It’s just that maybe seeing you and him together sparked some sort of jealousy…”

“No,” I shook my head, “Priscilla doesn’t play games like that. And besides, if she still wanted Piérre, she would be angry at me, not Dom.”

“That’s true,” he said.

We wandered in silence along the white gravel paths and I tried to understand why my sister had turned so cold towards Dom so suddenly.

“Your brother wouldn’t have…”

“Wouldn’t have what?” he asked sharply.

“I don’t know, I mean, he wouldn’t have, like, tried anything with Priscilla?”

He looked at her askance. “Dom? Mr Propriety and Decorum? You think the Lord Chancellor of Protocol and Etiquette would be too forward with your sister?” He laughed like it was the biggest joke in the world.

I smiled at the silliness of it. I had never met another man like Lord Dominique Furore. Even my father who was fastidious when it came to proper behaviour looked like a slob next to the Lord Chancellor. I couldn’t imagine him trying to take liberties with a woman even if she was presented to him naked and willing.

“No, you’re right. But something must have happened because prior to last night, they had been getting along famously and now she’s back to being a cold fish towards him.”

“Does it really matter what he did—”

“Of course it matters!”

“No, you misunderstand my meaning. Obviously he did something to upset her, but does it really matter what it was? It all comes down to the same thing, he needs to make amends. He needs to apologise and humble himself at her feet and then she might actually forgive him.”

“He needs to grovel,” I said, my mind racing with possibilities.

“Exactly.”

“But how?”

“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?”

“It needs to be something big. She’s pretty mad about whatever it was.”

“Maybe he needs to bring her lunch from the kitchens like she did for him?” Louis suggested.

I chewed on my thumbnail as I thought about it. “I don’t think that will be enough. He can’t just bring her a trolley of food the same as she did, he needs to do better.”

“A picnic!” Louis said as the walked through the opening of the hedges and into the centre of the maze. “Here,” he said spinning slowly around with his arms outstretched, “In the centre of the maze.”

I looked around the space and grinned. It was perfect. It was secluded and quiet and beautiful. There was a fountain in the centre of the paved area and a wrought iron table and chair setting tucked away in one of the alcoves that lined the edge of the clearing.

“Do you think he’ll go for it?” I asked, worrying my thumbnail again.

“I think it’s her we need to be concerned about. How will we get her here if she is not even speaking to Dom?”

“I’ll get her here,” I said with determination, “If you can get Dom and a picnic here.”

He grinned and I couldn’t help smiling too. “Okay, when?”

“I took a little sneak peek at her diary this morning and I noticed that tomorrow is looking like a possibility.”

“Okay, good. I’ll speak to Chef and Dom and if we come down here early we can set up something just for them, you know, to get them in the mood.”

I gasped. “I don’t want your brother to seduce my sister,” I said, scandalised.

He chuckled, “That’s not what I meant,” he said, “I just mean that if we set it up so that it is private and beautiful and comfortable, then they are more likely to stay. We need to remove as many obstacles from their path as we can.”

“Okay,” I said, looking around the idyll, “But where are we going to get the stuff we need and what exactly did you have in mind?”

“Leave it all to me,” he said, “You just get Priscilla here by, say, one o’clock? And I’ll look after everything else.”

I squealed with delight and excitement. This was fun! I wrapped my arms around Louis and hugged him tight, kissing him on the lips in my exuberance.

“Thank you,” I said, genuinely grateful for his help, “I hate seeing my sister so sad.”

“My pleasure,” he replied, his voice low and scratchy. He kissed me again, slower and deeper and it was enough for my mind to go wonky and to forget what exactly it was that we were talking about.