“I despise him,” Eleanor sputtered.

“As do I!” Beatrice’s brows became slash marks above her dark almond eyes.

Eleanor drew in her chin. “Why on earth did you invite him tonight when he’s such a scoundrel?”

Poppy’s mouth fell open. Oh, dear. She couldn’t explain that, could she? She couldn’t reveal anything about Operation Pink Lady.

She supposed she shouldn’t have told her two friends about Sergei’s true nature, but they were her closest companions. She couldn’t have held that back. She needed their support.

But … how to explain his presence tonight?

She gave them a weak smile, hating to lie. “I, um, I invited him and his sister because of old times’ sake. I think it will bring Papa a great deal of comfort to have a Russian meal with Russian guests, don’t you? St. Petersburg was the last place he had fun with Mama.”

Beatrice nodded. “That makes sense.”

“It’s a tremendous sacrifice for you,” Eleanor said, “but very thoughtful.”

“And I believe I can handle the prince,” Poppy said, assuaging her guilt with a genuine smile of affection for her friends. “Especially with you two in my corner.”

“Exactly,” said Beatrice. “We’re Spinsters. He’s asked the wrong girl to be his mistress.”

“Speaking of which”—Poppy grabbed their hands—“I put you on either side of him at the table. We keep our enemies close. So do take good care of him. But never let him guess what you know.”

“Poor Sergei.” Eleanor giggled.

And Poppy breathed a sigh of relief. Everything she’d said about Sergei had been true, hadn’t it? She’d simply left out that one small bit about his involvement with the portrait she was trying to help Drummond retrieve.

Fortunately, Aunt Charlotte arrived just then, resplendent in her gold gown, and diverted the talk away from Sergei by passing out her new version of the Spinster bylaws for the ladies to place in their reticules, with a strict reminder that wisdom was imperative in all Spinsters and couldn’t always be accrued in sufficient amounts by age twenty-one without some effort at seeking it.

Which led her into a speech about acquiring as much experience as possible as soon as possible—from traveling to studying to flirting with interesting men … as long as that flirtation didn’t involve …

Disrobing.

“It leads to all sorts of complications,” their club advisor insisted. “Especially if the man in question is—how shall I say?—endowed with qualities you can’t really appreciate until you see them. Or, um, until you see it. It could be simply one quality. A very nice quality.”

Her brow puckered, and she trailed off.

“Do tell us more,” Beatrice insisted.

“Yes,” Eleanor agreed.

Poppy was highly intrigued, as well. She had a suspicion now what that one intriguing quality might be—after having pressed close to Drummond, she could hardly not be aware of it. In fact, the thought of that one quality in Drummond made her a bit weak in the knees.

But the shocking, titillating talk was interrupted by the arrival in the drawing room of Lord Derby, who greeted the party of ladies cordially. Only Poppy could tell that her papa wasn’t used to having guests for dinner. There was a certain endearing awkwardness in his manner that he usually lacked.

The next guests to arrive were Lord Wyatt and several of Papa’s old friends from his Cambridge days. Lord Wyatt kept the conversation lively with stories about his expansive castles in Devon and Cornwall, both on vast properties he’d recently acquired. Papa didn’t appear to know what to do with his old friends other than talk politics, which Poppy knew he could do in his sleep. Nevertheless, they seemed to enjoy his company, and he theirs.

“Good idea,” Aunt Charlotte whispered to her at one point. One of Papa’s friends had asked to bring his widowed sister. The woman was pretty and lively, with a tendency to laugh easily, and Papa seemed quite comfortable and jolly himself in her company.

But where was Drummond? And where were Sergei, Natasha, and the Lievens? Poppy could barely stand the suspense. She did her best to be a cheerful hostess, but her stomach was doing flip-flops.

Finally, a carriage was heard arriving out front.

Poppy was terribly excited. She stood, smoothed down her lovely gown, and waited.

Kettle appeared in the drawing room door, announced the party, and she saw—

Drummond and Natasha together.

Whatever for?

But before she could even wonder, she saw that Natasha was wearing her gown.

All of the blood in Poppy’s face rushed to her feet. She gulped, stung by the depth of her hurt.

How could she?

How could Natasha be so cruel?

And then embarrassment spread through Poppy from head to toe, scalding her face red. This was clearly no accident. She’d been played for a fool. And the worst of it was, the princess looked far more compelling a figure than she did. Natasha wore the dress dampened—dampened—to a perfectly respectable dinner party. A magnificent emerald necklace dangled between her breasts and glinted in the candlelight, calling every man’s attention in the room to her ample bosom.

“I’m sorry we’re late.” Natasha tossed her elegantly coiffed head. “Nicky here insisted on driving me himself.”

Poppy gulped. Nicky? She exchanged discreet looks with both Eleanor and Beatrice, both of whom conveyed to her with their eyes that they understood exactly how awful the situation was.

Drummond cleared his throat. “It was what any gentleman would do, Your Highness, when a lady sends an appeal for an escort.”

Natasha laughed. “You should give yourself more credit, Nicky. You went above and beyond to make me comfortable”—she drew a hand along his arm and gave a breathy sigh—“for which I thank you.”

This was too much. Poppy took a slow, discreet breath. The Duke of Drummond was her fiancé—at least for the time being. How dare the Russian princess act as if she were his lover?

She’d little time to fume, however, because Kettle announced the rest of the missing guests, the Lievens and Sergei. Countess Lieven was a supreme hostess herself, and both she and her husband were well acquainted with Lord Derby. Introductions were easy, but they eyed Poppy’s gown with faintly bemused expressions.

It was humiliating, to say the least.

Sergei looked back and forth between her and his sister. “Who cares about my sister’s gown?” he said in jovial fashion for all the company to hear. “She may have a bigger bosom, but she has only a duke to admire her, while you have a prince, Lady Poppy.”

Heavens, was that meant to be a compliment to her? If so, it was the rudest one she’d ever received, and it was an obvious slight to Drummond, as well.

There was an awkward silence.

It was her duty as hostess to cover it up, wasn’t it?

“Um, it won’t be long before dinner,” she said but could think of nothing scintillating to add.

Fortunately, Aunt Charlotte, Beatrice, and Eleanor took over. They began small conversations here and there, so that a few minutes later, it was as if her embarrassment had never happened.

“My little Spinster,” the prince murmured for her ears only in a corner of the drawing room, “you do look delectable. Have you thought any more about my proposition?”

“No, I haven’t,” she whispered back. “Because I’m not interested. I told you already. We’re friends only.”

It was at moments like this that Poppy most missed her mother. Mama would have come up with a sparkling comment about the gowns to make all the company laugh and feel at ease. She wouldn’t have needed her aunt and her friends’ help. Mama also would have devised a proper set-down for Sergei that would have shamed him and kept him well-behaved.

And later, after everyone had left, she would have wrapped her arms around Poppy and told her she could cry all she liked about having a bosom smaller than Natasha’s—there were some things a girl simply didn’t have to apologize for.

But Mama wasn’t here.

Poppy bent the fingers of her right hand so she could feel her mother’s rings squeeze into her palm. She made the decision to focus on her party, to be a superb hostess despite the fact that it had gotten off to a bad start.

So she brushed past Sergei and went straightaway to Natasha, hoping to ease the tension. “What a droll coincidence we’ve chosen the same gown,” she said warmly.

Natasha shrugged. “It’s of no consequence to me. But perhaps it should be to you.”

Poppy’s hand itched to slap the smug expression off the princess’s face, and her stomach roiled with the new and unexpected crisis of confidence. But she would deal with it as any good hostess would.

“You’re entirely correct,” she said, then excused herself from the room and hastened to the stairs. But she was stopped from ascending them by a hand on her elbow.

“Just where do you think you’re going?”

It was Drummond.

Her heart began to hammer. He’d been instrumental in her choosing to throw a dinner party tonight. And now she wasn’t sure she could carry it off.

She schooled her expression into a cool smile and turned. “I’m changing my gown.”

Drummond rolled his eyes. “Only women would call wearing identical dresses a disaster, but even so, the damage is already done. Why bother?”

She inhaled a breath. “Because it will diffuse the tension everyone is feeling. Besides, I can’t compare—”

“You’re right,” he interrupted her. “You can’t. Which is one reason the princess is so jealous of you and is milking the situation.”