She couldn't blame it on her courses; those had come and gone a week ago, with their attendant stomach pains, spots, and snippiness. That would have been too easy. This was a distemper of the mind rather than the body, and it had begun with the arrival of the marquise. No, Henrietta corrected herself with brutal honesty. Not with the arrival of the marquise. With Miles's lingering to speak to the marquise. Henrietta banged her forehead against her knees. There was really no escaping it, was there? She was jealous. Jealous, jealous, jealous. Miles was supposed to be her escort, her permanent cavalier. Where there was jealousy…

Henrietta jerked her head up so quickly that she nearly tumbled off the chaise. She couldn't have fallen in love with Miles. The very term, with all of its poetic resonance, conjured up something grand and dramatic. There was nothing whatsoever grand or dramatic in the way Henrietta felt about Miles. It was a very simple concept, really: She just didn't want to share him with anyone. Ever. She wanted to be the person his eyes sought out in a crowded ballroom, the person he nudged when he had a really smashing joke he just had to tell, the first person he saw when he woke up in the morning, and the last person he spoke to when he went to bed at night. She wanted to be the one whose ear he whispered in at the opera, and the one perched next to him in his alarmingly tottery phaeton when he drove in the park at five.

Love, Henrietta told herself with a decisiveness she was far from feeling, was something of a different caliber entirely.

Before their first Season, she and Penelope and Charlotte had spent endless hours eating whatever biscuits were left after Miles raided the tray, and discussing Love. Love in capital letters, that would swoop down with shining wings and carry them away to realms of enchantment hitherto undreamed of. Love, of course, would be properly attired in tight tan buckskins, wear an immaculately tied cravat, and have a vaguely rakish air. His arrival would be heralded by violins in the background, an impressive firework display, and the odd clap of thunder, all signaling to her instantly that the love of her life had come to her. And here she was, without a thunderbolt in striking distance, musing over Miles, Miles who had been there nearly all of her life, without any sort of emotional pyrotechnics taking place.

It was ludicrous. If she did harbor deeper feelings for Miles, wouldn't she have known sooner? Wouldn't she have felt odd constrictions of the heart as he snatched biscuits out from in front of her, and turned cartwheels into the duck pond? All the books were quite clear on that point: When one's true love turned up, one was supposed to know. Immediately.

Of course, she had been not quite two when Miles first showed up at their door, and her vision of love at the time had a lot to do with warm milk.

Henrietta turned her head to stare thoughtfully at the moon. By all the classic measures, she couldn't be in love with Miles. But how did one account for the fact that the very thought of him driving with someone else filled her with bitter wormwood and gall ? As for the thought of him marrying someone else… the idea was too harrowing to even contemplate.

Miles. The name tasted right on her tongue.

Henrietta chuckled in the darkness. Of course it did! She had been uttering it in various tones of assertion, annoyance, and affection for the past eighteen years. Eighteen years. Henrietta let her chin sink back to her knees and thought about eighteen years of Miles. She thought about the way his cravat never stayed tied and his hair never stayed brushed, and the way his smiles always seemed too big for his face.

Millions of memories of Miles crowded one after the other in glorious chronological disorder. Miles letting her take the reins of his curricle and drive his beloved bays, breathing down her neck all the while — hmph, she had been nowhere near that tree. Miles popping out of her wardrobe as the Phantom Monk of Donwell Abbey, but ruining the effect by yanking the sheet off his head the minute she screamed. The scream had been one of indignation, rather than fear (she wasn't simpleminded; she'd seen the black shoes poking out under the edge of the habit), but it seemed a shame to inform Miles of that when he was so busy apologizing. There was the summer she was thirteen and had climbed too far up the old oak in the back of Uppington Hall. It had seemed a good idea at the time, a floating faerie tower in which to read and daydream, but less of a good idea once she was up there, perched precariously on a tree limb, book tucked into her sash, and the ground a long ways away. Henrietta was not a tree-climbing sort of girl. Richard had gone for a ladder, but Miles, grumbling all the way, had scaled the tree trunk and helped her down, branch by shaky branch.

There could be worse things than falling in love with one's oldest friend.

A slow smile began to spread across Henrietta's face. It lingered there while she slept, returned when she wokej and crept back at intervals throughout the morning.

Penelope yanked down the book Henrietta was holding in front of her face. "Do stop trying to hide. Why all the smiling?"

"It's Miles."

"What has the big oaf done now?"

"Miles isn't an oaf," Henrietta replied tolerantly. They had been through this before.

"No, he's a big oaf."

An unexpected chuckle rose from behind Charlotte's book. "Have you ever heard of a little oaf?"

Henrietta decided to intervene before they wandered irreversibly off on that fascinating tangent. "I have," she said, running her finger along the spine of the book, "developed a bit of a tendre for Miles."

"You've developed a what?" yelped Penelope.

"I think she said tendre" filled in Charlotte helpfully.

"Don't be ridiculous," argued Penelope. "It's Miles."

Henrietta assumed the sort of beatific expression more commonly associated with wings, halos, and Renaissance altar paintings. "Miles," she agreed.

Penelope stared at her closest friend in horrified disbelief. In desperation, Penelope flung out a hand to Charlotte. "You say something to her!"

Lowering her book, Charlotte shook her head, a small smile flitting about her lips. "I can't say I'm surprised. I had wondered…"

"Wondered what?" inquired Henrietta eagerly.

Charlotte lowered her voice confidingly. "Has it never struck you as odd that the minute you walk into a ballroom, the first person you gravitate towards is Miles?"

"She likes the lemonade?" suggested Penelope.

"I don't think it's the lemonade." Charlotte turned back to Henrietta. "It's always been you and Miles. It just took a long time for you to notice."

"How do you know that?" countered Penelope crossly. "This isn't one of your silly romantic novels. Just because Miles is always loafing about doesn't mean that he's… that they're… you know!"

Henrietta ignored her. "When you say it's always been me and Miles, do you mean it's always been me following along after Miles, or something else?"

Charlotte considered. "He does seek you out," she said after a pause that lasted several agonizing years. Henrietta felt her spine relax. Then Charlotte had to spoil it by adding, "I don't think there's anything romantic about it, though. At least, not yet."

"Blast." It was nothing Henrietta hadn't considered herself, but it still wasn't pleasant hearing it. "How do I get him to stop thinking of me as a little sister?"

"Never speak to him again?"

"Pen! I'm serious about this!"

Charlotte grimaced in comprehension. "The Marquise de Montval."

"The very one," said Henrietta.

"Oh, no," breathed Charlotte.

"I know," grimaced Henrietta. "It's hopeless, isn't it?"

"No," Charlotte hissed, flapping her hands in agitation. "It's not that. She's right there. To your left. Don't…"

Henrietta and Penelope both swiveled sharply to the left.

"… look," Charlotte finished weakly.

The marquise bent a casual glance on Henrietta and her companions, then continued on her way to the till, book in hand.

"Who knew she could read?" muttered Henrietta.

"S…" Charlotte cast an anxious glance back at the marquise, shepherding Henrietta and Penelope towards the back of the store, out of earshot.

"She all but propositioned Miles last night." Henrietta fumed, glowering around the bookshelves in the general direction of the marquise. "In front of me!"

"But did he accept?" asked Charlotte quietly.

"Maybe you should just leave him to her," broke in Penelope. "If he's the sort of man who'd succumb a woman like that, why would you want him?"

"What man wouldn't succumb to a woman like that?" returned Henrietta wryly. Even in profile, across the length of the store, the marquise's flawless complexion shone like the legendary beacon at Alexandria.

Usually, Henrietta was quite pleased with her own appearance. She knew she'd never set off a flotilla of ships, but she liked the oval face reflected in the mirror. She liked her thick brown hair with its reddish glints; she liked her high cheekbones and her small nose; and she was especially fond of the almond-shaped eyes that tilted at the corners in a way that Charlotte had fondly assured her lent her an exotic air.

Next to the marquise, Henrietta felt about as exotic as sticky toffee pudding.

As she watched, the marquise tucked her purchase into her reticule and swayed gracefully out of the shop.

"Even her walk is a poem," groaned Henrietta.