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“What is it?”
    Thanking the stars Frances couldn’t turn around and see her face, Nell continued to stare at the man standing beside Prince Frederick. “Nothing. Just keep smiling and waving and looking delighted. That’s all you need to do.”
    Finally dragging in a decent breath, Nell looked sideways and caught their mother’s eye. Lowering her voice even further, she whispered, “Were you expecting Robert Knightley to be here?”
    Valeria, Duchess of Pemberton, blinked her large violet eyes. “Why, yes, dear, of course. Robert is Prince Frederick’s closest friend and diplomatic right arm, as it were.” Looking past Frances to where Robert stood on the docks with Frederick and the rest of the official welcoming party, Valeria smiled. “As the British envoy to Lautenberg, dear Robert is in charge of all the arrangements. Should we require any assistance, it is to him we should appeal.”
    With a wordless “ah,” Nell turned back to the prospect before her. One she hadn’t until that moment realized lay before her.
    A long-ago would-be husband who, while he’d never actually come up to the mark, had effectively spoiled her for all others.
    That was how she saw Robert Knightley.
    He looked well. She could admit that. Could let her gaze sweep over his broad shoulders, down the long length of his leanly muscled frame, before returning to the chiseled, patrician planes of his face with some small degree of detachment.
    At least while several feet of river and rather more of planking separated them.
    How would she manage when they were closer? A lot closer? When she was forced to interact with him on a daily, even hourly basis in the frantic days before the wedding?
    How would she fare when she and he—if he was as close to Frederick as it seemed—perforce walked down the aisle together?
    Oh, God.
    She didn’t dare voice the words, and in the end her feelings didn’t matter.
    She was there and so was he, and she would simply have to manage.
    A n hour later, standing in the castle’s drawing room with a cup of calming tea in her hand, Nell decided the most appropriate strategy was to take the bull by the horns.
    Some angel had consented to watch over her on the docks; in the joy and rapture of Frederick formally greeting Frances, then welcoming their parents, she’d managed to avoid exchanging more than a polite nod with Robert. The entire party had then piled into open carriages for the trip up a long, winding, stone-paved road to the castle, a sizeable structure in pale gray stone sporting towers and turrets with conical roofs, crenellated battlements, and countless pennants flying regally in the breeze. Perched above the red roofs of the town and the sparkling blue ribbon of the river, in the bright summer sunshine the castle possessed a fairy-tale radiance. Although Nell had been in the same carriage as Robert, indeed, although they’d sat on the same bench seat, they’d both been facing back along the cavalcade; she hadn’t had to meet his eye and had taken care not to.
    Their progression through the huge gates of the castle had been accompanied by a sudden drop in the surrounding noise, but almost immediately the carriages had drawn up before the steps leading into the castle keep; the extended and clearly modernized building filled much of the space within the battlemented walls. Frederick had descended first, then had handed Frances down to enthusiastic applause from the assembled courtiers. Nell had quickly followed Frances, allowing a liveried footman to assist her to the flags.
    As she’d followed Frances and Frederick up the stairs and into the great hall beyond the massive double doors, she’d been intensely aware of Robert walking alongside her, but there’d been so many others to smile at and exchange polite nods with she felt sure no one had noticed that she’d kept her gaze studiously from him.
    Frederick had led Frances triumphantly into a magnificent formal drawing room, and had