"How I wish I could touch them." He moved even closer to her, and for a moment I thought he would reach out for them.

Isabelle, who had been summoned to her mother's side, frowned. "She was arrested wearing them?" she asked. "Aren't you afraid they'll bring you bad luck?"

"Not at all," Cécile replied.

"They're just the sort of thing that would carry a curse, the tragic fate of a previous owner haunting everyone else who possesses them," Isabelle said with a dramatic flair.

"I assure you, mademoiselle, that I am not concerned in the least," Cécile said, shrugging.

"Where did you get them, Cécile?" I asked.

"My brother purchased them for his fiancée. Unfortunately, she died before they were married, and he gave them to me."

"Died before they were married?" I asked. "Clearly the poor woman was cursed."

"Not in the least. Claudette had a sickly constitution long before Paul gave her the earrings."

Although I counted Cécile among my dearest friends, this story of her brother, along with vague rumors that her ancestors had been sympathetic to the monarchy during the revolution, was nearly all the information I'd heard about her family. Like me, she was a widow, though her husband had died almost thirty years ago. It was this that first drew us together — not simply that we had lost husbands, but that we had lost husbands we did not mourn.

"I would hesitate to wear them," Isabelle said. "You're very brave."

"It would take more than a curse to stop Madame du Lac," Colin Hargreaves said, striding confidently towards us, a broad smile on his face. "Do my eyes deceive me? Or is it true that the delights of the Season are enough to entice Lady Ashton to abandon the pleasures of Greece?"

"Colin!" I cried, feeling an unmistakable rush of pleasure as he brushed his lips over my gloved hand, the color rising in my cheeks as our eyes met. "Your letter said you would be in Berlin until next week."