Dressed to the nines, the four of us piled into the limo, Clarence driving again, and set off for the approximately forty-nine-minute journey to the soiree, which turned out to be just a lavish party. Georgie proceeded to squirm every few miles in her seat, and I knew why. She was hoping that, somehow or some way, that Lady Eleanor was somehow friends with the Cooper family. I just wanted to stay locked in my room that night, dining on croissants, and texting Ben.

No such luck.

We arrived just a few minutes after the appointed hour and were ushered inside the main room. A man stood there, and asked us for our names. We were all on the list and so he let us go in.

"Mr. Robert Melinsky, and Mrs. Charlotte Melinsky," the man announced as Dad and Charlotte walked into the room, Charlotte gleaming proudly upon our father's arm. "Their daughters, Miss Jennifer Melinsky, and Miss Georgiana Melinsky," said the man again as Georgie and I trooped in behind them, wondering if I should be technical and say we were merely Charlotte's stepdaughters.

"Ben!" I cried out in surprise.

Ben looked up at my call and grinned from ear to ear when he saw me. Excusing himself from fellow young men dressed in suits, he crossed the room to me, and Georgie politely excused herself. "Miss me?" he asked.

"How...?" I demanded, grinning. "Why...?"

"Trust me, I'm as shocked as you are," he replied. "Eleanor is my mother's twin sister."

"Elizabeth and Eleanor," I said, shaking my head at the simplicity of it all. "It all makes sense now," I said, chuckling.

"I like this," he said, his hand going around my waist and resting upon the small of my back. "This dress...it goes perfectly with your eyes and skin and is quite...form fitting."

I blushed, lowering my eyes and fighting the urge to keep grinning. I liked Ben when he talked this way. He was usually a bit stuffy and too proper, but this was nice. This was normal. This was...alluring. I found myself turning fifty shades of pink as I considered this. "Thank you," I replied.

"And how did you get an invite?" he wanted to know, summoning a butler with a raise of his hand.

"Charlotte and Lady Eleanor are apparently old friends," I said, accepting his offer of a glass of champagne and sipping it delicately. "I think I recall Charlotte mentioning that your aunt did some work for UNICEF in Somalia?" I asked.

Ben nodded, taking me by the arm and taking me out onto the balcony, overlooking the great expansion of land that was, apparently, owned by Lady Eleanor herself. The unusually warm night tickled my neck slightly, and I forced myself to look at the lay of the land.

"Yes, Aunt Eleanor has devoted a good portion of her life to UNICEF," Ben replied. "She's adopted two children through her work there—my cousin Otto from Germany and my cousin Elsa from Sweden. She also has two biological children, Grace and Harry, who are our age."

"Are Otto and Elsa older?" I asked.

Ben nodded again, eager to share. "Yes. Otto attends the University of Hamburg—he wants to be a professor there. And Elsa studies in Sweden, at the Royal College of Music—she wants to be a violinist."

"Are they fluent in German and Swedish?" I wanted to know.

Ben smiled. "Yes. Aunt Eleanor and Mom have always encouraged multiple languages to be added to our repertoire, as well as selecting one instrument to play. Otto can speak German, English, and French, and he plays the piano. Elsa, Swedish, English, and French, and you know about her passion for the violin. I speak English, French, Spanish, German, Swedish, and Italian. I also play the guitar and sing..." he trailed off.

"I sing, but you knew that," I said softly.

"Do you speak any languages?" he asked.

I nodded. "Yes. English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Russian," I replied. "I also had to pick up a few bits of Yiddish, but..." I said, shrugging a bit to make it seem like it wasn't a big deal.

"Say something to me in Russian," Ben said with a grin.

"Что ты хочешь, чтобы я сказал?" I asked, truly questioning. "Мне нужно больше идти на чем..."

"What did you say?" he asked.

"I said, 'What do you want me to say? I need more to go on than that'," I replied.

Ben smiled down at me. "You're really cool, Jenny."

I smiled back at him. "Thank you, Ben."

"I wish I could say I could show you the lights of Paris, but Mom and I are catching a red eye back to Seattle tonight," he said, a lot of regret in his voice. "But we'll have New Year's, trust me. I can't wait to see you at the party," he said, stepping forward so that his lips were by my ear. "We'll kiss at midnight."

"You won't kiss me goodnight?" I asked, mock pouting. "I don't understand—you kissed me at the wedding—"

Ben smiled. "I'm a gentleman, remember—and that was a farewell kiss. But, I shall do this," he said, reaching down and taking ahold of my hand. Gently pulling at my white silk glove, he removed it, his very touch sending hundreds of thousands of goose bumps up and down my skin, and I found I could not stop the gasp escaping from my lips. Bending down slightly, he brushed his lips briefly upon my hand, and then squeezed my hand slightly. "Good night, Jenny, and be safe going home tonight," he said softly, before leaving me alone upon the balcony, shivering in excitement, and gripping my white silk glove.

I remembered my first kiss vividly. I was on the playground at my middle school, trying to figure out why we had such a godforsaken play structure when we were pre-teens. I was going on thirteen at that point, and it was only a few weeks before the end of seventh grade.

Colin Abbott was an exchange student from London, England, and all the girls had gigantic crushes on him. He was already thirteen, and in the eighth grade, and I found it confusing that he would even talk to me. He had pale brown hair and engaging blue eyes, and he was very intelligent; I didn't even tell anyone that I thought his accent was cute, too.

One day we were sitting under a small tree after playing on the playground and we were talking, just talking. Colin told me that there was a girl called Sarah back at his school in London that he thought was pretty. She had black hair, like mine, eyes, like mine, skin, like mine, and a smile, like mine, except Colin assured me that Sarah was a different person and still resided in London.

Finally, he came right out with it—he wanted to kiss Sarah and tell her how he felt, but he was unsure of how to go about it. Amused that even an adorable English boy like Colin could be fearful of something, and, after making sure that we were completely alone, and, without hardly thinking about it, I promptly kissed him on the lips.

Colin seemed very into it, but I pulled back, telling him to tell Sarah how he feels, and then to do something like that. I remember giggling smartly at him before listening to the bell ring, indicating the end of recess for the seventh graders. The eighth graders still had about fifteen more minutes, but I knew that, if I lingered any longer, Mrs. Butler would be very angry with me.

Giving Colin a small wave, I ran all the way to class.

I went back inside to the soiree and saw Charlotte engaged in conversation with an elegant looking woman. She had long, strawberry blonde hair and was a perfect copy of Ben's mom, Elizabeth, except Elizabeth was blonde with no hint of strawberry. Charlotte saw me entering the party from the balcony and promptly waved me over.

"Jenny, dear! Come meet Eleanor!" she cried.

I smiled, crossing over to them both. I made a small curtsy to Eleanor and said softly, "How do you do, my lady?"

Eleanor chuckled. "Oh, my dear, I am simply 'Eleanor' to you. Why, you are practically my niece, for Charlotte and me...why, we two go back many, many years."

"Do you?" I asked. "How did you two meet?"

"We attended Harvard University together," Charlotte replied.

"Yes. I wanted to separate myself from all of this..." She made great big gestures to all the fine furnishings around us, "...and get a degree in law and international communications."

"Did you?" I asked.

Eleanor smiled and nodded. "Yes. And then I met my darling husband, Alfie—he is still in Somalia, poor dear, at a communications function. We met at a benefit to pull down the wall in Germany. Well, as you might have heard, we won that benefit."

"Did you honeymoon in Germany?" I asked.

She nodded. "Why, yes. That's where we met our firstborn, Otto. He was barely three and desolately alone. We plucked him right up from that orphanage as soon as the paperwork—and our humanitarian work—was completed in Hamburg."

I smile at the thought. "Ben tells me that Otto has returned to Germany to further his education."

Lady Eleanor beamed at the thought of her eldest son conquering his dreams abroad. "Yes. My darling boy is hard at work. Did Ben mention to you that he's engaged?"

"No," I said, shaking my head.

"Oh, yes. He met Sophie whilst home for the summer—here—only two summers ago. She was from New York and was on a family vacation. Dear Sophie is an actress. She plays Grace Warbeck in the T.V. show 'Carsen Drew: Back in Action'," Eleanor went on proudly.

"Oh, yes. Georgie and I love that show," I said eagerly. "Grace seems to be a complex individual. I loved the storyline where she was involved in the high-speed chase which got her into all of that memory loss drama. Do you know if she'll accept Carsen's proposal?"

Eleanor giggled. "I can't say... But someone's past will be revealed—"

"You mean... Grace's backstory?" I asked.

Our hostess grinned. "Precisely."

"Could I go tell Georgie?" I asked, quickly turning to Charlotte. "Please, excuse me," I said promptly to Eleanor.

Eleanor smiled. "Of course. You're so polite."

I dashed in the direction that I'd seen Georgie and Dunham go. Behind a pair of red velvet curtains, there they were, wrapped in each other's warm embrace. It took all of me not to gag and throw up onto the freshly polished floor. I ended up clearing my throat and obviously not looking in their direction. "Um, Georgie... may I speak with you?"

My little sister disengaged herself from Dunham's strong-looking arms and walked over to me. She locked my arm with hers, her crystal-like eyes all in a fog. "He's gorgeous, isn't he?" she whispered to me.

I did all I could not to roll my eyes as we left Dunham behind. "Positively handsome, if that's your type," I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm so as Georgie snapped out of it.

"What's up your butt?" she wanted to know.

I shrugged. "Nothing. But Charlotte is attempting to introduce us to society people, so don't act like a tramp."

Georgie turned white and lowered her eyes. "Yeah, you're right."

"Good." I nodded approvingly and took her along to a vacant corridor. "So, I heard some juicy news," I said, attempting to draw the conversation away from Dunham Cooper. "It seems as though Ben's cousin Otto is engaged to Sophie Klein, a.k.a. Grace Warbeck."

Georgie gasped. "No way!"

I nodded. "Yep. One in the same."

It was then that there was some sort of commotion from the front hall, where the soiree was being held. I told Georgie to remain where she was while I sneaked up to the front of the corridor to see what was really going on in there. Several masked men had infiltrated the scene, and they all had guns pointed at Eleanor.

"La main sur les perles," the man, who looked to be the leader of the thugs, ordered.

I looked around for Dad. Then I remembered him whispering to Charlotte when I was just about to go onto the balcony with Ben. He was clasping his phone in his hand, and I knew full well that he'd returned to the manor to answer the call properly. I gasped slightly then when Charlotte seemed to rip off her skirt—or, rather, unzip it—and remove a gun, strapped to her leg.

"Laissez-la partir," she growled.

The thugs looked most intimidated by the gun.

"Le patron a dit 'pas de victimes'," their leader said. He then reached out and pulled the pearl necklace in an unceremonious manner off of Lady Eleanor's neck. "Run! Par la fenêtre!" he shouted, and all the thugs ran onto the balcony and disappeared off of the ledge.

"Are you all right?" Charlotte asked, after motioning for two men to go onto the balcony and ascertain that the men were gone.

"I'm fine." Eleanor looked bewildered. "Without you, I'd be dead. I am in S.L.E.U.T.H.'s debt once again."

"Okay, wait a minute," I said, stepping out from my hiding place. "What the hell is going on, and what the hell is S.L.E.U.T.H.?"