Isabelle missed dinner that evening, too shaken by Leopold's abrupt arrival and departure to bear the tedium. She had her ladies-in-waiting attend in her stead, too weary to argue when they insisted it would be best for appearances' sake. She knew that Laura and Marjorie had shared what they'd overheard with Alicia, who was all too eager to further spread the gossip. Isabelle didn't have enough fight left in her to attempt to stop them. What did it matter, anyway? Word would get out that the Germanian prince had left Highcastle without his bride-to-be, so what harm would a few more details be?

Lissa answered the door when a gentle knock came later in the evening, Isabelle's dinner tray untouched before her as she stared into the fire. She'd penned a letter to her father, hoping the courier she paid thrice as much as she should have would reach him before Leopold did.

"Are you all right?"

The voice had her jumping, spilling her tea all over the saucer in her haste to set it down.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded, shaking her head as Lissa started to close the door. If the prince of Pretania dared call on her after the dinner hour, she'd leave her suite door wide open and ensure that she had Lissa there as a chaperone.

"I heard you had quite the afternoon," Graham said, coming around to seat himself next to her. He set a plate of gooey, baked chocolate squares before her, still warm from the oven, and took one for himself.

"I did, which is why I am in no fit state to sit here and discuss it with you," she said, inching farther from him. He leaned over, snatching up another square to offer it to her.

"But I brought the kitchen's most tempting sweet," he said, his tone just as neutral as his face. For once, he wasn't teasing her when she was upset. Grudgingly, she accepted the chocolate square, nibbling at it halfheartedly.

"You can't bribe me to talk, you know," Isabelle muttered.

"Then don't talk," Graham shrugged, taking another square. "We can sit here in companionable silence for all I care."

He folded his hands behind his head, leaning back on the love seat with a contented sigh. Isabelle glanced sidelong at him, his golden circlet still atop his sandy blond curls as he stretched out in his formalwear.

"You came to check on me," she said finally. He opened an eye to smirk at her before closing it again.

"Perhaps," he said. That familiar, dangerous thrill ran through her at the word.

"Which means you were worried for me," she continued, trying to keep the smile from her face even as she chastised herself. Her betrothed had just stormed out of the city and here she was, flirting with another man, a man she knew better than to allow any closer than an arm's length. Graham opened both his eyes this time, leaning his head over to look at her.

"You'd enjoy that, wouldn't you?" he asked, his avoidance of her question as much of an admission as an outright answer would have been.

"You were worried about me," Isabelle affirmed, her stomach twisting pleasantly as her cheeks lost the battle against her grin. She knew she was blushing and some part of her was mortified at her reaction, screaming in protest about Leopold, but she couldn't shake the happy little glow that had ignited inside her as she reached for another chocolate square. Graham sighed, despite the hint of a smile on his own face.

"If you must know, I came to congratulate you," he said. Isabelle paused with the chocolate halfway to her mouth, that little glow dimming.

"Congratulate me?" she repeated, confused.

"Congratulate you for the purported tongue-lashing you gave to bonny prince Leo," he said. "Nothing I've ever said has riled him so badly as to drive him out of the city. Please, I must know what you said so I can repeat it at our next meeting."

Isabelle threw the square at him, folding her arms. Anything pleasant she'd been feeling had soured. Guilt washed over her as she realized how much of a fool she'd been to think that Graham was capable of any kindness. Companionable silence and sweets, her right foot. He'd probably come only to gloat and taunt her.

"It's none of your business what I said to my betrothed," she said, throwing in the last words as a poorly veiled barb.

"Your betrothed?" Graham repeated, amused, "Pray tell, then, what happened to your ring?"

Isabelle made as face as she buried her bare finger into the crook of her crossed elbow, blushing anew with fresh mortification. That Graham had noticed and commented on her missing jewelry had only reminded her of the silent battle she'd waged before her vanity table earlier that evening.

Normally, she slept with Leopold's ring safely around her finger, but now that he'd stormed in and nearly beaten her, she hadn't been able to shake the urge to rid herself of it. As she'd stared at herself in the vanity mirror, she'd removed it, tucking it into a tiny drawer of her jewelry box and telling herself it was the right thing to do. After all, there was still a dent in the sitting room wall where Leo had punched it, her head having been mere inches away.

"Ah, I see," Graham said, following her gaze to that very spot on the wall. "It truly is a shame now, though."

"What's a shame?" Isabelle asked, her insides a roiling mess of guilt and unease. Graham's lips quirked up into that arrogant smile she hated.

"That I'll have to stop pursuing you now. After all, that was our deal. I'll stop when you stop wearing your shackle," he said. He smiled in earnest when she looked over at him, his green eyes glittering in anticipation for her reaction. She stared at him for a few moments, all the fight and fire that usually fuelled her in the presence of the meddlesome prince suddenly gone, replaced by a bone-deep fatigue.

She was tired. She was tired of all these games, of constantly having her guard up and attempting to anticipate what the royal family's had planned for her next. She'd gotten the one thing she'd wanted that day, to see Leopold again, but rather than the heartfelt reunion she'd been picturing since he'd ridden off into the Kentshire sunrise, her betrothed had yelled and raged and punched a wall, scaring her rather than reassuring her. She had no desire to play along with Graham's games that evening, not when her heart was so exhausted.

"Just because I took my ring off in preparation for bed doesn't mean that I'm no longer betrothed," she said, rising wearily to her feet. "Now if you would, I'm quite tired and I'd like to be alone."

"Dismissing two princes in one day," Graham said, letting out a low whistle without moving from the love seat, "You'd best be careful before you earn yourself a reputation, Isabelle."

As it always did, her name on his lips sent a thrill through her, but her exhaustion choked it out. He wanted to spar with her, to trade barbs and insults as was their custom, but she was thoroughly finished. She had nothing left to give that day and she was beginning to doubt whether anything would change in the morning.

For all she knew, her father's carriage would be waiting for her the next day, ready to deliver her home to Kentshire and into the arms of her betrothed. The thought opened a pit in Isabelle's stomach that had never been there before. For the first time in her life, the idea of marrying Leopold didn't bring a smile to her face.

It terrified her.

And it wasn't helped by Graham's green-eyed gaze, still fastened intently on her face.

"Please get out," she said quietly. A frown quivered on Graham's brow.

"If you kick me out, I'm taking the sweets," he said, sitting up to face her. "But if you allow me to stay and defeat you several times at backgammon, perhaps I'll let you eat the rest."

She squeezed her eyes closed, sighing.

"I'm tired," she said. "Good night, your Highness."

She left him in her sitting room, his puzzled stare following her until she closed the bedroom door between them.

Graham had anticipated that she'd be upset, but not so upset that she'd shut him out. The sight of the fist-sized dent in the wall had nearly broken his practiced calm, especially with the haunted way Isabelle's eyes had stared at it.

He would have given anything to have been alerted just five minutes sooner to the foreign prince's presence in his palace.

His little birds hadn't been as quick as the king's, which had given his father the opportunity to still Graham's hand. Had Graham learned of Leopold's presence earlier, he'd have ridden from the castle with the entirety of the royal guard at his back to hunt the bastard through Pretania. That the king had stopped him had sent Graham into a fit of rage at his powerlessness in the face of such a transgression by the prince of Germania.

He'd spent the afternoon pacing his room, planning all manner of revenge against Leopold, up to and including drawing and quartering the bastard if he ever dared return to Pretania. When his cousins, Laura and Marjorie, had called on him to report what they'd witnessed and overheard in Isabelle's suite, it was all Graham could do to maintain the fragile veneer of calm he'd so painstakingly pieced back together.

But he'd succeeded, impatiently sitting through dinner as Henrietta Barclay and Anna Hindersley shared his table. The pair of idiot debutantes had chattered away, grating on his very last nerve until he's silenced them both with a few choice words.

He couldn't stop his eyes from straying to the empty seat at Alicia, Laura, and Marjorie's table.

After dinner, he'd fled back to his suite, avoiding all the debutantes who'd clearly hoped to corner him before the evening ended. He had to check on her, he had to make sure she was all right. But she couldn't know that he was checking on her, so he'd hatched a plan the moment he'd noticed Isabelle's vacant seat. The kitchen had obligingly baked a batch of his favourite chocolate squares, which he'd used as an excuse to call on Kentshire's heiress and ensure that she was all right.

The relief he'd felt when she'd snapped at him as he entered, no sign of a bruise like her maid's anywhere on her delicate skin, had lifted a weight he hadn't even realized he'd been carrying. But now that she'd closed the door between them, that relief vanished, replaced instead by his ever-growing fury for what Leopold had done to her, in Graham's palace, no less.

Staring at the hole in the wall, Graham's mind turned to plotting.