I could feel George's eyes on me as I ate, and when his brother and cousin left the table, he lingered. "What is it, Bonnie? I can tell you have something on your mind."

"I am merely concerned about what your intentions are toward me, George." I wasn't able to meet his eyes.

"Ah, so you overheard the conversation Nicky and I had last night."

I quickly looked up to see that he seemed amused rather than angry. "There's no need to fear, sweet Bonnie. I'd never expect you to compromise your principals in any way."

Relief swept over me, and at the same time, it occurred to me to wonder whether or not he was a virgin himself. I knew that my own father hadn't been a virgin when he'd married my mother, even though it had been his first marriage. Neither of them had ever specifically told me that; it was just something I'd always known, perhaps due at least in part to my father's close friendship with Belle Watling.

Suddenly I felt George's finger lightly caressing my cheek. "I hope I've set your mind at ease."

"You have, thank you."

"I'd never do anything to hurt you, Bonnie."

The days seemed to fly by like magic. In this totally unfamiliar land so vastly different from the England I'd anticipated, I found happiness, adventure, and yes, love. George and I spent many pleasurable hours together, sometimes in the company of his brother and cousin, sometimes on our own. In the joy of getting to know him, I discovered that, despite our completely different backgrounds, we seemed to have an amazing amount in common. He was as close to his mother as I'd always been to my father, and his older brother Nicholas reminded me in many ways of my older brother Wade.

"Do you ever wish that you were the heir to the throne instead of Nicky?" I asked him once.

"Never!" he said emphatically. "I'd never want to have the responsibility for an entire country on my shoulders. I've felt that way ever since my grandfather was assassinated."

"Tell me about that."

"I was not quite ten years old," George began. "He was returning from the Mikhailovsky Menege one Sunday when someone threw a bomb under the carriage he was riding in. My grandfather wasn't injured because the carriage was bullet proof, but after he got out to see what had happened, another person threw a bomb right at his feet. It blew his legs off and ripped his stomach open. He lived long enough to make it back to the Winter Palace, where he died several hours later. Nicky and our father watched as he took his last breath."

I shuddered. "How horrid!"

"It wasn't the first time someone had tried to kill him. There had been four other attempts on his life before that one."

"I never knew my own grandfather," I told George. "He died in an accident before I was born."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Bonnie."

"He never was right after my grandmother died. She died of typhus during the war. First my Aunt Suellen caught it, and then my grandmother caught it from taking care of her. My mother always hated my Aunt Suellen after that."

"Well, she couldn't help getting sick, I suppose."

"Mother and Aunt Suellen never did get along very well," I told him. "Remember how I told you about my mother's second husband, Frank Kennedy? Well, he was Aunt Suellen's beau before he was Mother's husband. Mother stole him from Aunt Suellen."

"No!" George was grinning, and his eyes twinkled with interest.

I nodded solemnly. "Mr. Kennedy owned a mill. It was right after the war, my grandmother was dead, my grandfather had gone soft in the head, and the Yankees had destroyed their plantation and freed their slaves. My mother needed a way to support herself and my brother Wade."

"So she took her sister's source of financial support for herself. True sisterly love."

"I suppose she thought of it as payback for what had happened to my grandmother."

"A rather clever revenge." George was smiling and shaking his head incredulously. "Your mother must be a very interesting woman."

"She's certainly different," I agreed.

"And what about you, Bonnie Blue Butler? How similar to your mother are you?"

"My father has always said that I remind him of the way my mother used to be before the war and all the other bad things that happened."

"I've never known a girl like you, Bonnie," George said thoughtfully. "Are all American girls like you?"

"In what way do you mean?"

Well...bold, free spirited, not afraid to say what's on your mind."

I shrugged. "Some are more than others, I suppose. My sister Ella, for instance. I guess she's not as much that way as I am."

George's story of his grandfather's assassination turned out to be peculiarly ominous in a way, considering what happened later in Japan.