“Henrietta and her husband are here for Twelfth Night,” said Charlotte primly.

“Twelfth Night,” agreed Henrietta, her eyes flicking back and forth between Robert and Charlotte. “It’s . . . on the twelfth night.”

“I had hoped to trouble you for a dance,” said Robert to Charlotte. “But if you’re otherwise engaged . . .”

Behind his back, Henrietta made enthusiastic shooing gestures.

Charlotte swallowed a smile. Henrietta was so dear, and so un-subtle.

“I would be delighted,” said Charlotte, placing her hand on his arm. It looked rather nice there. She was very glad she had thought to wear fresh gloves.

It was not until they were lined up with the other couples and the first couple was galloping enthusiastically down the line that Charlotte realized that Robert was only about one quarter there. He said all the right things at the right time. He complimented her dress and twirled her in the appropriate direction and made the requisite snide comment about Turnip Fitzhugh’s execrable taste in waistcoats, but he did it all by rote, with a smile that never quite reached his eyes. He also appeared to have developed a twitch that involved frequent glances over his shoulder at the left side of the room.

“Is something wrong?” Charlotte asked as they pranced down the center of the long row of clapping couples.

“Have you promised anyone the next dance?” he asked abruptly.

“No.”

“Would you mind if we get some air?”

“No, not at all,” said Charlotte, although the air in the gallery seemed perfectly fine to her, and the Fairy Queen was one of her very favorite country dances. Charlotte sank into a curtsy as he bowed. “It is a little close in here.”

Rising from her curtsy, she saw Robert looking grimly over his shoulder again. “Close is just the word for it.”

Charlotte looked quizzically at him, but Robert made no offer to explain, and she didn’t press him. Whatever reason he might have for suddenly finding the gallery too close, she had no objection to anything that led them together to a quiet corner. One might even call it a tête-à-tête. Penelope certainly would.

Charlotte hastily got her visage under control before a very silly smile could break out.

She was, she realized, being exceedingly silly. She had managed to pass eight days in her cousin’s company behaving like a perfectly normal and rational human being — well, no more irrational than usual, at any rate — and there was no reason that being translated from their usual routine onto a dance floor should make her all fluttery and tongue-tied, even if Robert himself was behaving exceedingly oddly. Charlotte would have liked to think it was because he was nobly battling his passion for her, but it seemed far more likely that he was having the usual reaction of the healthy male to being made to mince around in circles in the center of a ballroom. Henrietta’s Miles tended to react in much the same way, and could usually be found fleeing for the card room sometime after the first quadrille.

Either way, she would far rather be not dancing with Robert than dancing with anyone else. For the first time, she began to understand what drove Penelope to seek out secluded balconies — although she still had extreme difficulty understanding why Penelope chose the men she did to accompany her.

“Shall we go that way?” Charlotte suggested, pointing towards the far end of the gallery.

The rooms along the garden front had all been pressed into service for the party, with one salon set up as a supper room, and another as a refuge for gentlemen looking to play cards. But on the far side of the gallery, effectively blocked off behind the musicians, the remaining rooms of the West Wing lay dark and still. It wasn’t quite a balcony, but it would be warmer, and just as quiet. Quieter, probably. Penelope had disappeared with Freddy Staines a good quarter of an hour ago.

“Wherever you lead,” Robert said, and then gave the lie to his words by hustling her along beside him at a pace that forced her to take two steps to each of his one.

It wasn’t until she stumbled over the long hem of her skirt that Robert noticed she was having trouble keeping up. Righting her with one hand beneath her elbow, he made a penitent face. “Sorry,” he said, slowing down. “I didn’t mean to rush you.”

“If you really didn’t want to dance, you could have just said so,” Charlotte teased.

Robert looked at her blankly.

“Never mind,” said Charlotte. Wherever he was, it wasn’t someplace jokes could follow.

The entrance she sought was blocked by a cunningly hung tapestry featuring a stirring representation of the second Duke of Dovedale welcoming King William III as he stepped off his ship, the Den Briel, at Brixham Harbor. Certain tactful license had been taken with the historical scene, such as adding an extra six inches to the King so that the second Duke wouldn’t tower over him quite so badly. The Lansdownes did tend to run to height. That was another way in which Charlotte had taken after her mother’s family.

Her lack of inches was, however, very convenient for ducking through small doorways. Charlotte gestured Robert through the gap behind the arras, into a curious octagonal room with three-sided windows on either side and delicately carved stone arches that rose to meet around an elaborate rosette in the center of the ceiling. The fabric swished back into place behind them, sealing them away as effectively as a medieval maiden barricaded into a tower.

They might be only just on the other side of the gallery, but the thick stone walls and heavy fabric made it feel a world away. The only light came from the torches flickering in the grounds outside. Filtered through the thick glass panels of the leaded windows, the light made pretty shadows on the stone benches beneath the windows, like fish beneath the waters of a pond. It was also dramatically cooler, shrouded in thick stone, away from the light and press of bodies in the room beyond.

Away from the ballroom, Robert looked considerably more cheerful. Stopping in the precise middle of the room, he linked his hands together and stretched up towards the ceiling. Tall as he was, his arms didn’t come near the center of the roof.

“Where are we?” he asked, examining his surroundings with interest. “I don’t remember this from my last stay.”

“This is the anteroom to the old chapel,” Charlotte explained, resting one knee on the stone window seat as she leaned over to unlatch one of the leaded windows for the promised fresh air. There had been cushions once, but the Duchess had ordered them removed, pointing out that penitence ought to be as hard on the bum as it was on the soul. In reality, Charlotte suspected that it was just that her grandmother hadn’t wanted to go to the trouble of having them replaced. “There’s a theory that the room was designed this way as an allegory of the Trinity, which each of the three-sided window embrasures representing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

Propping one elbow against a carved niche in the wall, Robert appraised her knowingly. “But you don’t believe it,” he said.

It gave her a warm and cozy feeling to know that he knew her that well already, like hot tea on a rainy day.

“But I don’t believe it,” Charlotte admitted. “I think it’s more likely that Vanbrugh just liked the way the curve of the wall looked from the outside. He used a similar technique at Blenheim. Don’t mention that to Grandmama, though. She likes to think that we’re unique.”

“You are,” said Robert fondly.

Before Charlotte had time to bask in the compliment properly, he added, in an entirely different tone, “And so is your grandmother.”

“Every fairy tale needs a witch,” said Charlotte unthinkingly, and then hastily added, “not that Grandmama is a witch, of course. Just a bit . . .”

“Witchlike?” contributed Robert.

“Set in her ways,” finished Charlotte.

The draft from the window was going right up the back of her neck — there were some disadvantages to upswept coiffures — so she turned to shut the window. Having once tasted freedom, the panel didn’t want to close again. Robert’s large hand settled over hers, pushing the latch capably back into place.

“The Duchess isn’t very kind to you,” he said, so close that she could feel his breath warm against the back of her neck.

Maybe upswept hair wasn’t such a very bad thing after all.

“She doesn’t mean any of it unkindly,” said Charlotte, addressing herself to the windowpanes in the hopes that if she stayed very, very still, he wouldn’t move away. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable sensation. Every inch of her body felt gloriously alive and aware. She wondered what would happen if she turned around. Would he stay where he was, close enough to kiss?

Charlotte’s voice was slightly breathless as she added, “It’s just the way she is. Would you condemn a tiger for biting?”

“I would, actually,” said Robert, stepping back. “Especially if it lopped off part of my anatomy.”

Turning, Charlotte smiled up at him. “Grandmama seldom lops anything. She pokes and prods, but her victims are usually left whole, if slightly bruised.”

“She seems to have taken a fancy to Tommy.”

“She’s made him her cane-bearer for the evening. It’s really a rather good position to be in. If he’s holding it,” Charlotte explained, “he can’t be hit by it.”

“Better him than me,” said Robert feelingly.

“She likes you, too,” said Charlotte, settling herself down on the stone bench. Cold still seeped through the edges of the warped old panes, but with the window closed, the draft was bearable. “I heard her say at breakfast the other morning that you were a Lansdowne ‘through and through, by Gad.’ ”