“Is that meant to be a compliment?”

“It’s generally better just to take it as one,” said Charlotte comfortably, fluffing her skirts out around her feet.

“Very wise advice,” said her cousin, sitting down next to her.

Against the stone floor, the silver embroidery on her green slippers looked like tiny stars. Charlotte wiggled her toes to make them twinkle. “Why were you in such a terrible snit just now?” she asked.

“I wasn’t — ” Robert broke off with a sigh as she looked at him. “It wasn’t a terrible snit.”

“One seldom has small snits,” said Charlotte. “They’d be barely noticeable as snits and then what would be the point of having them?”

“Shall we call it a snit of medium size and leave it at that?”

Charlotte’s lips quirked. “A snit of average snittiness?”

Robert leaned his forehead against the windowpane in an attitude of mock agony. “I think I’m all snitted out for the moment, thank you very much.”

“You still haven’t said what it was that set you off.”

For a moment, Robert seemed like he might be about to demur, but Charlotte pinned him with her very best inquisitive expression.

Pushing up off the bench, Robert strode over to the small, carved face of an angel on the opposite wall.

“It was just something Medmenham said,” he muttered, poking at the pointy end of the angel’s wing. “I may have overreacted.”

Charlotte wondered what Medmenham had said. Robert had shown himself to be fairly unflappable, even during his last visit all those years ago. Not even all the Duchess’s poking and prodding managed to elicit anything more than a raised eyebrow and a carefully composed riposte. He carried his very own shield along with him, welded to his skin. It was a nicely gilded shield, charmingly crafted and pleasing to the eye, but it was a shield nonetheless. Every now and again a flicker of stronger emotion flared up, but he always caught it and stuffed it back beneath his pleasant façade before she got to see anything interesting.

“Sir Francis does seem to have that effect on people,” she said carefully.

Robert looked up sharply from his angel. “Has he been bothering you?”

The idea was so absurd that Charlotte couldn’t quite suppress a smile. “Me? Don’t be silly.”

“I don’t see what’s so silly about it,” said Rob stiffly.

“I’m not the sort of girl Francis Medmenham bothers,” said Charlotte simply, as though that were that.

In Charlotte’s opinion, that was that.

Her cousin felt otherwise.

“If Medmenham asks you to go anywhere with him, don’t.” Robert searched Charlotte’s face for comprehension and found only polite attention.

What did he expect? Good God, the girl was even prepared to believe the best about the Dowager Duchess. She would be easy prey for a hardened rake like Medmenham. In Charlotte-land, gentlemen were gentlemen, everyone was exactly what they seemed, and indecent propositions were things that happened to other people.

Robert raised the level of urgency in his voice. “Don’t go anywhere alone with him,” he stressed. “Anywhere.”

“You mean someplace like here?” Charlotte teased.

“You probably shouldn’t be alone here with me, either,” said Robert grimly. “Not with anyone.”

Charlotte looked up at him from under her lashes. “Are you planning to make improper advances?”

Robert went red straight through to the tips of his ears. “Certainly not!”

“Well, there you are,” said Charlotte cheerfully, as though that explained everything.

Robert wasn’t quite sure how he had managed to lose that argument. “Someone else might have, though.”

“But that someone else wouldn’t be you.”

“You’re very trusting.”

“You needn’t make it sound like it’s a bad thing,” said Charlotte with a laugh. “Isn’t it better to trust people than not?”

“Not always.” There were only a handful of people in his life who had proved themselves worthy of trust. Tommy. Colonel Arbuthnot. Charlotte.

Charlotte raised her chin. She still looked like an angel, but a very stubborn one. “I believe that people tend to live up or down to your expectations. When you trust them, you give them the opportunity to vindicate that trust.”

“And if they don’t? That sounds like a very dangerous philosophy. You shouldn’t trust anyone too far. Including me,” he added repressively.

“Why ever not?”

“I’m a rotten apple.”

A dimple appeared in Charlotte’s right cheek. “You certainly don’t look like an apple.”

“A rotten apple,” Robert stressed, just in case she might have missed the crucial point. It seemed, somehow, absolutely imperative that she be warned what she was dealing with. The product of taverns and ale-houses, drunken mess parties and rough marches. “Wormy and canker-ridden.”

Charlotte glanced at him sideways. “If you were really wormy and canker-ridden, you wouldn’t be admitting to it.”

Robert grasped at straws. “Can’t one be canker-ridden with a conscience?”

Charlotte shook her head so decisively that strands of her hair tangled in her eyelashes. Robert’s hand tingled with the urge to smooth them back. “It’s a contradiction in terms. Cankers have no consciences. Just look at Francis Medmenham.”

“Don’t,” Robert said irritably. “And hopefully he won’t look at you, either.”

Charlotte favored him with one of her disconcertingly level glances. “If you think so poorly of him, why do you spend so much time with him?”

For a moment, Robert was tempted to confide in her, to tell her the whole sordid story of the Colonel’s death and Wrothan’s disappearance. It would be a relief to have someone else to talk to; Tommy, good and loyal friend though he was, had all but disappeared in Miss Deveraux’s train, living for her smiles and moping at her frowns. It made him decidedly less than useful for plotting and planning purposes. Besides, he didn’t want Charlotte thinking that he patronized Medmenham for, well, for the obvious reasons, for his connections to gaming hells, opium dens, loose women, and other licentious pleasures. Robert wasn’t sure why Charlotte’s opinion mattered so much to him, but it did. She was his touchstone, his lodestar, his shining spot of virtue in a dark world, everything that was good and kind and pure.

And sheltered.

If he told her about the Colonel — she would understand, that much was for sure. Knowing Charlotte, she would immediately conceive of it as a glorious quest, St. George sallying forth to kill the dragon and make the world safe for afternoon tea, sticky toffee pudding, and all the good yeomen of England. Charlotte would want to play, too, not realizing that it wasn’t a game, but in deadly earnest. He didn’t want her anywhere near Wrothan. And even if she stayed clear of Wrothan, what of Sir Francis?

Charlotte was still looking at him, waiting for an answer. Robert shrugged, packing it with as much nonchalance as he could muster.

“Everyone needs a diversion now and again. Medmenham’s an amusing fellow.”

That was true as far as it went. Medmenham would be an entertaining companion but for that whiff of brimstone that hovered around him. However, he was certainly not a fit companion for Charlotte. Under any circumstances.

It wasn’t so very long ago that unscrupulous men had made a practice of kidnapping heiresses as brides. When he thought what someone like Medmenham might do . . . Robert’s hand closed so tightly around the angel’s wing that it left a dent in his palm.

Robert forced himself to release his grip. It wasn’t as though Medmenham and his friends were going to kidnap Charlotte as a virgin sacrifice for their ridiculous Hellfire Club. At least, he hoped they didn’t have virgin sacrifices. And even if they did, they wouldn’t dare touch Charlotte. She was too well connected to be lightly trifled with, and by all that was holy, he would make sure that Medmenham and the rest of his crew knew it. No one toyed with the cousin of the Duke of Dovedale.

It was slightly lowering to know that the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale was probably more of a deterrent than he was.

The devil of it was, he probably was overreacting, prey to morbid fancies and all that rot. Feeling that he had already belabored the point far too much, Robert scuffed his shoes against the worn flagstones of the floor and said, “Just be wary of Medmenham, that’s all.”

Charlotte rose from her perch on the window seat and touched a hand lightly to his arm. Her gloved fingers were tiny and very pale against his sleeve, like a china miniature. “You’re very sweet to look out for me.”

“Sweet?” said Robert, with feigned indignation. “You’ll have me laughed out of my regiment.” The words were already out of his mouth before Robert remembered that he no longer had a regiment. It was an oddly empty feeling, no longer belonging to anything.

“Kind, then,” she said, smiling at him as though he were Lancelot, Sir Galahad, and the rest of the Round Table all wrapped into one.

Robert’s hand closed over hers. “You make it very hard to refuse a compliment.”

Charlotte tilted back her head, tossing a loose curl back over her shoulders. “I’ll just keep throwing adjectives at you until you accept.”

The faint light of the distant torches slanted through the uneven old windowpanes, sending golden flecks dancing along her curls like angels on pins.

Robert leaned forwards, his hand tightening on hers. “I’d better accept then, hadn’t I?”

Her lips looked very pink and soft as she smiled up at him, that small, close-lipped smile that was so distinctively Charlotte’s. It would only take just a whisper of movement, barely a movement at all, to lean forwards and brush those lips with his, to tangle his hands in that net of golden hair and kiss her until the torches in the garden flickered and died.