Flaking off the remaining cake crumbs with a gallantry worthy of Sir Walter Raleigh, Robert placed the gold crown on her palm and folded her fingers firmly around it.

“No arguments,” he said, squeezing her hand. “It always belonged to you.”

Releasing her hand, he stood, pushing back his chair so abruptly that it tottered back and forth behind him and had to be quickly rescued by the waiting footman.

“We have a monarch!” he thundered, in the sort of voice that Charlotte imagined must have brought whole regiments to heel. “Queen Charlotte!”

“I say, does he mean the real one?” demanded Turnip Fitzhugh, craning to see over his shoulder. “Didn’t know she was coming.”

“Oh, do be quiet,” said Penelope, whacking him on the shoulder with her fork. The fact that the fork still had some cake on it was entirely beside the point. “It’s our Charlotte — that Charlotte. Over there.”

Robert ignored them both. “If my Lord of Misrule would provide the crown?”

“With pleasure, Your Majesty.” Essaying a sweeping bow — a little more sweeping than intended due to the amount he had already imbibed — Lord Freddy swept up the gilded circlet on the point of his jester’s staff and swaggered down the length of the table. Brandishing the garland in the air for the benefit of the audience, Lord Freddy wafted it about like a gypsy with a tambourine while the others at the table hooted, applauded, and called for a coronation.

While Freddy postured, Robert neatly snagged the crown.

Charlotte had to bite her lip to keep from giggling at Lord Freddy’s expression of indignation. Laughing at a subject in distress would be decidedly unqueenly.

“I say!” protested Freddy. “Highway robbery, by Gad!”

Robert smiled blandly. “Nothing of the sort. I merely claim my ducal prerogative.”

The wine had already been flowing a little too freely. Someone called out, “Is that like the droit du seigneur?”

The Duchess’s cane came down with a loud thump, followed by a yelp of pain.

Charlotte could see Robert’s lips twitch, fighting to maintain an expression of due solemnity as he lifted the crown high above her head.

Charlotte bowed her head in a pretense of humility, knowing that if she were to meet his eyes, the laughter welling in her own throat would break out and shatter any pretense of composure. Something snagged on her hair and prickled against her scalp. Cautiously, Charlotte raised her head and felt it slip and catch, pulling painfully at her upswept hair. Like so many of her grandmother’s ideas, a crown of gilded mistletoe worked better in theory than actuality.

Moving very carefully, so as not to dislodge her crown, Charlotte rose to her feet to acknowledge the cheers of her subjects.

“Allow me to be the first to felicitate you on your ascension.” Once again exercising his ducal prerogative, Robert lifted Charlotte’s hand to his lips. “Congratulations, Queen Charlotte. Long may you reign.”

When he bowed in obeisance over her gloved hand, Charlotte felt like a queen. Her spine straightened, her shoulders moved back. She was Gloriana, the Virgin Queen, resplendent in silks and velvets, confounding foreign ambassadors and dazzling the eyes of her courtiers. And Robert? He was Sir Walter Raleigh, promising her new worlds and new kingdoms and strange little brown leaves called tobacco. Or maybe he was Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the Queen’s Master of the Horse and secret love, ready to whisk her off for a clandestine tryst behind an alcove within yards of the courtiers milling about.

Charlotte thrilled to the romance of it, feeling gloriously imperious and utterly unlike herself.

Facing down the long table, Robert lifted his glass high, commanding the attention of the unruly revelers at table. “To Her Majesty, our Queen of the Feast — Queen Charlotte.”

Crystal glittered in the candlelight as a a chorus of slightly inebriated voices echoed, “Queen Charlotte!”

In front of her, all down the long table, mouths opened to hail her, hands raised to toast her, and the ruby red of a dozen rings gleamed like fireworks in the air. Charlotte beamed down on the lot of them, giddy with more than wine.

“Do you have any pronouncements for your loyal subjects?” called out Tommy Fluellen, from the lower end of the table, where he was seated next to the pudding-faced Miss Dempsey.

“That I do!” called back Charlotte, deploying her fan like a scepter. “Go forth and enjoy yourself mightily.”

Tommy grinned at her down the table, “A good and wise queen if ever I saw one, eh, lads?”

The lads all agreed.

“Shall we open the dancing, Your Majesty?” suggested Robert, holding out an arm.

Charlotte considered the guests streaming towards the gallery. There would be the usual jostling for place as they formed up for the dance, the endless polite inanities exchanged with dozens of dull acquaintances. That was all very well for the workaday world, but tonight she was Queen, daring and reckless, able to command Armadas with a single word. It was too soon to have to go back to mundanity, to being quiet Charlotte in the corner of the ballroom. “No,” Charlotte said decidedly. “I have a better idea.”

“Unicorn hunting?” suggested Robert, seeming perfectly content to follow whichever way she should lead.

“It’s the wrong season.” She tugged at his hands, drawing him after her. “Come with me. I want to show you my very favorite place at Girdings.”

Chapter Nine

When his Queen commanded, what was a loyal subject to do but obey?

Swept up in her enthusiasm, Robert found himself hurrying along as Charlotte grabbed his hand and pulled him in the wake of the departing guests. At the door of the dining hall Charlotte veered sharply to the left, down a narrow and barren corridor lit with tapers at long intervals. Despite the gloom, Charlotte moved with the assurance of familiarity, one hand still holding his as she urged him along, her skirts making a cheerful swishing noise as she danced ahead of him. Robert had to half run to keep up with her, his boots skidding on the marble tiles of the floor. For a small person, Charlotte could move very quickly when she wanted to. Robert grinned at the thought.

“Where are you taking me?”

Charlotte glanced back over her shoulder, spinning a bit to make the scalloped edge of her skirts flounce. “You’ll see.”

“Kidnapping, is it? What do you think you can get for me?”

“Seven swans a-swimming?” suggested Charlotte blithely.

“Just so long as we don’t have to eat them.”

“No, that wasn’t one of Grandmama’s better ideas, was it?” said Charlotte, stopping short so unexpectedly that he nearly toppled right over her.

“Does the oubliette open here?” asked Robert, catching at the wall to keep himself from falling over her.

“We’re going up rather than down,” said Charlotte, not the least bit discommoded by being hemmed between Robert and the wall.

Given certain of his thoughts at the moment, Robert was afraid that he was going very far down indeed, straight to the realms of pitch and brimstone reserved for those entertaining carnal thoughts about young ladies in dark alcoves. Their present position was as dark and secluded as any rake could desire, far from interfering chaperones and indignant duchesses.

Charlotte tilted her head up at him at an angle that would have been perfect for kissing, had Robert been considering kisses, which he most certainly was not. That was the tale he was telling to his conscience, and he was sticking to it.

“Don’t you know where we are?” she asked.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Robert said, and meant it in more ways than one.

He could see only the outlines of her smile in the general gloom, like a portrait done in charcoals, emphasizing the Cupid’s bow curve of her lips.

“You should,” she scolded. “We are directly between your bedroom and dressing room.”

From anyone else that might be construed as an invitation. From Charlotte . . . it was nothing more than a geographical observation. It had to be. Didn’t it?

“And these,” continued Charlotte, blissfully unaware of the implications her last words had engendered, “are the back stairs.”

Groping along the wall, she located a knob and turned it. A door swung smoothly open on well-oiled hinges — there would be no unsightly creaking noises permitted to disturb the Duke’s slumbers. Robert had to execute an inelegant hop to get out of the way before the wooden panel made straight for his nose, bowling him safely out of the way of his companion.

There was nothing like a blunt block of wood in the face to dispel lascivious thoughts.

Turning to face him, Charlotte beamed up at him in the way of an illusionist producing silk flowers out of a hat. “This is how the servants get down to your rooms.”

“Right,” said Robert. Well, that did rather put paid to any thoughts of assignations. Coal scuttles and water buckets weren’t exactly among the harbingers of romance.

Gathering her heavy velvet skirt in both hands, Charlotte started up the steps, the gold thread on her emerald slippers winking in the occasional glare of the candles placed at infrequent intervals along the stairway. “My rooms are just above.”

“Are they?” Robert’s eyebrows engaged in the sort of acrobatics that would have done credit to Drury Lane.

“Right through here.” With a sweeping gesture, Charlotte indicated a door that led off the next landing — and kept right on climbing. Robert wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.