Charlotte’s lashes fluttered down over her eyes. They were touched with gold at the tips, he noticed, inconsequentially, before his own eyes drifted closed and there was nothing but touch. The slide of her hair beneath his fingers, the soft exhalation of her breath in the cold air, the brush of her lips against his, more warming that any number of well-stoked fires. He had meant it to be only a mistletoe kiss, a ceremonial salutation in honor of the season, but perhaps it was the sheer quantity of the mistletoe in the crown that betrayed them, kiss upon kiss multiplying until there was nothing ceremonial about it at all.

Charlotte’s crown jangled forgotten to the stone-flagged floor as she wrapped her arms securely around his neck, kissing him back with kisses that tasted faintly of wine. Above them, the stars whirled in dizzying circles in the perfect night sky and the faint sound of music rose from below like the chime of celestial harps.

They might have stayed that way for hours, drugged by kisses, spell-bound by starlight, if the wind hadn’t defeated them. Beneath the velvet of her dress, Robert could feel Charlotte shivering. He wrapped his arms more firmly around her, drawing her into the shelter of his body. While her dress might be made of a warm fabric, it left crucial areas uncovered. Robert warmed the exposed skin at her collarbone with a kiss and felt her shiver with something other than cold.

“You’re freezing.” For a wonder, he wasn’t. For the first time since returning to England, he felt warm. Too warm. That was the harm in a kiss. “We should get you back inside.”

Charlotte rested her head against his jacket, finding a comfortable hollow beneath his shoulder. “Must we?” she said wistfully. “Magic never fares well in the real world. I’m afraid that once we go downstairs, the enchantment will all fade away.”

“What makes you think it will fade away?” Robert asked, knowing he was flirting with danger. “What if it’s real?”

Charlotte blinked up at him, her voice slightly muffled by his waistcoat. “Do you mean that? Or are you just trying to get me inside so I don’t turn blue?”

Robert tucked a finger under her chin and tilted her face up towards his. “I like you in blue.”

He kissed her before she could point out that he hadn’t answered the question. He kissed her, knowing that it was a knave’s trick, designed to buy time. He kissed her to avoid having to acknowledge that the most frightening answer of all was the true one.

When their lips finally parted, neither showed any inclination to move. Instead, they stood in comfortable silence, Charlotte’s head tucked beneath his chin, looking out over the sleeping gardens with their rose bushes tied up in burlap, over the dry fountains with their frost scarred bottoms laid bare to the elements, over the lake from which all the swans had fled — presumably to avoid being turned into a ducal dinner. In summer, the view must be dazzling. For a moment, he allowed himself to entertain an image of what it would be to stand so in summer, with the flowers blooming below and the fountains sending up their fine spray and the sun reflecting golden off the tips of Charlotte’s eyelashes.

Summer was a very long time away. In the meantime . . . Robert didn’t want to think of the meantime, of Staines and Medmenham, of promises still unfulfilled and dark deeds unpunished.

“We should go in,” he said, brushing a kiss across the top of Charlotte’s head to soften the sentiment.

“I know,” agreed Charlotte, and nestled deeper into his waistcoat.

“We could make a house up on the roof,” Robert suggested, only half jokingly. “And send down baskets for food.”

Reluctantly, Charlotte peeled herself from his side and shook out her skirts. “It would have to be a very long rope. And you would be very cold.”

“Shall we?” said Robert. There was, he noticed, a crease in her cheek from the seam of his coat. He lifted a hand to smooth it away.

Charlotte caught his hand and pressed the curled fingers to her lips. “Let’s.”

For all that it was warmer in the stairwell, he could feel a chill settle upon him as soon as they closed the door to the roof behind them. Charlotte’s hand nestled trustingly in his as they meandered very slowly down the long stair. He could feel the weight of it like a tug at his conscience. Would her hand rest so comfortably in his if she knew for what he really was? If she discovered that he wasn’t at all what she believed him to be, not a Sir Galahad but — well, a man. A man with a cluttered, untidy past and a million minor transgressions to his discredit.

She had hit far too close to the bone at dinner that night, when she asked about his departure from Girdings. He could still hear the clink of coins in his satchel as he had stolen away from Girdings that night, slinking off like a common thief with the four hundred pounds he had needed to purchase his commission as an ensign in the army. His father would have called it “borrowing against his inheritance,” which was probably why Robert preferred to think of it as it was. Stealing. He had spent years trying to sweat out the taint of it by working twice as hard as any other officer in the regiment, volunteering for the most exhausting treks, the most dangerous missions, the most tedious administrative duties. He had been promoted from subaltern to captain on his own merits — his own merits and the backing of Colonel Arbuthnot. It was a pretty sort of punishment that there was no way to make proper amends; the person to whom he would have to pay that initial money back would be himself.

What would Charlotte say if she knew? Would she care? He remembered her praise of that long-ago Lansdowne who had taken such shameless advantage of Sir Walter Raleigh and allowed himself to hope that she might see it in that light, as an expedient to a greater end, unimportant in itself. But even if she saw it through rose-colored glasses, he knew otherwise. He knew what he was and what he had done.

But he didn’t let go.

It was too tempting to hold on to Charlotte’s hand and her vision of what he might be, as though believing hard enough might make it so. He kept the conversation light as they strolled down the narrow stairway, hand in hand, sharing silly stories about nothing in particular and pausing frequently in dark corners. Robert knew he would have to pay the piper sooner or later, but for now, the shadows kept inconvenient realities at bay.

“I should fix my hair,” said Charlotte, dawdling on the first-floor landing, no more eager than he to abandon the shadows. She indicated the way to her rooms with a tilt of her decidedly lopsided coiffure. “And try to make myself presentable.”

Robert followed her into a wide hallway dotted with majestic-looking doors, not as majestic as the state bedrooms on the ground floor, including the gloomy ducal chambers that he currently inhabited, but still far grander than anything to which he had ever aspired. Accustomed by long usage, Charlotte didn’t even seem to notice.

Her sitting room looked just as he would have imagined it, decorated in airy pastels, with papers scattered pell mell on a writing table and books falling open on every available surface. He thought he recognized the battered binding of the book he had seen her reading in the gallery last week. Emmelina? No, Evelina. The memory brought a smile to his lips.

“Shall I wait for you?” he asked.

Charlotte clung to his hand as though she were going to agree, and then reluctantly released it. “It would probably be best if we went back separately. Just so that people don’t talk.”

She looked at him so expectantly that Robert wondered if he was supposed to argue with her and insist on not leaving her side, or whatever else it was that a proper knight errant would be expected to do. But what she said made sound sense. They had undoubtedly been missed by now. Tongues would have begun wagging, dowagers would be whispering behind their fans. Charlotte knew this world far better than he.

“All right,” Robert said, planting both hands on her shoulders and drawing her close for one last kiss. “I bow to your superior judgment.”

“The ballroom?” she said.

“I get the next dance,” said Robert. “Whatever it may be.”

This time, he had clearly said the right thing. Charlotte beamed at him. “It’s a promise.”

With a flurry of flounces, she flung her arms around his neck for one more last, absolutely the last, very last kiss. It turned into an almost the very last kiss, instead.

“The ballroom,” Charlotte repeated breathlessly, once the absolutely last kiss had been kissed.

Detaching Robert’s hands from around her waist, she swirled through the door of her sitting room, giving the impression of flying rather than walking. Flying did have its hazards. Robert caught a last glimpse of frothing petticoat and heard a muffled “Ouch!” as she stumbled over a book, and then the door swung shut behind her and he was left staring at a plaster panel.

Not just staring at it, beaming fatuously at it like the most mawkish sort of lovesick schoolboy. Robert hastily rearranged his face into more acceptable ducal lines.

Shaking his head at himself, he forced himself to move away from the door, step by determined step. Served him right to always be mocking Tommy and then to be hit by the fatal arrow himself. That it was fatal, he had very little doubt. Maybe Charlotte was right, maybe it was all an enchantment. If it was, it felt like a very durable one, solid as the stone of Girdings. Just so long as he could keep the past at bay.

Like the pictures in all illustrated paper, he could see their future all laid out, with captions. “Duke and Duchess of Dovedale Visit the Tenantry,” “Duke and Duchess of Dovedale Relax in the Library,” “Duke and Duchess Take Little Dovedales Unicorn Hunting.” Funny, how the prospect of being Duke became a great deal less daunting when Charlotte was in the picture as Duchess.