He was too busy mentally moving Charlotte into the ducal chambers to hear the sound of footsteps in the hallway behind him. And he was far too engaged in imagining what might come after to notice the long shadow fall across the floor in front of him.

He didn’t notice anything at all until a red-ringed hand descended upon his shoulder.

Chapter Ten

Robert grabbed for a pistol that wasn’t there. One tended not to wear arms in one’s own home, but his home, until now, had been an army tent, and there, one did. How in the blazes could he have allowed himself to go off in the clouds like that? That was the sort of lapse that could get a man killed.

Reality came raging back with the force of a fist to the vitals. With a sickening wrench, Robert realized that he had come within an inch of forgetting everything that had brought him back to Girdings in the first place. Domestic bliss didn’t come into it.

“Ah, Dovedale,” drawled Sir Francis Medmenham. “Just the man I wanted to see.”

Robert couldn’t quite bring himself to echo the sentiment. Something about the arch tone of his voice grated on Robert even more than usual.

“Medmenham,” he managed to say, with every imitation of pleasure. “Enjoying the party?”

“Not so much as you, I expect,” said Sir Francis Medmenham, with an eyebrow arched in the direction of the bedroom doors. “A bit far afield from the ballroom, aren’t we?”

Robert managed to keep smiling, although he was not quite sure how. “You wanted to see me?”

Having found him, Sir Francis seemed in no hurry to state his business. “The little Lansdowne has also been conspicuously absent from the ballroom.”

Robert’s fists ached with the visceral need to seek out Medmenham’s face. He managed a shrug. “Crowded places, ballrooms. It’s hard to see everyone.”

Sir Francis’s smile was too knowing by half. “Indeed.”

Placing one hand on the other man’s elbow, Robert steered him firmly away from Charlotte’s door. “Were you looking for me, or for Lady Charlotte?”

Sir Francis made a show of polishing his ring against the side of one perfectly cut sleeve. “Under the circumstances, I had rather thought I might kill two birds with one stone.”

Men had been called out for less.

There was nothing Robert would have liked more than to suggest rapiers at dawn — or, even better, cannons at twenty paces — but he had no right to dice with Charlotte’s reputation. And he couldn’t afford to alienate Medmenham. It was, he assured himself, the former that concerned him more than the latter.

“You don’t think that I and — good Gad, Medmenham!” Robert affected a hearty laugh. “Charlotte? I’m certainly very fond of her, but . . . no.”

“No?”

“No,” repeated Robert quite firmly. “She’s not the sort of girl one dallies with, is she?”

That much, at least, was quite true. Courted, yes; dallied, no.

“And I imagine her grandmother would have something to say about any man who came calling. She’s a dear girl, but not worth slaying dragons for, eh, Medmenham?”

“That,” said Medmenham, “would depend on the size of her dowry. A dragon’s hoard might be worth a certain amount of effort.”

“Not this dragon,” said Robert repressively. “What exactly was it that you wanted to see me about?”

“A suggestion I think will interest you. I have a little proposition to put to you . . .”


Charlotte danced her way down to the ballroom in the sort of perfect happiness that only occurs once in a lifetime.

This was the very apex of joy, the peak of happiness, the desired ending of every novel. Happily ever after had finally arrived and it was just as glorious as she had dreamt.

They would be married, of course. That went without saying. A spring wedding would be perfect, Charlotte thought, with all its promise of the world coming again into bloom. It had a rather nice symbolic resonance to it. On a more practical level, she was promised to Queen Charlotte — the real Queen Charlotte — to serve as one of her maids of honor from the middle of January to the end of April. Fortunately, her duties would be light and maids of honor were no longer so secluded as they had been in the past. Due to crowded conditions in the royal residences, the Queen had decided several years ago that it was no longer necessary for maids of honor to reside with the royal family during their tenure. While the royal household was in London, Charlotte would live at Dovedale House.

The Duke of Dovedale would presumably reside at Dovedale House as well.

In between her duties to the Queen, there would be plenty of time for walks in the park, afternoons in the library, evenings at the theatre, and — Charlotte went a happy pink — many long hours in convenient alcoves. Dovedale House was well furnished with those, although Charlotte had never had any need of them before. Lovely, deep alcoves, shaded with heavy velvet curtains.

Downstairs, champagne burbled from a specially constructed fountain in the hall, monitored by white-wigged footmen in the distinctive green and gold Dovedale livery. The ground floor was mobbed with the most elite of the fashionable world, all of whom had gone trotting out to Dovedale at the Duchess’s command. Charlotte threaded her way through the crowd towards the gallery, smiling and nodding, brimming with affection for the whole of mankind. Even Lord Vaughn and his haughty bride, of whom Charlotte had always been more than a little afraid, earned a beaming smile that left them both completely baffled.

For Charlotte, the enchantment, far from fading, appeared to have followed her down into the gallery. The entire assemblage glowed as though touched with fairy dust. Jewels glittered like pendant stars, silks ran rippling like rainbow streams, the very champagne in the glasses scintillated like condensed sunlight, conveying benefaction to whosesoever lips it touched. She had never seen so many beautiful people, so many brilliant costumes, so many graceful dancers. Even Turnip Fitzhugh had an exuberant charm about him that not even his appallingly high shirt points could mar.

In the midst of it all, Charlotte felt as though she were floating, borne on her own personal, gold-spangled cloud. Her feet barely touched the ground as she sparkled her way through the hall and down the long corridor into the gallery.

As one gnarled dowager shouted to another, “The little Lansdowne is in looks tonight, ain’t she?”

“With that sort of dowry,” bellowed the other, “who wouldn’t be?” And they both cackled happily over their own wit.

Charlotte found Henrietta at the far end of the gallery, on the side farthest from the musicians, chatting with the new Viscountess Pinchingdale, formerly Miss Letty Alsworthy, who had come up from London with her husband for the festivities.

It took only one look at Charlotte’s face for Henrietta to hastily detach herself from Letty and scoot Charlotte off into the most remote corner she could find, wedged between a shoulder-high cupid carrying candles and old Lady Featherstonehaugh, who had dozed off in her chair, her mouth open to reveal a truly impressive array of false teeth. Their remove offered only the illusion of privacy, but the din of the music and hundreds of voices chattering provided a far more secure safeguard.

After so many years of friendship, there were times when mere words were redundant. Henrietta grasped both of Charlotte’s hands in hers. “I don’t even need to ask. But I will. Well?”

Charlotte beamed. “Life can be better than fiction. Better than Evelina even!”

Henrietta’s hazel eyes widened. “This is serious.”

“Oh, Hen, it was splendid. We were up on the roof — ”

“The roof?”

“It was my idea.”

Henrietta shuddered. “He really must love you. It’s frigid out.”

“Neither of us wanted to come back inside. Even though our fingers were turning blue.”

Henrietta collapsed in a fit of choking. “So you’re frostbitten, but very much in love.”

Charlotte felt that that was an accurate summary. “Essentially.”

“Oh, darling, you are mad,” said Henrietta, and proceeded to give ample evidence of the same herself by laughing, crying, embracing, and generally bouncing around in place.

Fortunately, most of the guests were too involved in their own affairs to wonder why the granddaughter of the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale and the daughter of the Marquess of Uppington were engaging in their own private jig in the corner of the Gallery of Girdings.

“Where is your duke?” asked Henrietta, once the requisite jumping and squealing had been accomplished.

This time, Charlotte didn’t contest the appellation. “He’s supposed to meet me in here,” she said, standing on tiptoe to scan the crowd. Given that the gallery was crammed by hundreds of guests, most of them taller than she, it was not the most effective of gestures. Charlotte was nothing daunted. Love’s compass would guide Robert to her. Besides, being much taller, he could actually see over the crowd to find her. “I’ve promised him whatever dance he likes.”

“Oh, just a dance, is it?” teased Henrietta, making Charlotte blush. “Is it all settled between you, or do I need to make Miles demand his intentions? Miles does loom so well,” she said fondly, sparing a glance in the direction of her own husband, who was less looming than leaning, propped against the wall like a human replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa as he engaged in a conversation with his old friend, Pinchingdale-Snipe.

“I believe we can spare Miles,” said Charlotte happily. “I can’t believe it was all this easy. I had always thought that the path of true love was supposed to be strewn with challenges and dangers. But Mr. Shakespeare seems to have got it entirely backwards. When it’s right, it is easy.”