Tommy simply looked stunned, although that could, in part, have been because the Dowager had landed on his foot in passing.

“Ah, these old legs aren’t what they once were,” mused the Dowager, wiggling a red-heeled shoe. “In my day I could outdance half the men in London. Outrun them, too.” She emitted a short bark of laughter. “Except when I wanted to be caught, that is. Those were the days.” She shook her cane in the face of a practically paralytic Tommy. “Who’s this young sprig and what is he doing in my hall?”

Robert very nobly refrained from pointing out that it was, in fact, his hall. “May I present Tommy Fluellen, late of His Majesty’s service?”

“Welsh?” demanded the Duchess.

“With the leek to prove it,” Tommy replied cheerfully.

The Dowager regarded him thoughtfully. “There was a Welsh princess married into the family in the twelfth century. Angharad, they called her. I doubt you are related.”

The Dowager Duchess turned her gimlet gaze on the Duke, for an inspection that went from his bare head straight down to the mud on the toes of his boots.

“You do have the Lansdowne look about you,” she admitted grudgingly. “At least you would, if you weren’t burnt brown as a savage. What were you thinking, boy?”

“Not of my complexion.”

“Hmph. That’s clear enough. Still, you look more of a Lansdowne than Charlotte.” The Dowager jerked her head in Charlotte’s direction by way of acknowledgment. “She favors her mother’s people.”

Charlotte was well aware of that. She had heard it often enough over the years she had lived under her grandmother’s care. The Dowager Duchess had never forgiven Charlotte’s father, the future Duke of Dovedale, for running off with a humble vicar’s daughter.

It hadn’t mattered one whit to the Duchess that the Vicar had been the grandson of an earl or that Charlotte’s mother had been undeniably a gentleman’s daughter. The Duchess had had her heart set on a grand match for her only son, the sort of match that could be counted in guineas and acres and influence in Parliament.

They had been happy, though, even in exile. Or perhaps they were happy because they were in exile. When she tried very hard, Charlotte could remember a golden age before she had come to Girdings, when she and her father and mother had lived together in a little house in Surrey, a quaint little two-storied house with dormer windows and ivy growing over the walls and a stone sundial in the garden that professed only to count the happy hours.

The Duchess had never forgiven them for being happy, either.

Ignoring the Duchess, Robert bent his head towards Charlotte. “I regret I never had the honor of meeting your mother.”

“She was not a Lansdowne,” the Duchess sniffed.

Robert cocked an eyebrow at the Duchess. “If everyone were a Lansdowne, where would be the distinction in being one?”

“Impertinence!” The Duchess’s cane cracked against the tiles like one of Jove’s thunderbolts. “I like that in a man.”

Her cousin caught her eye, making a face of such mock desperation that Charlotte had to bite her lip to keep from smiling. His friend simply looked mesmerized.

“You’ll have the ducal chambers, of course,” said the Duchess. “Don’t look so frightened, boy! You shan’t find me through the connecting door.”

“I wouldn’t want to dispossess you.”

“I occupy the Queen’s chambers.” Having established her proper position, somewhere just to the right of Elizabeth I, the Duchess waved a dismissive hand. “These gels will introduce you to the rest of the party. You may find some acquaintances from India among them. Not a one worth knowing in the lot of them.”

She snapped her fingers, and the polebearers dutifully sank to their knees.

“You!” she barked, and four different potential yous stood to attention all at once. “Yes, you! The one with the leek!”

Lieutenant Fluellen snapped into parade-ground pose.

“Well?” the Duchess demanded, batting arthritic eyelashes. “Don’t you know to help a lady into her litter?”

“It would be my honor?” ventured Lieutenant Fluellen.

The Duchess favored him with a smile as her polebearers struggled to their feet. “Correct answer. You may keep your head. For now.”

And with that, she swept off, her bearers’ feet beating a staccato tattoo against the marble floor.

“Good Lord,” breathed Lieutenant Fluellen. It wasn’t a prayer.

“Grandmama seems to have taken a fancy to you.”

“A fancy?” echoed Lieutenant Fluellen incredulously. “I’d hate to see her take against someone.”

“Oh, no,” Charlotte hastened to reassure him. “Grandmama generally just ignores people she doesn’t like. She doesn’t believe in wasting her energy on them.” She caught Robert’s eyes on her again, too shrewd for comfort, and hastened to change the subject. “Do you have any baggage?”

“Our bags are in Dovedale village. We thought it better not to presume upon our welcome.”

There it was again, the past, jabbing at them. Charlotte lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry if Grandmama was . . . unkind, all those years ago. She — ”

“She had every right to be,” her cousin interrupted flatly. “She was remarkably well behaved under the circumstances.”

Lieutenant Fluellen looked from one to the other with undisguised curiosity. “I feel as though I’m missing something.”

“Most of your wits,” countered Robert amiably.

“I packed them in my other case. Which, by the way, is still at the Rusty Dove in Dovedale village.” He turned to Charlotte. “What is a rusty dove?”

It was too clumsy a change of subject not to be deliberate. Charlotte liked him tremendously for it.

“It’s my guess that rusty is a corruption of ‘russet,’ ” she explained earnestly. “The first Duke of Dovedale had red hair, you see. Hence the Russet Dove, in compliment to the Duke.”

Lieutenant Fluellen looked critically at his friend. “If they named a tavern for Rob, it would have to be the Muddy Dove. Did you leave any dirt on the road between here and Dovedale, Rob?”

“An adage about pots and kettles comes to mind.” The Duke turned his attention back to Charlotte with an alacrity that would have been flattering if she hadn’t had the impression that his thoughts were a million miles away. Or perhaps only several thousand miles away, across the seas in India. “The Duchess mentioned visitors from India?”

“Only one,” Charlotte said apologetically, wishing she could offer him more. “Lord Frederick Staines.” Something in Robert’s expression prompted her to add, “Do you know him?”

“Only by reputation,” said Robert smoothly. “But I look forward to knowing him better. We old India hands tend to band together.”

Penelope swung her basket in the direction of the door. “Lord Frederick and the rest of the party should be outside already, cutting holly and mistletoe. If you join us, you can meet him.

“Although I imagine you’d probably prefer to stay by a hot fire at this point,” Charlotte put in, with a glance at her cousin’s chapped cheeks. Much as she wished he would join them, it would be cruel to drag him back out into the cold. It was silly to imagine that if she let him out of her sight, he would disappear again, like a cavalier in a daydream, riding back off into the haze of her imagination.

Or, as he had twelve years ago, packing and stealing away without a word to any of them at all.

“Ra-ther,” agreed Lieutenant Fluellen wholeheartedly. “A hot fire, a hot fire, my kingdom for a hot fire.”

He looked like he might have expatiated on that theme, but the Duke preempted him by strolling deliberately towards the door. Glancing back over his shoulder, the Duke winked at Charlotte in a way that made her stomach flutter like five and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.

“Come, Tommy,” he said easily. “Where’s your seasonal spirit? How often does one have the chance to participate in a proper country Christmas?”

Lieutenant Fluellen held out both hands palms up, in the traditional gesture of surrender. “How could one refuse?”

Chapter Two

There were many emotions Robert Lansdowne, fifth Duke of Dovedale, might have experienced upon returning to his ancestral home. Elation. Triumph. Fear.

Mostly, he just felt cold.

Charlotte was right: He was longing for a hot fire. Preferably a dozen of them all at once. After a decade overseas, he had nearly forgotten the merciless chill of an English winter. Robert thought back to all those soldiers he had known in India who had spent half their time mooning over memories of England, saying fatuous things like, “Oh, to see a good English winter.” Madmen, the lot of them. He had lost the ability to feel his feet somewhere just west of King’s Lynn. Since he was upright, he assumed they were still attached to his legs, but he wouldn’t have been willing to vouch to their presence in any court of law. As to the rest of him . . . well, it didn’t bear thinking about. At this point, fire and brimstone were beginning to sound more like a promise than a threat. The Devil could have his soul for the price of a hot water bottle.

Yet here he was, turning his back on the promise of whatever warmth might be available in this frosty and unpleasant land, and going voluntarily out into that cold night. It was only just past five, but the early winter dusk had already fallen, turning the grounds of Girdings House dark as night. The great parkland stretched before them like the uncharted seas of a medieval explorer’s map, the topiary rearing from the landscape like sea serpents along the way. The torches placed at intervals along the uneven paths served more to cast shadows than to illuminate, making two of every shrub and tree.