Over Robert’s bowed head, Charlotte could see his friend Medmenham approaching. What was that Penelope had said, five hundred years ago? Something about the company Robert kept. Penelope had been right. Didn’t animals tend to run with their own kind? So, apparently, did rakes.

In a voice like dead leaves, Charlotte said tonelessly, “So I was simply your country entertainment. Like a mummers’ play.”

“Only much prettier,” he said matter-of-factly. “Ah, Medmenham. My cousin was just leaving.”

Medmenham lifted her fingers lingeringly to his lips. “Pity,” he said.

As if from a very long way away, Charlotte could hear Penelope again, in the ballroom at Girdings. I heard your precious duke tell Sir Francis Medmenham that you weren’t the sort he’d be interested in dallying with. . . . He left you, Lottie. By going off to carouse with Medmenham . . . going off to carouse with Medmenham . . . with Medmenham.

Charlotte could feel color rising in her cheeks, not out of shame, but rage. Two could play at that game, couldn’t they? “Yes, isn’t it?” she said, and her voice had a shrill edge that hadn’t been there before. “Would you walk with me, Sir Francis?”

Medmenham waved a languid hand. “To the ends of the earth.”

“I had in mind the end of the Presence Chamber.” Charlotte smiled winningly at Medmenham, unshed tears making her eyes brilliant. There was nothing like heartbreak to lend color to the complexion. “Will you excuse us, Cousin Robert?”

Even now, when she found she knew nothing about him at all, she knew enough to tell that her erstwhile betrayer was decidedly not happy. Displeasure exuded from the sudden stiffness of his shoulders, the belligerent angle of his jaw. Short of making a scene, however, there was nothing at all he could do.

“All right,” he said smoothly, “but just this once.”

There was something in his tone that said that he meant it.

Charlotte took Medmenham’s arm, holding her head so high, it hurt. So he didn’t want her monopolizing his friends, did he? Well, too bad for him. He wasn’t the only one who might find her “entertaining.” Charlotte’s heart clenched painfully at the memory. At least Medmenham was an honest rogue. He had never pretended to be a knight in shining armor. Charlotte blinked back angry tears.

“Do forgive me, Sir Francis,” she said thickly. “A spot of dust in my eye.”

“Indeed,” agreed Sir Francis. “The Court is confounded . . . dusty.”

“But peaceful,” said Charlotte. It was peaceful, usually. Too peaceful. She thought of the King’s daughters, kept at Court in perpetual monastic confinement, and had to suppress a shiver.

“As the tomb,” agreed Sir Francis. “And you know what the poets say about that.”

“One poet, at least,” said Charlotte. “But not one, I think, of whom Their Majesties would approve.”

“Do you base all your actions on the approval of Their Majesties?”

“When I am under their roof, it seems the least I can do.”

“Roof” had been the wrong word to choose. In the back of Charlotte’s head, drooping nymphs crooned an elegy about the illusions of love. That night on the roof, she had been so very happy, so very sure that Robert had meant everything he said. It wasn’t even so much what he said, since, in retrospect, he hadn’t said so very much, but the way he had looked as he had said it, tenderness written in every line of his open, honest face.

So much for that.

All this while, she had thought she was living out Evelina, where the heroine’s virtue and charm won the admiration and love of the honorable Lord Orville. Instead, she seemed to have dropped into Clarissa, seduced by the rake Lovelace for his own amusement. She had always thought herself able to tell the one from the other. And Robert had always seemed so honorable, so truthful — so kind.

If she let herself start believing Robert didn’t mean what he had said just now, she would go mad. Like Ophelia. There was a heroine she most certainly did not want to emulate.

Medmenham ducked closer. “Is the presence of a roof your sole criteria for the moderation of your activities? What about the royal courtyards? Or the Palace gardens? Would you forebear to gather your rosebuds there for fear of offending your monarch?”

“I believe,” said Charlotte solemnly, “that, like balconies, gardens and courtyards must be taken as extensions of the overall structure, and dealt with accordingly.”

“Your scruples become you, Lady Charlotte.” The glint in Medmenham’s eye said that before the night was out, he would have ten to one in the books at White’s that he could overcome them. He, at least, was an unmistakable Lovelace. And, as such, no danger to her.

Charlotte inclined her head in silent acknowledgment, all that was virginal and aloof. After all, if he was playing Lovelace, she might at least do her bit as Clarissa. Especially if Robert was still watching them.

Medmenham rose to the bait. The more she looked away from him, the closer he leaned. Charlotte desperately hoped that Robert was watching. But why? What was the point? If he were, he wouldn’t care. He had made that quite clear. Charlotte’s head swam with the confusion of it all. Just twenty minutes ago, she had been galloping towards happily ever after, in love and loved; now she was . . . what?

Medmenham was still buzzing around her ear, like a fly. “Do you return to Girdings? Or shall you stay in London to grace the gatherings of the metropolis?”

“As long as Their Majesties are in London, I will be, too. I wait on Her Majesty,” Charlotte explained, pulling herself together. “It’s my three-month turn as maid of honor.”

“I trust, then, that I may wait on you.”

Trust. The word had a bittersweet echo to it. Charlotte could hear herself, like a fool, prattling to Robert in the chapel antechamber, bragging that to trust was to render someone worthy of trust. And Robert, all those long weeks ago, replying, “That sounds like a very dangerous philosophy.”

He must have known, even then, what he had intended to do.

Rotten apples, indeed!

Charlotte busied herself with the leaves of her fan, which had been painted with a charming scene of Richmond Palace. “Never trust, Sir Francis. It’s a dubious venture.”

“Will you, then, give me leave to hope?”

“Shall we say, instead, that you may hazard a visit?”

“That,” said Sir Francis, “would be a wager very much to my taste. For you, dear lady, who could fail to hazard far more?”

One name came to mind.

“I imagine that for a hardened gamester, one wager does as well as another,” Charlotte said honestly. “And that the determining factor would be which first comes to hand.”

If she hadn’t been there, would it have been Penelope or one of the others singled out for the new duke’s attentions? It was like looking at the world reflected in the back of a spoon, everything upside down and out of proportion.

“I had never thought you a cynic, Lady Charlotte.” Sir Francis sounded like he very much approved the change.

Charlotte lifted a hand in instinctive revulsion. “Say practical, rather than cynical.”

“Two words for the same thing.”

“No.” Caught up in the philosophy of it, Charlotte nearly forgot she was talking to Medmenham. “A cynic looks for the worst. A pragmatist merely weathers it when he stumbles upon it.”

“Or she?” asked Lord Francis, a little too knowingly.

Charlotte took refuge behind her fan. “Does it make any difference? Life makes little distinction for one’s sex in these matters, I should think.”

“Radical notions for a member of the Queen’s household, Lady Charlotte,” drawled Medmenham. “Have you any others?”

That almost made Charlotte smile. There was nothing the least bit radical about her. In fact, she was the most conventional creature alive. She believed in true love, and loyalty to one’s monarch, and death before dishonor. It was just that, sometimes, things didn’t quite turn out as one would have wished. In those cases, there was nothing to do but carry on. And on and on and on.

Charlotte smiled achingly up at him. “No, Sir Francis. Not radical notions. Merely practical ones.”

Chapter Fourteen

“A pleasant girl, your cousin.” Medmenham’s voice pounded against Robert’s aching head like the devil’s own hammers.

That had not gone well.

In fact, it was hard to imagine a way in which that could have gone any worse, short of flood, fire, or a large batch of locusts. What in all the blazes was Charlotte doing in London? In his imagination, Charlotte was perpetually at Girdings, leaning over the parapet of the roof with the wind playing through her hair. That was the point of towers, after all. They kept their princesses safe. She was safe at Girdings. Safe from him.

Three weeks later, he could smell the reek of the caves rising off his skin like rot. He had spent years trying to remake himself, trying to scour the stench of the tavern from his skin. But when it came down to it, for all his years of self-abnegation, he was no better than his father, whoring his way through life without moderation or honor.

Charlotte deserved better than that.

“You think so?” Robert adopted the bored drawl that was de rigueur among Medmenham’s set. After three weeks, it came as easily as breathing. “I’m sure she’s pleasant enough, but it is the utter end of tedium to be constantly burdened with attendance on a young relation. Especially when there are so many more entertaining companions to be had.”