It was rather odd to reflect that she had known him even before she had known Henrietta, whom she always thought of, in all capital letters, as her best and oldest friend.
Henrietta, however, seemed determined to make Charlotte re-think that designation.
‘Hello!’ Henrietta popped out of her chair, ignoring protocol with the blithe unconcern of one to the marquisate born. ‘You must be Charlotte’s duke.’
At the moment, Charlotte didn’t want a duke; Charlotte wanted a hole to open in the parquet floor and swallow her up.
‘I’m afraid you have the advantage of me,’ said Robert, although he did not, Charlotte noted with guilty pleasure, challenge Henrietta’s description of him. Of course, he couldn’t very well admit to being a duke but deny being Charlotte’s. So there was really very little to read into it, other than the fact that she was behaving like a complete ninny and needed to stop now.
‘I am Lady Henrietta Sel – um, Dorrington.’ Henrietta hadn’t quite got into the habit of her married name yet. She smiled winningly. ‘Charlotte’s oldest and dearest friend.’
‘In which case,’ said Robert, bowing over her hand, ‘I am doubly honoured to make your acquaintance.’
Over his bowed head, Henrietta pushed up her eyebrows as far as they would go and pursed her lips in the general direction of Robert’s head. After years of Henrietta’s facial expressions, Charlotte was able to correctly translate it as, ‘I like this one! Keep him.’
As Robert straightened, Henrietta returned her features to their normal positions, assuming an expression of exaggerated innocence. At any moment now, she was going to start whistling.
‘Henrietta and her husband are here for Twelfth Night,’ said Charlotte primly.
‘Twelfth Night,’ agreed Henrietta, her eyes flicking back and forth between Robert and Charlotte. ‘It’s … on the twelfth night.’
‘I had hoped to trouble you for a dance,’ said Robert to Charlotte. ‘But if you’re otherwise engaged …’
Behind his back, Henrietta made enthusiastic shooing gestures.
Charlotte swallowed a smile. Henrietta was so dear, and so unsubtle.
‘I would be delighted,’ said Charlotte, placing her hand on his arm. It looked rather nice there. She was very glad she had thought to wear fresh gloves.
It was not until they were lined up with the other couples and the first couple was galloping enthusiastically down the line that Charlotte realised that Robert was only about one quarter there. He said all the right things at the right time. He complimented her dress and twirled her in the appropriate direction and made the requisite snide comment about Turnip Fitzhugh’s execrable taste in waistcoats, but he did it all by rote, with a smile that never quite reached his eyes. He also appeared to have developed a twitch that involved frequent glances over his shoulder at the left side of the room.
‘Is something wrong?’ Charlotte asked as they pranced down the centre of the long row of clapping couples.
‘Have you promised anyone the next dance?’ he asked abruptly.
‘No.’
‘Would you mind if we get some air?’
‘No, not at all,’ said Charlotte, although the air in the gallery seemed perfectly fine to her, and the Fairy Queen was one of her very favourite country dances. Charlotte sank into a curtsy as he bowed. ‘It is a little close in here.’
Rising from her curtsy, she saw Robert looking grimly over his shoulder again. ‘Close is just the word for it.’
Charlotte looked quizzically at him, but Robert made no offer to explain, and she didn’t press him. Whatever reason he might have for suddenly finding the gallery too close, she had no objection to anything that led them together to a quiet corner. One might even call it a tête-à-tête. Penelope certainly would.
Charlotte hastily got her visage under control before a very silly smile could break out.
She was, she realised, being exceedingly silly. She had managed to pass eight days in her cousin’s company behaving like a perfectly normal and rational human being – well, no more irrational than usual, at any rate – and there was no reason that being translated from their usual routine onto a dance floor should make her all fluttery and tongue-tied, even if Robert himself was behaving exceedingly oddly. Charlotte would have liked to think it was because he was nobly battling his passion for her, but it seemed far more likely that he was having the usual reaction of the healthy male to being made to mince around in circles in the centre of a ballroom. Henrietta’s Miles tended to react in much the same way, and could usually be found fleeing for the card room sometime after the first quadrille.
Either way, she would far rather be not dancing with Robert than dancing with anyone else. For the first time, she began to understand what drove Penelope to seek out secluded balconies – although she still had extreme difficulty understanding why Penelope chose the men she did to accompany her.
‘Shall we go that way?’ Charlotte suggested, pointing towards the far end of the gallery.
The rooms along the garden front had all been pressed into service for the party, with one salon set up as a supper room, and another as a refuge for gentlemen looking to play cards. But on the far side of the gallery, effectively blocked off behind the musicians, the remaining rooms of the West Wing lay dark and still. It wasn’t quite a balcony, but it would be warmer, and just as quiet. Quieter, probably. Penelope had disappeared with Freddy Staines a good quarter of an hour ago.
‘Wherever you lead,’ Robert said, and then gave the lie to his words by hustling her along beside him at a pace that forced her to take two steps to each of his one.
It wasn’t until she stumbled over the long hem of her skirt that Robert noticed she was having trouble keeping up. Righting her with one hand beneath her elbow, he made a penitent face. ‘Sorry,’ he said, slowing down. ‘I didn’t mean to rush you.’
‘If you really didn’t want to dance, you could have just said so,’ Charlotte teased.
Robert looked at her blankly.
‘Never mind,’ said Charlotte. Wherever he was, it wasn’t somewhere jokes could follow.
The entrance she sought was blocked by a cunningly hung tapestry featuring a stirring representation of the second Duke of Dovedale welcoming King William III as he stepped off his ship, the Den Briel, at Brixham Harbour. Certain tactful licence had been taken with the historical scene, such as adding an extra six inches to the king so that the second duke wouldn’t tower over him quite so badly. The Lansdownes did tend to run to height. That was another way in which Charlotte had taken after her mother’s family.
Her lack of inches was, however, very convenient for ducking through small doorways. Charlotte gestured Robert through the gap behind the arras, into a curious octagonal room with three-sided windows on either side and delicately carved stone arches that rose to meet around an elaborate rosette in the centre of the ceiling. The fabric swished back into place behind them, sealing them away as effectively as a medieval maiden barricaded into a tower.
They might be only just on the other side of the gallery, but the thick stone walls and heavy fabric made it feel a world away. The only light came from the torches flickering in the grounds outside. Filtered through the thick glass panels of the leaded windows, the light made pretty shadows on the stone benches beneath the windows, like fish beneath the waters of a pond. It was also dramatically cooler, shrouded in thick stone, away from the light and press of bodies in the room beyond.
Away from the ballroom, Robert looked considerably more cheerful. Stopping in the precise middle of the room, he linked his hands together and stretched up towards the ceiling. Tall as he was, his arms didn’t come near the centre of the roof.
‘Where are we?’ he asked, examining his surroundings with interest. ‘I don’t remember this from my last stay.’
‘This is the anteroom to the old chapel,’ Charlotte explained, resting one knee on the stone window seat as she leant over to unlatch one of the leaded windows for the
promised fresh air. There had been cushions once, but the duchess had ordered them removed, pointing out that penitence ought to be as hard on the bum as it was on the soul. In reality, Charlotte suspected that it was just that her grandmother hadn’t wanted to go to the trouble of having them replaced. ‘There’s a theory that the room was designed this way as an allegory of the Trinity, with each of the three-sided window embrasures representing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’
Propping one elbow against a carved niche in the wall, Robert appraised her knowingly. ‘But you don’t believe it,’ he said.
It gave her a warm and cosy feeling to know that he knew her that well already, like hot tea on a rainy day.
‘But I don’t believe it,’ Charlotte admitted. ‘I think it’s more likely that Vanbrugh just liked the way the curve of the wall looked from the outside. He used a similar technique at Blenheim. Don’t mention that to Grandmama, though. She likes to think that we’re unique.’
‘You are,’ said Robert fondly.
Before Charlotte had time to bask in the compliment properly, he added, in an entirely different tone, ‘And so is your grandmother.’
‘Every fairy tale needs a witch,’ said Charlotte unthinkingly, and then hastily added, ‘not that Grandmama is a witch, of course. Just a bit …’
‘Witchlike?’ contributed Robert.
‘Set in her ways,’ finished Charlotte.
The draught from the window was going right up the back of her neck – there were some disadvantages to upswept coiffures – so she turned to shut the window. Having once tasted freedom, the panel didn’t want to close again. Robert’s large hand settled over hers, pushing the latch capably back into place.
‘The duchess isn’t very kind to you,’ he said, so close that she could feel his breath warm against the back of her neck.
Maybe upswept hair wasn’t such a very bad thing after all.
‘She doesn’t mean any of it unkindly,’ said Charlotte, addressing herself to the windowpanes in the hopes that if she stayed very, very still, he wouldn’t move away. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable sensation. Every inch of her body felt gloriously alive and aware. She wondered what would happen if she turned around. Would he stay where he was, close enough to kiss?
Charlotte’s voice was slightly breathless as she added, ‘It’s just the way she is. Would you condemn a tiger for biting?’
‘I would, actually,’ said Robert, stepping back. ‘Especially if it lopped off part of my anatomy.’
Turning, Charlotte smiled up at him. ‘Grandmama seldom lops anything. She pokes and prods, but her victims are usually left whole, if slightly bruised.’
‘She seems to have taken a fancy to Tommy.’
‘She’s made him her cane-bearer for the evening. It’s really a rather good position to be in. If he’s holding it,’ Charlotte explained, ‘he can’t be hit by it.’
‘Better him than me,’ said Robert feelingly.
‘She likes you, too,’ said Charlotte, settling herself down on the stone bench. Cold still seeped through the edges of the warped old panes, but with the window closed, the draught was bearable. ‘I heard her say at breakfast the other morning that you were a Lansdowne “through and through, by Gad.”’
‘Is that meant to be a compliment?’
‘It’s generally better just to take it as one,’ said Charlotte comfortably, fluffing her skirts out around her feet.
‘Very wise advice,’ said her cousin, sitting down next to her.
Against the stone floor, the silver embroidery on her green slippers looked like tiny stars. Charlotte wiggled her toes to make them twinkle. ‘Why were you in such a terrible snit just now?’ she asked.
‘I wasn’t—’ Robert broke off with a sigh as she looked at him. ‘It wasn’t a terrible snit.’
‘One seldom has small snits,’ said Charlotte. ‘They’d be barely noticeable as snits and then what would be the point of having them?’
‘Shall we call it a snit of medium size and leave it at that?’
Charlotte’s lips quirked. ‘A snit of average snittiness?’
Robert leant his forehead against the windowpane in an attitude of mock agony. ‘I think I’m all snitted out for the moment, thank you very much.’
‘You still haven’t said what it was that set you off.’
For a moment, Robert seemed like he might be about to demur, but Charlotte pinned him with her very best inquisitive expression.
Pushing up off the bench, Robert strode over to the small, carved face of an angel on the opposite wall.
‘It was just something Medmenham said,’ he muttered, poking at the pointy end of the angel’s wing. ‘I may have overreacted.’
Charlotte wondered what Medmenham had said. Robert had shown himself to be fairly unflappable, even during his last visit all those years ago. Not even all the duchess’s poking and prodding managed to elicit anything more than a raised eyebrow and a carefully composed riposte. He carried his very own shield along with him, welded to his skin. It was a nicely gilded shield, charmingly crafted and pleasing to the eye, but it was a shield nonetheless. Every now and again a flicker of stronger emotion flared up, but he always caught it and stuffed it back beneath his pleasant façade before she got to see anything interesting.
‘Sir Francis does seem to have that effect on people,’ she said carefully.
Robert looked up sharply from his angel. ‘Has he been bothering you?’
The idea was so absurd that Charlotte couldn’t quite suppress a smile. ‘Me? Don’t be silly.’
‘I don’t see what’s so silly about it,’ said Rob stiffly.
‘I’m not the sort of girl Francis Medmenham bothers,’ said Charlotte simply, as though that were that.
In Charlotte’s opinion, that was that.
Her cousin felt otherwise.
‘If Medmenham asks you to go anywhere with him, don’t.’ Robert searched Charlotte’s face for comprehension and found only polite attention.
What did he expect? Good God, the girl was even prepared to believe the best about the dowager duchess. She would be easy prey for a hardened rake like Medmenham. In Charlotte-land, gentlemen were gentlemen, everyone was exactly what they seemed, and indecent propositions were things that happened to other people.
Robert raised the level of urgency in his voice. ‘Don’t go anywhere alone with him,’ he stressed. ‘Anywhere.’
‘You mean somewhere like here?’ Charlotte teased.
‘You probably shouldn’t be alone here with me, either,’ said Robert grimly. ‘Not with anyone.’
Charlotte looked up at him from under her lashes. ‘Are you planning to make improper advances?’
Robert went red straight through to the tips of his ears. ‘Certainly not!’
‘Well, there you are,’ said Charlotte cheerfully, as though that explained everything.
Robert wasn’t quite sure how he had managed to lose that argument. ‘Someone else might have, though.’
‘But that someone else wouldn’t be you.’
‘You’re very trusting.’
‘You needn’t make it sound like it’s a bad thing,’ said Charlotte with a laugh. ‘Isn’t it better to trust people than not?’
‘Not always.’ There were only a handful of people in his life who had proved themselves worthy of trust. Tommy. Colonel Arbuthnot. Charlotte.
Charlotte raised her chin. She still looked like an angel, but a very stubborn one. ‘I believe that people tend to live up or down to your expectations. When you trust them, you give them the opportunity to vindicate that trust.’
‘And if they don’t? That sounds like a very dangerous philosophy. You shouldn’t trust anyone too far. Including me,’ he added repressively.
‘Why ever not?’
‘I’m a rotten apple.’
A dimple appeared in Charlotte’s right cheek. ‘You certainly don’t look like an apple.’
‘A
rotten apple,’ Robert stressed, just in case she might have missed the crucial point. It seemed, somehow, absolutely imperative that she be warned what she was dealing with. The product of taverns and alehouses, drunken mess parties and rough marches. ‘Wormy and canker-ridden.’
Charlotte glanced at him sideways. ‘If you were really wormy and canker-ridden, you wouldn’t be admitting to it.’
Robert grasped at straws. ‘Can’t one be canker-ridden with a conscience?’
Charlotte shook her head so decisively that strands of her hair tangled in her eyelashes. Robert’s hand tingled with the urge to smooth them back. ‘It’s a contradiction in terms. Cankers have no consciences. Just look at Francis Medmenham.’
‘Don’t,’ Robert said irritably. ‘And hopefully he won’t look at you, either.’
Charlotte favoured him with one of her disconcertingly level glances. ‘If you think so poorly of him, why do you spend so much time with him?’
For a moment, Robert was tempted to confide in her, to tell her the whole sordid story of the colonel’s death and Wrothan’s disappearance. It would be a relief to have someone else to talk to; Tommy, good and loyal friend though he was, had all but disappeared in Miss Deveraux’s train, living for her smiles and moping at her frowns. It made him decidedly less than useful for plotting and planning purposes. Besides, he didn’t want Charlotte thinking that he patronised Medmenham for, well, for the obvious reasons, for his connections to gaming hells, opium dens, loose women, and other licentious pleasures. Robert wasn’t sure why Charlotte’s opinion mattered so much to him, but it did. She was his touchstone, his lodestar, his shining spot of virtue in a dark world, everything that was good and kind and pure.
And sheltered.
If he told her about the colonel – she would understand, that much was for sure. Knowing Charlotte, she would immediately conceive of it as a glorious quest, St George sallying forth to kill the dragon and make the world safe for afternoon tea, sticky toffee pudding, and all the good yeomen of England. Charlotte would want to play, too, not realising that it wasn’t a game, but in deadly earnest. He didn’t want her anywhere near Wrothan. And even if she stayed clear of Wrothan, what of Sir Francis?