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“Too old to marry?” For the briefest moment, Miss Throckmorton hesitated, glancing across the room at Wynford in the group of gentlemen around the marchioness. He was startlingly attractive compared to the others in spite of the waistcoat. “Perhaps he seems so to one used to country ways, but in town, I assure you, gentlemen of your brother’s...age are quite...eligible.”

“Surely, you would prefer a younger man,” Octavia said.

“Oh,” said Miss Throckmorton, “young men are such puppies. They adore you one minute and the next they go on about some horse or gun or the sort of wheels on a new sporting vehicle. Trust me, Miss Davenham, older men are much steadier. But if you don’t mind a young man?” She shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll find partners enough.”

But when the dancing began, Octavia had no partner and endured the first two sets in mortification at Harriet’s side among the chaperones. Across the room, Wynford in his carroty waistcoat continued to make himself agreeable to the marchioness. He did not look their way once.

At the end of a nearly interminable third set with Octavia slumping in the little gilt chair, Harriet told her charge to keep smiling and hold her head up a few moments longer. She made her way as discreetly as possible around the salon to Wynford’s side and tugged his sleeve.

“Is wearing that waistcoat a penance for the fashion sins of your youth? Did you once wear yellow pantaloons and a Belcher neckcloth?”

“Miss Swanley?” His eyes told her he did not know whether to be astounded or amused at her daring to tease him.

She pressed home her advantage. “It would be most prudent of you to dance a quadrille with our hostess’s daughter if you wish your sister to have any chance of a partner tonight.”

She bowed and turned to make her way back to Octavia’s side.

* * * *

Charles watched her walk away. Halfway around the room, she encountered Briggs-Price. There was an exchange Charles could not hear, some importuning on the part of the gentleman and, clearly, a refusal on the part of the lady. He guessed that Briggs-Price had invited her to dance. She responded with that cool detachment that made Charles think her position less a barrier than a shield against the world around her. He should ask Perry why she had left her home.

Across the room he caught Octavia’s desperate glance. His sister needed help. With a bow, he left the marchioness’s circle. An hour of listening to her mild flirtation with some of London’s dullest men had not given him any more clues to her true identity. The too careful family tree and the reluctance to talk about the Delatour wines could be no more than the kinds of difficulties faced by anyone who had survived the turmoil in France. Her avoidance of Wellington still counted against her, but tonight she appeared to be what she said she was, a widow on the lookout for a man to keep her in comfortable circumstances in a world indifferent to single women.

He found Miss Throckmorton, engaged her for a set, and begged her assistance in finding his sister a partner. She was all bosom and compliance, and he set himself to be agreeable to yet another woman, while a small voice in his head whispered that he would rather dance with Harriet Swanley. Two sets later, with Octavia engaged to stand up with a chinless youth disdained by Miss Throckmorton, he left the dance floor and went to Miss Swanley’s side. She listened—apparently with undivided interest—to the remarks of an elderly aunt of one of Miss Throckmorton’s friends.

He bowed to both ladies and took the little gilt chair next to Miss Swanley. A waltz began, and Charles suppressed an irrational desire to pull Harriet Swanley out into the whirl, to see if he could break through her detachment.

“I must thank you,” he said to her, “for recalling me to a sense of my duty to my sister. If, for any reason, I must leave the party, you will see her safely home?”

“Of course. I do not desert my charges, whatever you may think.”

“Must I apologize for that remark?”

“I think you must.”

Charles regarded her silently for a moment. He suspected that she owed much of her detachment to a lack of awareness of how a man might see her. “You seemed so engrossed,” he said. “And you can’t deny that the man was flirting with you.”

“Captain Mudge flirting? He was explaining to me that the paisley design which ladies so much admire on their shawls is a fertility symbol, the unfurling cone of the male date palm.”

“He was not.”

“I assure you he was.” There was a gleam of laughter in her eyes from which he could not turn away.

“He was trying to win you over with sheer erudition then.”

“Oh paltry stuff.”

Across the room, Octavia managed quite prettily one of the more complicated movements of the quadrille, gliding with the best of them.

“You are not so easily won?”

“Nothing less than a thorough knowledge of physics and astronomy wins me.”

“But suppose he had offered to buy you the beautiful shawl?” Had he been in Mudge’s situation seeing her look at that scarf, he would have bought the thing at once.

She looked shocked. “He would never do anything so improper.”

“Ah, you think not. You think your position as governess shields you from the attentions of gentlemen?” The thought became fixed in his mind. He did not know what had happened to separate her from her family and put her on a course so different from the one expected of a woman of her birth and beauty. And she was a beauty. He had noticed immediately even in the bare yellow room under the stairs at Luxborough House. She could confine her hair in a style of severe symmetry. She could wear the plainest of gowns and go without jewels, but nevertheless, her eyes would flash, her smooth skin invite a man’s hand to touch.