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“Did you?” Charles asked. He could no longer keep the edge from his voice.

“What’s it to you, Wynford? You could have had her if you’d stayed. You left.” Dunraven shrugged.

“I found your method of getting a husband for your sister not to my taste.”

“Like her method better? Try the terrace. She followed some officer out there.”

The icy cold left him in a flash of anger that clenched his fists and flexed his arms and legs. He could lay Dunraven flat in an instant. In his mind he already stood over the man who had blighted Harriet’s life.

Dunraven’s eyes widened, and he backed away as he read Charles’s intent. Before the bend and twist of Charles’s body and upward arc of his fist could meet Dunraven’s jaw, Charles caught himself and consciously opened his hands. He promised himself he would deal with Dunraven after he found Harriet and Octavia, and stepped out into the dark.

Within minutes he knew his search of the terrace was fruitless. Back in the heated ballroom, he turned away from the orchestra to circle the end of the ballroom for the benches under the gallery. There in the shadows sat Harriet Swanley, gently holding a dead man’s hand in her lap.

“I thought you would find us,” she said. “Who was he?”

“Ashton,” he said, noting the trickle of blood on the man’s chin.

“You think the marchioness did this?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“She is not your cousin, is she?”

“No.”

“How long have you known she was a fraud?”

“There was no proof until tonight. Ashton provided the proof.”

“But you always believed she was dangerous?”

“Very.”

“And yet you continued to let Octavia meet her?” She shuddered, a mix of bafflement and censure in her tone. She was in shock, but he could see that her orderly, unflinching mind kept working to make sense of what she saw.

How could he explain that the plan had been for Octavia to remain safe in the country? “I thought Octavia was in no danger while I had you,” he said. It was true.

She nodded. “While you...did what...the government’s work? It is spying, isn’t it?” she asked. “That’s what you’re doing here tonight?”

“I am,” he said grimly.

She nodded again. “And we, Octavia and I, we are part of your disguise? Like the waistcoats?”

“No.”

She looked at him without reproach really, just an acknowledgment of a calculation he had not realized he’d made until now, the calculation that he could pursue and catch the marchioness without involving his sister or the woman he loved. He wondered if his mother had made a similar calculation that she could use her wits and skills to serve England without endangering her children.

“We have to find her, you know.” She moved the dead man’s hand to his lap, gently releasing it. “Gresham was here with his fiancée. He came because of a letter he received that he believed came from Octavia. He upset her. She ran out onto the terrace, observed by the marchioness. Captain Fanshaw followed.”

“You’ll help me?” he asked. He could not ask or expect it.

“Of course. We should speak with the footmen at the entry. There’s a chance that Fanshaw has taken her somewhere.”

Charles extended a hand to lift her from the bench. She rose. Charles stepped forward to set the dead man upright. Something brittle snapped under his boot, and he looked down to see a crushed sprig of mistletoe. He nudged it aside.

“I will send someone for Ashton,” he said.

* * * *