Just then Charlotte stood up, giving the signal for the ladies to leave the room, and Sophie gratefully filed out after her mother.

After the ladies were assembled in Charlotte’s private drawing room, Charlotte clapped her hands for attention. “We ought to have some dancing, don’t you think?”

The younger girls chattered and clamored for dancing. Even Sophie’s mother allowed as how it would be proper to get up some couples for a country dance or two.

So when the men rose from the dinner table they were directed to the garden room. They trooped in, carrying with them a faint, rich smell of cognac and a lingering woodsy smell of cigars, only to find that the ladies were busily directing footmen hither and thither, and that those footmen were carrying chairs out of the room and pushing sofas back against the walls.

Charlotte judged the party too small to move into the Sheffield House ballroom, where they might feel quite dwarfed and thin with only ten couples. But the numbers were perfect for the garden drawing room. Moreover, since it was an unseasonably warm night, she had had all the French windows opened onto the terrace, and footmen were arranging large potted torches around the veranda. One by one, the torches flared into light, casting golden rays into the dusky warmth of the London sky.

The Earl of Sheffield and Downes himself, who had strolled into the room at the tail of the group of male guests, narrowed his eyes. Where the devil had those monstrous torches come from? And why didn’t he know anything about the twelve-person group of musicians even now warming up at one end of the long room? And what was this bothersome wife of his saying?

“I’m sure you agree with me, Alexander dear,” Charlotte said sweetly, curtsying before him. Alex made an elegant leg in reply, but as he straightened he picked up his wife, tucked her adroitly into his arms and carried her out of the room.

There was a faint shriek of surprise from those ladies who caught sight of Alex’s maneuver, but Charlotte just giggled. Sophie’s mother shuddered and turned back to a conversation with her future son-in-law.

Out in the hallway, Alex let Charlotte slide slowly down his front until her toes touched the floor, keeping his arms around her.

“And what do you think you’re doing, Madam Wife?”

Charlotte could feel Alex’s large hands on her back … they were inching downward as his breath grazed her ear.

“Alex!” she hissed. Footmen were still coming in and out of the garden room door.

“Are you by any chance planning to influence the lovely Sophie’s choice of husband?” Alex’s hands ran a bit lower. Despite herself, Charlotte swayed.

“No!”

Alex bit her ear softly.

“All right, yes! I thought I would give your brother a chance to …”

“I love it when your voice goes all husky like that,” her husband informed her. “Why don’t we go upstairs and check on the children?”