Eloise put on the ball gown and tumbled her hair into some sort of order. Then she ran through her dressing room to the adjoining bedroom. George fastened up the back of the dress without a word, and they made their way downstairs. Carroll emerged from the shadows of the back hallway.

“The marchioness and I are attending a late engagement,” George announced. “You’ll be glad to know, Carroll, that your suspicions were for naught. Lady Sophie is safely in her bed, with no thoughts of elopement.”

Carroll bowed and murmured his delight at the news. He held the door open as the marquis and marchioness clambered with unseemly haste into their waiting carriage.

“And where are you off to in the middle of the night, if not the post road leading to Gretna Greene?” Carroll liked to ask himself the questions that he could never address to his master. “And what shall I do about that ladder? And are you really telling me that Lady Sophie will ring her bell for hot chocolate, without a hair out of place, at seven in the morning?”

Well, one question could be answered. Without further ado, Carroll ordered Philippe to remove the ladder in the back garden.

Up in Sophie’s bedroom, Patrick was leaning on one elbow, looking down at Braddon’s—no, his future wife. As he watched, Sophie opened her eyes and looked up at him, eyes midnight blue in the dusky light.

Patrick ran a finger over her lower lip. “We’re going to have to find Braddon another wife, you know. We can’t just leave him in the lurch. What a pity that you don’t have a sister, my love!”

“Or you,” Sophie said impishly. A telltale blush was rising up her neck. She was in bed, unclothed (at least she seemed to have a sheet over herself), talking to Patrick, whom she was going to marry, and with whom she had just—

“Your parents were in here just now,” Patrick said. His grin widened. “You were sleeping like a baby.”

“What?” It emerged from her mouth like a half-strangled shriek.

The finger which Patrick had been rubbing over her lip began to wander down her neck. “Your mother didn’t see us. Your father did, though. He practically threw your mother back out into the hallway. Apparently she thinks you’ve eloped, because she was looking for a note.” His finger wandered below the sheet.

Sophie fastened her eyes on Patrick’s face, trying to ignore all nonverbal communications. “Are you saying that my father saw you and said nothing?”

Patrick nodded.

“But why?” Sophie’s eyes were as round as robin’s eggs. “Why on earth wouldn’t he challenge you, or stop and call me a doxy, or do something?”

“A doxy?” Patrick looked at her quizzically. “Where did you get that outmoded term, my love?”

Sophie blushed. “It’s … that’s what my mother calls some women.”