Dare paused as he turned to leave. “Patricia, just because you’re marrying a sailor—”

“Captain, if you please, of the finest Whitney ship ever to sail the seas!”

“—captain, does not mean you must talk like Halibut Harry, the fishmonger’s delight. And there had best be no anchor hoisting before the wedding,” he warned, his eyes dark with meaning.

Patricia grinned and shooed her brother off. With a shake of his head at the folly awaiting him, he started for the small room off the darkened end of the hall that Charlotte had indicated. Surely it would be a simple matter to help her, one quickly attended to. He would assist in evicting whatever it was that had taken up residence in her codpiece—women were so often squeamish about such things—then perhaps engage in a few moments of the particularly delightful form of word games that passed for conversation with Charlotte, after which, with a polite but firm excuse, he would take his leave. The nagging desire he felt to be near her would be assuaged, she would receive discreet assistance with regards to her codpiece problem, and none would be the wiser.

He was mentally forming the excuse he would use to make his escape when he entered the room. “My apologies for being delayed, Lady—mmrph!”

Dare didn’t have time to do more than catch a glimpse of heated blue eyes before he was pulled into an intimate embrace.

With Henry VIII. A very well-padded, bearded, codpieced Henry VIII.

He unwound the arms clasped behind his neck in order to dis-attach his lips from the mouthful of scratchy red-orange wool that covered Charlotte’s lower face. “I never thought the opportunity to voice this opinion would arise, but there is much to be said for women who shave.”

Charlotte, dismay filling her eyes for a moment at his rejection of her advances, smiled instead. “I beg your pardon, I forgot about the beard. One moment, I’ll remove it, then we may continue with the ravishing.”

Dare shook his head in hopes of clearing away whatever it was that was keeping him from hearing her correctly. He knew Charlotte’s verbal acrobatics were sometimes filled with leaps in logic that even a learned man would be hard put to follow, but the one she had just made was surely beyond even her fertile mind.

“About the problem with your costume—”

“That’s been remedied,” she replied, frowning as she tugged on the side of the woolly beard. “’Twas just a leaf, not a family of dormice as I had suspected. Drat this thing. Crouch must have used extra glue on it. I can’t seem to peel it off, and I ask you, how on earth am I ever going to attend to the ravishing in time if I’m wearing a beard!”

An ugly suspicion flared to life in Dare’s mind. “Exactly whom do you expect will be ravishing you?”

Charlotte frowned as she muttered something about needing glue remover. “Pheasant feathers! You’ll just have to keep your lips clear, is all. As for your question, no one will be ravishing me, Alasdair. I shall ravish you.”