“’Ere, what’s the ’oldup?” one of the rope dancers leaned back to ask. “We’ve got to do our show for the Tsar this afternoon. Ye’re goin’ to ’ave to ’itch yer carriage to a faster ’orse else we won’t ’ave time to toast yeh with that fine ale ’is lordship there said we’d be gettin’.”

Charlotte pounced on the one word that had any meaning for her. “The Tsar? You’re performing for the Tsar? The one from Russia?”

“Isn’t no other that I knows of,” the rope dancer sniffed.

The light of victory dawned in Charlotte’s eyes. She walked down the aisle quite happily after that, mentally forming exactly how she would tell Lady Jersey and other preeminent ladies of the ton how she had to hurry her wedding because the guests, her dear, close, personal friends, had an important audience with the Tsar himself.

She even forgave the monkey later for stealing her small bouquet of roses.

Six

Charlotte looked at her maid with a steely glint in her eye. Her maid looked back at her with a calm countenance. The new Lady Carlisle was not amused.

“You squeak,” she accused. “I’ve never before had a maid who squeaked, and I don’t intend to start now. I believe I shall find a new maid—one who doesn’t squeak.”

“I am devastated that I do not meet with your ladyship’s most discriminating and no doubt exacting taste. My life, as I have told your husband, is devoted solely and completely to his happiness, a situation which I am thrilled to the very limits of my soul may now also be applied to your own gracious self. In short, my lady, I live to serve you. If you are not happy with the unfortunate noises associated with the new wooden leg, I will immediately dispense with it. I need it not to serve my lady in any capacity she desires of me, be it butler, valet to his lordship, boot boy, or in the most humble role of lady’s maid to you. I am quite a prodigious hopper, as your ladyship will see—” Batsfoam hiked up his trouser leg in preparation for removing the offending wooden limb.

Charlotte stopped him the second she realized his intentions. She had no desire to see his leg, wooden or otherwise. “I’m sure you’re quite a capable hopper, Batsfoam, but ’tis the truth that although I find the novelty of a squeaking maid difficult to bear, bear it I would if there were not a graver, more serious complaint to be laid at your door.”

Batsfoam reluctantly lowered his trouser leg, his shoulders slumping into their habitual droop. He bowed his head in a close approximation of abject humility. “And that would be what, my lady?”

Charlotte wondered briefly if no one else thought it the least bit peculiar that her husband’s butler should offer to serve as her maid. “Perhaps it is because Alasdair is Scottish,” she mused aloud. “Perhaps it is commonplace in that heathen land to the north. You never know about a society that has men in short skirts. On the other hand”—honesty compelled her to add—“I very much enjoyed the time I saw Alasdair in his kilt. And out of it, too, but I suppose that really goes without saying, don’t you think?”