“Alasdair felt a bit parched in the heat and has gone for some refreshment. I believe David is keeping him company. The rooms are closed no doubt because the Prince Regent is expected, and I doubt seriously if your husband would appreciate you parading around in a gown like Mrs. Cutter’s. She’s a notorious widow, and is not in the least the sort of person you should emulate.”

Patricia grinned and took Charlotte by the arm as they wove their way through the crowd. “Come, you promised to introduce me to all the people Aunt Whitney would not allow me to meet. Let’s start with Mrs. Cutter.”

Charlotte spent the next hour in a unique position previously unknown to her—chaperone. While Patricia was not a flighty young thing to be watched every moment lest she bring herself to ruin, she was young, excited, and utterly thrilled with a world in which she’d had little contact. She also possessed a spirited sense of mischief that Charlotte realized, with some horror, bore an uncanny resemblance to her own. Never before had she been responsible for another, and she did not much care for the sensation.

“I have a new respect for what my poor mother must have endured,” Charlotte grumbled to Caroline later as she intervened when Lord Briceland, a notorious rake responsible for many a young woman’s downfall, would have swept Patricia off into a secluded corner of the ducal gardens. Caroline snickered.

“I am betrothed, Charlotte,” Patricia protested as the two women dragged her along a cinder path edged with fantastic beasts rendered in topiary form toward the doors leading into the ballroom. “No harm can come to my reputation now. Lord Briceland has the dearest golden curls, don’t you think, Lady Beverly?”

“Oh, yes, very much like that dashing Lord Byron’s,” Caroline agreed.

“Puts them up in papers each night like Byron, too, no doubt,” Charlotte snapped and came to a halt to face the giddy young girl. She glanced around quickly, but there was little to be seen but a giant yew hedge marking the boundaries of a maze. “Good, there’s no one around so I can speak freely. Patricia, I cannot have you dashing about making a cake of yourself in this manner. I really cannot. What would Alasdair say if I allowed you to be seduced in the garden? What would David say? He’s bound to object. Men do about that sort of thing!”

“They do, they truly do,” Caroline said. “Why, I remember the time shortly before I was wed when dearest Algernon caught me admiring Lord Selfridge’s mustache—you remember him, Char, he had the most delicious blond mustache, almost silver it was—well, as it was, I was admiring Lord Selfridge’s mustache and I felt I simply must touch it to see if it was as soft as it looked, and do you know, it was. It was very soft indeed, and I was much tempted to kiss him just to know whether the mustache tickled upon one’s lip or not. But then dearest Algernon burst into the room ranting and carrying on in the most flattering way about me shaming him and giving away my innocence all for the sake of an attractive mustache—”