“What?” Charlotte asked again, her curiosity getting the better of her. She knew Caroline well. A woman less able to say anything unkind or cruel did not exist. A flash of blue in the corner of her eye caught her attention as Caroline gestured wildly, her voice rising in distress.

“I don’t know, something terrible, something cruel. No, I do too know what I will do.”

Someone was coming from within the maze. Charlotte stepped aside, intending to pull Caroline after her so their conversation wouldn’t be overheard.

“If you persist in calling me by that unkind and wholly inaccurate word,” Caroline said in voice that pierced the night in righteous indignation, “I shall tell that awful Lady Brindley that your husband has refused to bed you because he is still infatuated with her.”

Charlotte’s mind skidded to an abrupt stop at the sight over Caroline’s shoulder. A woman emerged from the darkness of the maze into the golden pool of light cast by the torches. Dressed in midnight blue with a lighter-blue overgown, Phylomena, Viscountess Brindley, embodied the memory of every bad experience Charlotte had had during her two Seasons.

“Did I hear my name taken in vain?” Lady Brindley’s cool gray eyes examined Charlotte from crown to heels before she smiled.

Caroline gasped in horror, one hand covering her mouth as she stared with wide eyes at the woman Charlotte would gladly have seen struck down with a bolt of lightning.

“Oh, Char, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know she was there—”

Lady Brindley smiled. Charlotte gritted her teeth and tightened her hands into fists.

***

“It can’t be that bad, Dare,” David said as he strolled into the card room from the dance floor. “I know you have no love for these things—God knows, I don’t either—but we have to humor the ladies once in a while, and Patricia’s in seventh heaven that Charlotte is going to introduce her to all the fashionable folk.”

Dare tossed back a second whiskey and gestured to the footman for another with only a raised eyebrow and a grimace to indicate he heard his sister’s betrothed.

“If you feel so strongly against attending balls and such,” David said, “you shouldn’t have allowed Charlotte to talk you into this one.”

Dare took the proffered glass, saluting the younger man with it. “Talk? She didn’t talk. Talk I could have resisted. Talk might have meant I had a chance to reason with her. Talk would have been manageable. What she did was much more insidious. She’s a woman, and women don’t think like we do. Always remember that, David. They take the shortest route to what they want, which, in most cases, means they use their perfumed selves to drive you to the brink of madness, forcing you—out of sheer self-preservation—to give them what they want.”

David laughed again. “Do I take it, then, that your own good lady worked her wiles on you against your wishes?”

Dare allowed a smile to flirt on his lips before the memory of Charlotte at breakfast that morning returned. He was consumed with guilt when he considered the life he was forcing her to accept, overwhelmed with the worry that his steam engine wouldn’t succeed. He took a gulp of the whiskey, closing his eyes against the burn as it worked its way into his stomach, wondering if he would ever be free of the yoke of debt that had settled on his shoulders when he inherited the title. Worse yet, he admitted to himself as he tossed off the last of the drink, he feared his future with Charlotte. Could he go through life in love with a woman who didn’t love him in return?