And even though he went back to the Cyprians’ Ball the next Saturday night, to the distress of his brother, Patrick, who had had no fun at all the week before, she wasn’t there. He also went to a few society balls in the next two weeks, thinking if she was a lady he might see her, but he couldn’t find any tall, slender girls with green eyes. The young girls in London were bouncy and curled and small, whereas he was looking for willowy and composed.

If only he knew the color of her hair it would be easier, but she had been wearing a ridiculous amount of powder. Alex’s domino smelled faintly of lavender for weeks. He thought about it carefully and decided that she had red hair. With skin that white, her hair had to be red. So he looked for a red-haired girl who smelled of lavender, and Charlotte, whose hair was jet-black and who smelled of orange blossoms, never crossed his path.

When Alex wasn’t dreaming about making love to her (and he didn’t even think how odd it was to use that term about a probable whore), he dreamt she was weeping, and he was comforting her, and saying tender things. Probably, Alex told himself rationally, he kept thinking of her because he hadn’t gone through with it and finished: But even thinking about how wet she had been, and how small, made him pale. She couldn’t be a lady; there was proof positive. No lady enjoyed sex, let alone a virginal lady.

On her side, the truth came slowly to Charlotte. She ran into the ballroom and thankfully saw Julia and Mr. Colby standing by the statue of Narcissus, although she didn’t notice the mutinous set of Julia’s mouth. She didn’t have to say anything; Julia simply shoved her across the ballroom and out into Mr. Colby’s carriage. In fact, she didn’t even think until later how odd it was that no one said a word on the way home. Her mind was so tumbled that she barely felt as if she were in the carriage at all.

And when they got home and Julia babbled about Mr. Colby, that he had tried to kiss her—to kiss her, Julia!—and she had had to grind her foot into his in order to make him let go, Charlotte just sat numbly on a chair and nodded occasionally. Finally Julia stopped.

“Are you all right, Charlotte?” she asked, seeing that Charlotte’s eyes were shadowed and her face was waxen.

And Charlotte simply said, “I think I shall be ill.” And she was, right on the Axminster carpet in Julia’s bedchamber. Which was problematic because it was the middle of the night and Julia did not want to sleep in a sour-smelling room, so finally they both went into Charlotte’s bedchamber and prepared for sleep.