Charlotte lay for a moment in the warm darkness. Suddenly the bed didn’t seem so large and unfriendly anymore. Pippa was curled on one side of her, and in her womb Alex’s baby was growing larger every moment. Charlotte smiled. Soon she would have two little chicks.

The next morning Charlotte started all over on Mall’s portrait, to the kitchen maid’s mingled distress and pleasure. Mall loved sitting in the mistress’s airy studio; she vastly appreciated the time to rest her feet. But she was eager to see a picture of herself too. Even staring into the cracked mirror upstairs hadn’t told her why the mistress wanted to paint her. Mall was hoping that she would be transformed into a great beauty, on canvas at least.

By two weeks later, Charlotte had made more progress on the portrait than ever before. She had also dragged Sophie to two balls, two musicales, and the opera.

“I abhor musicales,” Sophie complained, waving her fan gently. “We are not dressed to our best advantage. I don’t appreciate myself in chaste white muslin. Just look about you: Every woman looks like a little white ghost. We appear sheeplike, and that inspires men to become dull admirers of themselves and make their court to nothing but their cravats. Look at that fop who calls himself my cousin.” She waved at the Honorable François de Valcon, her mama’s nephew, with an enchanting smile. Then she turned back to Charlotte. “He is more concerned at the disordering of his cravat than I would be at having my skirt fly above my ankles.”

“That is because you admire your own ankles as much as Francois likes his skill at tying cravats,” Charlotte whispered back.

Sophie laughed. “Musicales are particularly boring because we just sit about and listen to singing. I like to dance. There’s always the chance I’ll be able to admire my ankles, or at the least, I can provide the occasion for someone else to admire ’em. Look at this room. There’s not a man here who isn’t a rakehell, paying his lazy addresses to us, but actually conducting business only with his mistresses.”

“You shouldn’t use that kind of slang, Sophie!” Charlotte protested. But as she glanced around the room, she had to agree with Sophie. Musicales were for the bored and the foppish; Mrs. Felvitson’s Russian singers were unintelligible and monotonous. The room was full of young matrons like herself, accepting the languid compliments of fairly uninterested fops.

“And all these old women: they are hoping for a scandal to erupt,” Sophie continued disgustedly. “We should leave, Charlotte. They’re such dowdies, just longing to kick up some dust. If a libertine walked in the door and merely looked at a woman, they would build some sort of a tale out of it.”

“Let’s go then,” Charlotte replied, standing up. But as she stood, her eyes caught sight of a tall man just bowing his welcome to Mrs. Felvitson.