If the truth be told, Adelaide was exhausted, too exhausted to deal with a new, irritable Charlotte. Presentations were tiring. The planning had taken weeks, and just this week Gunter’s had put up a fuss about the ices. She had ordered ices colored a delicate violet, and they appeared with a violently purple sample. The footman who was set to washing the center chandelier broke seventeen crystals before anyone noticed he was dead drunk. The new gown she had ordered (blue velvet, embroidered with silver fleur-de-lis) was ghastly. The sleeves were short and far too tight, and the overdress sagged, making her look old and matronly. So she had to pay four times the price to have Madame Flancot create a new gown of rose brocade, practically overnight.

And then, the very day before the ball, Charlotte announced that she wouldn’t go to any balls, including her own presentation. Adelaide stared at her in disbelief. She turned sharply to Charlotte’s maid, Marie.

“Fetch Violetta, please, Marie. And then you may go.”

Marie slipped from the room. Her mistress must have gone crazy. That beautiful dress! How could she even think of not wearing it?

Charlotte’s sister Violetta strolled into the bedroom with all the nonchalance of someone with two seasons behind her and an almost-for-certain marriage proposal from the Marquess of Blass.

Violetta tried persuasion. “You know, Lottie,” she said, reverting to Charlotte’s pet name from childhood, “I was terrified at my coming out ball. Mama had the place absolutely covered in white lilies—which was very nice, Mama,” she hastened to add, “but the perfume was so powerful. When I slipped downstairs to see the ballroom in the afternoon, I just kept sneezing and sneezing, and we all panicked. But then Campion suggested scotch, which he said was a perfect remedy for sneezing, and he was right. Of course,” she said meditatively, “I don’t remember much of what happened after the glass of scotch, but at least I didn’t sneeze all evening.”

Charlotte just looked at her sister miserably. She hadn’t cried since leaving Julia’s house, but she felt like it, all the time. One minute she was desperate to see that man again; the next she was consumed with rage and self-pity.

Violetta sat down next to her on the bed, so close their shoulders were touching. “I wouldn’t worry, Charlotte. You’re the most beautiful of us three, you know. You always have been. And you’re the reason for the whole ball: You don’t have to worry about not having someone to dance with….”

Charlotte just shook her head. Why go? She couldn’t get married; she might as well start the way she meant to go on. She felt, in her old nurse’s phrase, as stubborn as a pig about it.