“And Ira,” she told her husband for the third time, “it fair took my breath away when she came to me and said, ‘Mrs. McDougal, I have found a few slight discrepancies in the housekeeping records, and I wondered if you might help me understand them?’ Ira, it took my breath away. That Mrs. McLean—some housekeeper she is!—has been filching linens from my very cupboards practically as long as she’s been here, and no one has taken a bit of notice. You can tell our lady has been brought up the right way.”

McDougal acknowledged that he too liked the young countess. Who would not, given her kindly, sweet manner? But he ventured to say that he shouldn’t like his daughter to be seen kissing her husband in back of every statue in the gardens, and hadn’t Mrs. McDougal told him herself that the countess’s French maid said she was spending most of her time sewing buttons back on her mistress’s clothing?

“She’s French,” Mrs. McDougal replied, assessing the evidence of a Frenchwoman at a very low rate indeed. “But even if Marie were telling the truth, what’s the matter with a few buttons lost between a man and his wife, eh, Ira?”

Her husband chuckled appropriately and talk passed to other things.

Meanwhile the master of the castle kissed his wife behind statues, scattered small pearl buttons around the matrimonial bedchambers, and played with his child in the castle garden. And when the time came for the family to travel back to England, the three large coaches stayed together, if only because Pippa switched frequently between her mama and papa’s coach and that of her own dear nanny. So the coaches wound toward London as slowly as the servants’ coach had found its way up, and Charlotte buried memories of tearful nights by romping half the night with her husband in the same inns.

No one who saw the young countess on the way back to England, rather than on the way to Scotland, could have said she looked distant or snobbish. Due to Pippa’s frequent presence in the coach, Charlotte often looked rumpled. But if the truth be told, even when Pippa was not in their coach, her husband took over the job of rumpling himself.

The day after the first coach, drawn by four prancing steeds, drew up before Sheffield House in Grosvenor Square, Sophie York swept past the butler with an airy “Charlotte expects me.”

“So,” Sophie demanded impudently. “Tell me all! How is married life?”

Charlotte blushed.

“That good?” Sophie asked, laughing.

“What has happened to you in the last two months?” Charlotte asked.

Sophie twinkled at her, just to show that she noticed Charlotte’s evasion, and then she wound into a long tale of Braddon Chatwin’s pursuit (having missed his chance with the one reigning beauty, Charlotte, he had adroitly turned to the other, Sophie).