“Well, now you’re going to learn to be a housekeeper, Mall. And I want you to stop off at your father’s house and spend a good week with your family before you begin your new position.”

Charlotte dispatched Keating and Mall to Wales with directions to open the house and to make extensive lists of those things needed to refurbish it. Roses crept over the top of the lattice house. Pippa learned to say whole sentences, made up of three words. She developed a passionate love for the kitchen cat, who became adroit at recognizing her small footsteps and disappearing.

Still there was no news from Alex. Charlotte allowed herself to think about him only in small snatches—first thing in the morning or last thing at night. She shied away from imagining his rage when he saw The Tatler and found out that the horrible Staple had not only detailed the ugly shambles that was their wedding night, but had invented quite a few things himself, such as the fact that one of the maids supposedly heard her crying out, “Alack! I shall have no children!” Charlotte still shuddered every time she thought of The Tatler.

When Sophie arrived for a visit, she was impudently cheerful about the scandal. She didn’t tell Charlotte that her mother had forbidden her to visit and that Sophie had wrangled with her for a full week until Eloise finally gave her permission. In fact, the marchioness had relented only when Sophie threatened to create a scandal the next season that would cast Charlotte’s little problems into the shade. Even so Sophie had had to be fairly graphic about exactly what she would be caught doing before her mother finally quailed and allowed her to visit Charlotte.

“Alack!” Sophie said blithely, when she and Charlotte were sitting in the newly furbished Green Room after dinner. “Alack! I shall have no children! I fear me that Braddon has given up the chase.”

Charlotte glared at her. “Don’t be funning about this, Sophie! Alex is going to be furious when he returns. If he returns.”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “The most besotted man in all of London—and you’re afraid he won’t return? What do you think he’s doing?”

“I don’t know,” Charlotte admitted. “He said he would be gone for two months, and he has been gone over twice that. And he has sent only one letter. Here I am, eight months pregnant”—she gestured faintly toward her growing stomach—”and he doesn’t even know we’re having a child yet. Oh, Sophie,” Charlotte said wrenchingly, “do you think he went into France and didn’t come back out?”

“No. Because in that case the Foreign Ministry would inform you. Have you tried writing to the rascal who sent him off on this excursion?” Sophie shared Charlotte’s sense that the whole idea of picking up a “package” in Paris was ridiculous.