Sylvester was charmed. “My dearest wish is to sit at your side, Your Grace,” he said cheerfully, although he was a bit nonplussed to find that the subject of conversation was one and only one: the future Earl of Sheffield and Downes and his brother. But, like most men, Sylvester was a born gossip; he simply didn’t bother to hide his inclinations. He bent his head near Adelaide’s ear and agreeably related tales of Oxford mishaps and a reported fistfight at Vauxhall two years ago, when the brothers were accompanied by a lady of easy virtue and came to blows with another “friend” of hers. Then he burbled on with a few more tales expunged of too racy material.

But he said enough to convince Adelaide that Charlotte probably wasn’t the first maiden this Alexander, or Patrick, had deflowered in a garden, and to explain why she herself didn’t know them. Apparently the twins didn’t spend much time in respectable surroundings. Another point which suggests that one of them came here looking for Charlotte, Adelaide thought.

Still, they were gentlemen, nay, they were noblemen. And their papa was friends with her husband, Marcel, and if one of them had a hand in this, Marcel would make perfectly sure that he offered marriage by tomorrow night.

“I hear,” Sylvester rambled on, “that Sheffie is thinking of separating them; they’re just too wild together. He was talking of sending the boys off to the Continent, or maybe it was one of them off to Europe, or some such thing, and I think the other one to the Orient … I don’t remember exactly what he was planning, but that was it: yes, one to Europe and the other to the Orient. Probably get taken by pirates over in the East; he’d better not send his heir.

“Sheffie’s not here, is he?” Sylvester peered around for Woodleigh Foakes, the actual Earl of Sheffield and Downes.

“No,” Adelaide said absently. “I think he’s poorly again; he suffers horribly from gout, you know.”

Just then the music ended and the duchess’s next partner, Sir Walter Mitford, appeared at her elbow as if by magic. Sylvester bowed, a little creakily (he’d taken to wearing corsets in the past few years), and her young partner led Adelaide onto the floor.

Sylvester stood for a moment, his lips pursed. I wonder why she’s so interested in those boys, he thought, his gossip-loving soul sniffing a scandal. Probably no scandal, he thought with a sigh. One tended to forget that Adelaide was the mother of three girls, but she was. And the Foakes heir would be an excellent match.