Adelaide thought about it. Their eldest daughter, Winifred, had married Austen Saddlesford, a madly wealthy American, and gone off happily to live in Boston, and Violetta had married the Marquess of Blass, and indeed, neither girl was hurting for money. And Horace would inherit all the ducal holdings; he wouldn’t begrudge the Welsh inheritance.

Characteristically, she saw it from a slightly different angle than did her husband. Marcel thought, kindly enough, that with the Welsh rents Charlotte could live comfortably and buy a house in London if she wished. But what Adelaide immediately grasped was that the Welsh estate—a little Elizabethan manor house and its land—would turn Charlotte from the very well-endowed daughter of a duke into being a remarkable heiress. And that, she thought sagely, would perk up interest in her daughter and what’s more, would stop tongues wagging about her being an old maid. A great heiress just didn’t fit the category, somehow.

One never knew; perhaps the right man would come along for Charlotte, and now it wouldn’t matter if he wasn’t wealthy.

“Marcel, you are a wonder,” Adelaide said gratefully, rubbing her hair against his shoulder like a silken cat.

So the season of 1801 opened on a rather different note for Charlotte. Ignoring all her protests, her father had signed over to her a quite vast amount of land in Wales.

“You might as well get used to the responsibility while I’m around to advise you,” he said, signing the last papers with a flourish of his quill. The duke’s thin, prunelike lawyer, Mr. Jennings of Jennings and Condell, shuddered delicately, inside of course. Jennings and Condell did not approve of women holding property of any kind and Mr. Jennings foresaw endless bother after the Duke of Calverstill passed away.

On her side, Charlotte quickly realized that owning a house made her very happy. She owned a manse in Wales; twenty-three people lived and farmed near the house, and some three hundred sheep grazed on her land, according to the manager’s report. She read the latest reports over and over. The newspaper gained an interest that it never had before. When workers destroyed looms in the Cotswolds, she shuddered. What if riots spread to Wales?

As soon as possible, she promised herself, she would go to Wales. She could just imagine her mother’s horror if she suggested such a thing now (the trip! the dirt!), but perhaps in the fall … with a chaperone, of course.

And the season was better because it seemed to Charlotte that her mother was becoming more comfortable with her rejection of eight worthy suitors. Adelaide stopped looking at her with a pained expression. They even began speaking again without sorrowful innuendoes underlying every conversation.

In fact, Charlotte didn’t notice immediately that her mother was no longer prodding her into attending social events. One night she walked into the dining room and realized the room was bare.