Charlotte was startled for a moment, and then smiled. “I shall wear no more pink,” she said. “Nothing rosier than a strong peach. And”—more slowly—”no flounces, no ruffles, no embroidered flowers, no bows.”

“Absolument, oui, oui!” Marie was almost babbling.

Charlotte looked up, smiling. “Now, Marie, would you like to take all these dresses away?”

Marie’s eyes shone. Not that she would ever wear such outmoded clothes herself, but she could sell them for a tidy sum (in perfect condition as they were!) and she and Cecil would be that much closer to marriage.

“Thank you, my lady,” she said, sweeping Charlotte a graceful curtsy. Marie flung a huge stack over her arm and half-staggered out of the room, blinded by underskirts puffing into her face. It took three trips and then Charlotte had the room to herself again.

She paced about, frowning slightly. Then she began to take down the china figures on the mantel, and all the knickknacks that had sat on her bedside table since she was five years old, and to place them carefully on her dressing table. The room was still too frothy. It was a girl’s room, for a girl’s dreams, all buttercups and daisies.

It will have to be changed, Charlotte thought, but I can do that tomorrow. She envisioned something cooler, perhaps even blue, the color of cornflowers. She had retained a horror of blue, based on memories of her coming out ball, but that was foolishness.

Charlotte went to bed without a thought for the almost-finished third version of Sir Vigilant Daicheston, waiting on the third floor. Instead, she went to sleep thinking dreamily about herself, dreams in which she was dancing with a man who had silver-shot hair, and she was wearing a silk gown of Persian blue, and he was gazing at her in adoration, desire stark in his eyes.

He bent his head and his lips brushed against hers, once, twice, three times, inviting, beckoning, promising. Charlotte turned restlessly in her sleep and woke up, her heart pounding. She stared into the dark for quite a while, thinking. Tomorrow morning she would definitely inquire whether William Holland had found himself a wife. It’s rather odd, Charlotte thought amusedly, to join the ranks of husband-seeking women so late. But it didn’t strike her as an insurmountable task by any means. All she had to find were brains, given her new wealth. Brains, and something unnameable, Charlotte thought. Whatever that footman had. With a sigh she snuggled back into her covers and went to sleep.

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

No one greeted Charlotte’s determination to buy a new wardrobe with more joy than her mother. They visited Madame Carême together, the very next day, and while Charlotte recklessly ordered dozens of wispy, high-waisted dresses, so light that the outline of her entire body could be seen through them, Adelaide watched happily from a comfortable chair.