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Manor. 
    Charlotte slowly looked around at the other small tables where guests were now starting to eat, taking mental notes for her letter to Belinda.
    She was entirely unprepared for the shock she suddenly received, like a silent thunderbolt striking her down in the midst of the oblivious crowd. A gentleman sitting some ten feet away, with his back to her, was eerily familiar. She literally felt all the tiny hairs on her skin stand up.
    Even from behind, she immediately knew him, although she had not set eyes on him, or heard from him for four and a half years. Peter, her faithless spouse, was also enjoying Lady Sefton’s hospitality.
    Charlotte’s heart began to hammer frantically as she realised how precarious her position was. Peter knew her and Belinda well. He could expose her with a single word.
    Would he, though? In the story of her life so far, he was the villain, and would have been treated as such had he dared to show his face back in their Yorkshire neighbourhood. Here in London, however, she was the outsider, and already in a false position due to her deception of her cousin’s relatives. Maybe he had not seen her. Maybe it was not him, just someone who looked like her husband from the back. The hollow feeling in her stomach told Charlotte that she was fooling herself. It was Peter all right.
    “Here you are,” James said cheerfully, placing a brimming plate before her, and a somewhat less full one in his own place, before seating himself. He raised his glass to her: “May you enjoy the fruits of my battle!”
    “Thank you, kind Sir.” She forced a smile, returned his toast, and took up her fork. The food he had selected looked and smelled delicious, but her appetite had completely disappeared.
    Apparently she was not as good an actress as she had thought, for it did not take two minutes for James to notice her change of mood.
    “Is anything the matter, cousin? You look worried, as though you had received bad news while I was away getting the food.”
    “That would be unlikely, as I was just sitting there, and hardly anybody in London knows me as yet.”
    “I find it hard to imagine a life with so few acquaintances.”
    “Oh, I suppose I have the usual number, they just all tend to live in Yorkshire. It is not a desert, you know.”
    He looked at her with an uncomfortably penetrating gaze. Had she really thought him a heedless popinjay just a few days ago?
    “If you have run into any difficulty, let me know if I can do anything to help.”
    This was one difficulty that she could not possibly admit to him. “You are very kind – but you are just imagining problems where there are none. Besides, you are already helping me greatly by your enquiries about the inheritance.”
    That diverted James, and after discussing his findings so far, they agreed to visit the solicitors’ offices in Baker Street the day after next. Charlotte now felt even more urgency to bring her enquiries to a swift conclusion. Everyone expected her to spend several months in the bosom of the Amberley family, but she might only have days, or even less, if Peter denounced her. It was a depressing thought, and she looked much more serious than before as they finished their food. Surprisingly, she found her plate empty after all.
    Charlotte had hoped that after supper they could go back to Mount Street and get some sleep, but was told there were at least two more hours to be endured. She was beginning to feel pity for these elegant but nocturnal creatures and even more for herself. At least her new slippers were soft and comfortable.

Chapter 10
     
    James was still concerned about his cousin. Her denials that something was wrong had not sounded convincing. He was developing a hyper-sensitivity where she was concerned, an awareness of her mood that he had never felt towards any other person before. Strange, but there it was.
    He decided to keep an eye on her, now that his mother had sat down to play whist in the card room and