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her slim arms below the capped sleeves looked pale and rather cold. Hadn’t she gained some confidence from her come-out ball? She hadn’t been short of admirers. But they might not have measured up to her mother’s expectations. Poor Kitty was like a lamb to be slaughtered on the altar of her mother’s ambition. Robin felt rather sorry for her and a little protective. “Would you save me a waltz, Lady Kitty?”
    “Certainly, Your Grace,” she said in her soft voice.
    With a gratified smile, Kitty’s mother ushered her daughter into the ballroom.
    “Sweet girl,” Louise said when a pause came in the line of guests.
    “Who?”
    “Kitty Boothby.”
    “Very young. Rather shy perhaps.”
    She raised her eyebrows. “So you took pity on her.”
    “Her mother is ambitious. Kitty was pushed toward every suitable male at her come-out.”
    “Including you, of course,” Louise smoothed her long kid gloves with a thoughtful look. “I can see how things are. She is young, Robin. She may yet become more like her mother.”
    “I doubt it.”
    “It’s to be hoped she marries well. A good thing she is pretty.” Her intelligent blue-grey eyes observed him. “Do you not think so?”
    It was a good thing that Louise lived in Devin, and that her adoring husband would claim her after the ball and whisk her back home again.
    “I suspect you are planning to meddle. I do wish you wouldn’t.” Robin nodded a greeting to Admiral Frobisher, who had just appeared at the top of the stairs. Stroking his white beard, his cheeks reddened from the climb, Frobisher hurried over to them.
    “Oh! Unfair, as if I would,” Louise protested under her breath while giving her hand to the admiral.
    “And unnecessary,” Robin said as the next in line, Lord Margate and his wife, another determined mother, and their daughter approached. “I do believe I can manage that part of my life quite well without your assistance.”
    “Of course you can, but you’ve been rather distracted of late, have you not?”
    Robin inhaled sharply. He’d deliberately stopped writing to Charity in the hope she would miss him and write a more personal letter. Then they could proceed along those lines. She had not. In fact, she hadn’t written at all. And this morning, he’d read in the newspaper about her portrait of Lord Gunn. Robin was pleased for her, of course. He clenched his jaw. But the fellow was a known rake. Robin didn’t take much stock of rumors, but the one about Gunn seducing a lord’s wife in the garden at a ball had sounded convincing, especially as Lord Templestow banished Lady Templestow to the country in the middle of the Season.
    “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he said with studied indifference.
    “Oh pooh,” his sister said irreverently before falling into an elegant curtsey at the approach of the Marchioness Lansbury.

Chapter Five

    A fierce wind rattled the windows and sent a sharp barrage of rain against the glass, causing Charity to look up from her letter. It was peaceful and warm in the parlor with the burgeoning fire. “Lord Gunn writes that he’s holding a party to unveil the new portrait.”
    Mama put down her knitting and frowned. Lord Gunn’s name appeared to have disturbed the peace somewhat. “In London?”
    “No, at his Scottish home. He has invited us to attend.”
    “Well, I don’t see how—” her mother began.
    “What’s this?” Her father strode into the room. Since he’d recovered from his illness, he’d begun to take more of an interest than was usual in what occurred around him.
    Expecting him to refuse the invitation out of hand, Charity explained.
    “Well, then, we must accept.” He took a seat near the fire and leaned forward, warming his hands. “When is the occasion to be?”
    Suspecting an ulterior motive—to see her married to the baron—Charity returned to the letter. “The sixteenth of next month.”
    Mama cast him an anxious glance. “Autumn in Scotland will be very