The idea was laughable. Charlotte considered Miranda’s appalling misadventures after such a charmed beginning, and her husband Kit’s early life at the mercy of a drunken, spendthrift father living precariously in the meanest part of town. They had both been forged into something more than they might have been if the fates had been kinder to them, and overcome their troubles magnificently, so forcing Miranda’s sisters into marriage for the usual dynastic reasons was unthinkable. The Earl and Countess of Carnwood would never do that, even if they lost every penny of their vast fortunes, Charlotte thought wistfully, and tried not to wish her happiness had been of such crucial importance to her own relatives. No, she refused to sit about repining about the past, or she would do if there was only something better to do, she thought crossly, and wiped the frown off her face and tried to look inconspicuous as possible in this ill-lit corner of the ballroom.
It wasn’t easy to efface yourself when you were about as tall as a lady could get without being publicly displayed as a curiosity, but she managed it more often than not nowadays. Charlotte fiddled with her snowy cap and adjusted a strategic piece of lace to conceal the suggestion of a curl that she pushed back into hiding with exasperated efficiency. She had a job keeping her rebellious locks in place at the best of times, but if they showed themselves here the results could be disastrous. It would never do for some sharp-eyed dowager to detect even a hint of the gangling débutante who had once sat out so many dances at her chaperon’s side beneath the guise of a humble duenna.
‘Ah, so there you are, Miss Wells,’ a deep voice rumbled at her side and made her jump at least six inches. Charlotte shivered in the stuffy air of Lady Wintergreen’s elegant ballroom with an infuriating mix of apprehension and excitement. How could such a very large man move so silently that she had no idea he was anywhere near her until he spoke? And where else did he think she would be when this entire fiasco was his fault in the first place?
‘Go away!’ she ordered rudely, even as she strained her neck to meet Mr Benedict Shaw’s altogether too intelligent grey eyes challengingly.
He just laughed at her as usual, and gave her the quizzical smile that usually swept all feminine opposition before him so effortlessly, despite his dubious credentials as cavalier to an innocent young début ante. She had a very long way to look, she decided absently, and put a hand to the back of her head to make sure her cap stayed securely in place. Unused to being towered over by anyone and recalling the humiliation of looking down on nearly all her dance partners during her ill-fated Season, she firmly squashed the idea that to waltz with the very tall and broad-shouldered Mr Shaw could quite possibly feel a little too wonderful.
‘May I not sit beside you for even a short time while I rest my weary bones then, Miss Wells?’ he asked mildly and she wondered what he was about this time, for in her opinion Mr Shaw had never been meek or mild in his entire life and probably only slept when he could spare a few moments from his busy schedule to do so.
‘What a ludicrous idea,’ she dismissed tartly.
‘Ludicrous?’ he echoed contemplatively. ‘I have been called many things during the course of my chequered career, Miss Wells, but so far that’s not one of them. If you can tell me why my sitting beside Miss Alstone’s very respectable chaperon whilst I politely await my dance with her charge could be construed as ludicrous by anyone but yourself, I might even oblige you and take myself off.’
‘For the very reason that I am her chaperon and about as dull a female as you could find if you scoured every ballroom in Mayfair,’ she parried crossly as he sat anyway, despite her embargo.
‘Nonsense, you are very far from dull, Miss Wells, although it’s plain to me, if to nobody else, that you study very hard to appear so,’ he observed coolly and watched her steadily, trying to look as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth and not succeeding at all well. ‘I have the misfortune to be very tall, you see,’ he said with a look of quite spurious innocence as she continued to glare back at him in a most unladylike fashion. ‘You would have got a crick in your swanlike neck had I continued to stand, Miss Wells, and no doubt that would have been my fault as well.’
‘Well, of course it would,’ she answered and made herself look away from the suppressed laughter in his apparently guileless grey eyes.
Finding nothing fascinating enough to engage her attention, she shot him an even more irate glare and wondered how he knew everything about tonight’s débâcle was to be laid at his door.
‘You should never have sought me out in the first place,’ she informed him grumpily and turned her head to find him watching her with amused speculation. Sometimes it seemed to her as if the wretched man had been regarding her so since they first met, and she was heartily sick of being the butt of some private joke. ‘I am here as a chaperon, sir, not an idle guest with nothing on her mind but flirtation and gossip,’ she added tartly, hoping he wouldn’t realise she’d been covertly watching him flirt mildly with a lovely blonde widow for most of the evening.
‘I really don’t think it would be a good idea for me to indulge in an amour with you tonight, Miss Wells,’ he murmured silkily, revealing that he was as conscious of her uneasy disapproval as she was of feeling it.
He gave a soft chuckle when she gave him a look that should have turned him to stone and sat on, as serene and content as an alderman at the Lord Mayor’s banquet. No wonder her palm itched to slap that parody of a gentleman’s politely interested smile in the face of small talk off his handsome face.
‘I have no wish to indulge in such wanton behaviour at any time, sir, and least of all with you,’ she said sharply and wished that last caveat were entirely true.
There was a silly, and usually firmly suppressed, side to Charlotte’s nature that had never quite relinquished the romantic rebellion of her youth. That Charlotte had stood to attention the moment Ben Shaw hoved into view two years ago, and had annoyed her everyday self at the most inconvenient moments ever since. Now the silly idiot clearly yearned to become the sort of female who could exchange languishing glances with a gentleman in search of more sophisticated amusements, and lure him to heaven knew what wanton and forbidden rendezvous that a true lady shouldn’t even know about, let alone consider in her wildest fantasies. She was rather foggy about how a femme fatale behaved once she had lured her quarry into her perfumed lair, of course, but that other Charlotte was quite willing to improvise, at least if the shortness of breath she suddenly suffered at the very idea was anything to go by. It was all utter nonsense, of course, sensible Miss Wells informed her fiery secret self, and met Mr Shaw’s eyes with chilly resolution.
‘I, sir, am a chaperon. It is my duty to watch over Miss Alstone and make sure nobody can level the accusation that she was so laxly chaperoned that her reputation might be in danger. That is my purpose and my destiny,’ she finished rather wistfully and quite spoilt the effect of her first chilly statement.
‘Now you are being ludicrous, Miss Wells. Those young cubs wouldn’t even blink the wrong way with your stern eye on them, even if they were intent on mischief, which I doubt as they’re clearly besotted with the little minx and have sickeningly honourable intentions. Besides that, I dare say young Shuttleworth is so upright and respectable he could chaperon Kate himself, if you weren’t here to play the watchdog so determinedly, and nobody would raise an eyebrow,’ he asserted outrageously.
Such a foolish notion appealed to the sense of humour she usually managed to conceal in mixed company and she couldn’t help smiling at such a revolutionary notion. Lord Shuttleworth was indeed a very virtuous and earnest young man, but he would look very odd indeed sitting with the dowagers, frowning at Kate’s many admirers and shaking his head over the more rakish of their number. Come to think of it, he would probably perform the role far too diligently, and make sure Kate only danced with himself.
‘You are most certainly mistaken in that notion, sir, and I still wish you would go away,’ she informed him forthrightly, having long ago discovered