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“Lady Holt! Oh, but you are not Lady Holt.” She stopped two steps in and looked at Rosalind with frank, bright interest. “You are the niece. Augusta said dark and quiet and watchful, and here you are, taking my measure.” Crossing the room with her hand already out, she went on before Rosalind could answer. “Charlotte Danforth. I was told there was a niece to be met, and I did not mean to wait until tomorrow.”

Rosalind took the offered hand and found Miss Danforth’s grip warm and brief and definite.

“Lady Rosalind Hartley,” she replied. “You are very good to call.”

“I am not good in the least. I am curious, which is a far more reliable thing to be.” Miss Danforth drew her toward the window-seat and had them both arranged in it before Rosalind had decided to be arranged. “Augusta has gone to fetch us tea, which means she has gone to leave us alone. Now, you will tell me everything, will you not?”

“There is very little to tell,” Rosalind replied in her level way. “I have been settling in, and my aunt has been very kind.”

“That is what people say when they have decided not to be interesting, and I shall not allow it. Settling in, indeed! You have been to Lady Marchwood’s dinner, have you not?”

“I have,” Rosalind said, surprised. “How did you know of it?”

“I had it from three people, for three people remarked that Augusta’s niece was very quiet and very plain, and that they could not think why she had been brought up at all.” Her eyes danced. “Which only proves they were not watching the right person all evening.”

It took Rosalind a moment to find her footing, for the barb was so clearly aimed at the three people and not at herself.

“I was very quiet and very plain,” she said. “They were watching the right person.”

Miss Danforth laughed, a quick, warm sound that came before the joke was quite finished, and leaned in.

“No, they were not, for while they were all being clever at one another, Lady Marchwood’s table came apart, and somebody put it back together. Did you know Lady Marchwood has been telling everyone who will hold still that she does not know how she came through the evening?”

“Has she?” Rosalind asked, her heart sinking a little.

“She has, and I have been adding two and two.” Her eyes were very bright. “Augusta’s quiet niece, who kept an earl’s house for eleven years, was standing by the dining-room door when the Dowager Marchioness of Stillingbourne walked in and nearly sank the whole dinner. Was it you?”

Rosalind’s hands wanted the holly, but the basket was across the room, so she folded them in her lap and held them there.

“The table only needed rearranging,” she said. “Anyone might have done it.”

“Anyone did not. Nine-and-twenty people did not, and you did, and you have just tried to give the credit to the table.” Miss Danforth sat back, looking enormously pleased. “That is the most telling thing you could have said. Oh, I do like you. I knew I should, for Augusta is never wrong about a person, which is her one insufferable quality.”

Rosalind sat quite still, her breath caught somewhere beneath her stays. She had armor for unkindness, worn smooth with long use, but what armor was there for this? A stranger had crossed a room to find her interesting. When had that ever happened before, and what was she to do with it now?

“You are kind to say so,” she began, reaching for the old deflecting line.

“I am not kind, I told you. Do keep up.” But Miss Danforth said it laughing, and the warmth under the teasing took the sting clean out of it. “Now, I mean to be useful to you, for you are new, and London is a thicket, and a person ought to have somebody who knows where the brambles are.” She spread her hands. “So ask me anything you please. Who to know, who to flatter, who to be quietly out for when they call, for I know everyone’s business and have no shame about it whatever.”

There, at last, was a thing Rosalind could meet, for she had spent her life watching rooms that did not watch her back, and she knew the use of intelligence.

“Very well,” she said. “There was a gentleman at the dinner. He stood by the wall the whole evening, and watched the room, and spoke to almost no one.” The words came out before she had decided to let them go. “He left very late, I think, though I did not see him go. I could not place him at all. Dark, and tall, with the look of a man who would rather have been elsewhere. Do you know who he might be?”

Something kindled in Miss Danforth’s face, and she put a hand briefly to Rosalind’s wrist, all delight.

“By the wall, watching the room? Oh, that is very good.” Glancing at the door and finding it safely empty, she dropped her voice. “Tall, dark, and looking as though the party owed him money. That is Lord Dover. James, Viscount Dover.”

“Lord Dover,” Rosalind repeated, and the name settled somewhere inside her and stayed.

“Half the mothers in Town have spent two Seasons throwing their daughters at that man, and he has stepped over every one of them as though they were puddles. They call him uncatchable, which only makes them try the harder, the geese.”

“Has there never been anyone, then?”

“Lady Letitia Vane, once. Everyone expected a match, until it became clear that she cared a great deal more for becoming Lady Dover than she did for Lord Dover himself. It ended badly. He has been rather difficult to approach ever since.”

“And he watched you all evening,” Miss Danforth said. “He watched you.”

“He watched the room,” Rosalind replied. “I happened to be in it.”