They were close enough that he could feel the hurried beat of her heart. He could feel Charlotte’s indecision in every word she didn’t say and every move she didn’t make. She was tense with uncertainty, quivering with irresolution. She might not be leaning into him, but she wasn’t pulling away, either.

Running a gentling hand down her back, he tilted that crucial bit forwards, just as a jarring sweep sent them both tottering sideways.

Robert swore, catching at the side of the boat with one hand and Charlotte with the other, grabbing at the side of her dress to keep her from going over. Wiping the spray out of his eyes, he could see the vast bulk of Medmenham Abbey looming above them on the bank, like an evil sorcerer’s fortress. Swinging on a wide arc, sending water spraying in its wake, the boat made for the water stairs. They had arrived.

Damn, damn, damn. Even in absentia, Medmenham contrived to thwart his courtship.

Charlotte pulled away, shaking off droplets of water and frantically smoothing her hair. From the look on her face, the argument was far from over.

Robert’s throat constricted with the reminder of how badly he had managed to mangle something that could have been so simple. If he had only explained himself at Girdings, if he had only sent more than a two-word message — but he couldn’t have, back then, he thought wearily. Part of Charlotte’s accusation was fair; he hadn’t known her well enough to be sure how she would have received it. He knew now, but now it was too late. There was a certain Shakespearean irony to it.

There was no going back, he reminded himself, only forward. The endless night wasn’t over yet. There was the King to be found, and perhaps that might yet be the saving of him, if he could offer up the King to Charlotte as a token of his seriousness of purpose.

At least it would make a more original gift than flowers or chocolates.

Fabric rustled and loud yawns could be heard as the inhabitants of the cabin began to stir.

“Are we there yet?” came Miles’s plaintive voice from inside the tilt.

“Not quite,” Robert said dryly.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Charlotte was shaking with more than cold as she climbed out of the barge.

She had lost her lap rug somewhere on the deck of the shallop. Her lap rug and her senses, too. She could still feel the warmth of Robert’s fingers in her hair, like a phantom of her own folly. If the boat hadn’t turned when it had, quite literally dousing her with cold water . . . she didn’t want to think about that bit. Not with the others all waking and milling and stretching. Only so much of the color in her cheeks could be convincingly attributed to windburn.

Robert offered her a hand to help her out of the barge and she took it, feeling the clasp of his fingers sure and firm around her own. Charlotte glanced fleetingly up at him. He returned her glance with a slight, reassuring smile.

That smile made Charlotte bristle.

Was it her imagination, or was there something ever so slightly smug about that smile? As though he knew he had her in the palm of his hand and could decide to pick her up or drop her as the whim moved him.

Charlotte seized on that tiny, warming spark of anger. What did he think he was playing at? One moment Robert was all compliments and deep, burning looks, the next it would be calm reserve and protestations of indifference. Did he just have a horror of cold places? Charlotte would have laughed if she weren’t afraid her frozen facial muscles would crack with the strain. It had been frigid in the chapel at Girdings, too, and on the roof. That would be the most lowering explanation of all, to be wanted not for one’s wit or charm but for one’s ability to serve as a chest and lip warmer in cold places.

He couldn’t keep changing the terms. Charlotte was cold and numb and miserable, but she managed to grasp that one simple concept with her frozen senses. She — she told herself indignantly — had been more than accommodating in her willingness to forgive his last lapse and be friends despite it all. It wasn’t fair of him, just as she had worked her way around to understanding and forgiveness, to go and start the cycle all over again. This sort of romantic tangle wasn’t meant to be a cycle. She didn’t think she could bear to keep playing the same scenes over and over again, earnest affection followed by terse words of denial, followed by cautious forgiveness, followed by earnest affection again. It sounded like one of the more inventive torments derived by the Greek gods for their favored guests in Hades. Sisyphus didn’t even begin to compare.

Charlotte would have told him so, but now didn’t quite seem to be the time, not surrounded by their raggle-taggle band of adventurers with a king to be saved. Charlotte had always had the lowest possible opinion of those heroines who caused unnecessary delays in the middle of a quest by dragging in their own petty romantic problems.

What she had failed to allow for was that it wouldn’t feel nearly so petty when it was her own. But having a proper Lansdowne temper tantrum at Robert could wait until they had the King safely tucked into his own bed, attended by his own attendants. Minus Lord Henry Innes, that was. Even if Lord Henry had been merely the unwitting dupe of Robert’s mysterious Mr. Wrothan, he was still not fit to be entrusted with the care of a lapdog, much less the King.

Despite the fact that she was safely on dry land and in no imminent danger of falling over, Robert had taken casual possession of her arm, grasping it through her cloak, just beneath the elbow, as though he had every right to offer that support.

It would not have infuriated Charlotte quite so much if she hadn’t caught herself leaning into that gentle pressure, like a dog preening to be petted.

Charlotte pulled herself stiffly upright.

Robert, still casually bracing her arm as though — as though she were a dog he had on the lead (having chosen a metaphor, it seemed simpler to stay with it, as unflattering as it was to her), didn’t seem to notice. He frowned up at the stucco façade of Medmenham Abbey.

“Look at the lights,” he said, keeping his voice deliberately low. “Someone is in the Abbey.”

“Not unusual, surely?” said Miles, vaulting easily over the edge of the boat and landing on the dock with a satisfied thump. Miles had always been particularly fond of jumping over things. “Medmenham would have a left a staff behind. Servants and . . . well, servants.”

Household management had never been Miles’s forte.

The lantern light trailed from one window to the next, casting strange plays of light and shadow onto the winter gray grass of the bank. To Charlotte’s dazed and dazzled eyes, the light seemed to ripple like the tail of a salamander.

There was something entirely uncanny about the whole scene, something that whispered of old and cruel enchantments. Behind her, she could hear the harsh laughter of the wind whistling through the reeds. It made Charlotte think of Shakespeare’s Puck. But this was a very old Puck, an old and a malicious Puck, wheezing with spiteful pleasure at tricks still to be played on a band of self-satisfied and unsuspecting mortals.

Pure fancy, she told herself. But she still drew her cloak more tightly around her, wishing she had some iron in her pocket to touch to keep away the fairies. It might be silly, but it couldn’t hurt.

The others were more concerned with human malefactors than malicious spirits.

“Who prowls about at midnight?” said Robert. “Those aren’t servants. Someone is looking for something.”

“Or for someone?” suggested Charlotte, thinking of the King.

His eyes caught hers. “Or for someone,” he agreed, and for a brief moment Charlotte wasn’t sure whether they were discussing the King or something else entirely.

“The Frenchman’s men, I’d wager,” said Lieutenant Fluellen lazily, coming up between them. Time returned to its normal pacing. “Wrothan would know where he had stashed his prize.”

“And the Frenchman had an hour’s start on us.” Turning back to the boat, Robert had a brief conversation with the boatmen, involving the exchange of gold from Robert’s hands to theirs and assurances given on either side. The breeze carried their words away to the far bank, robbing Charlotte of the ability of eavesdrop.

Within a moment, Robert was done, driving the rest of the group before him like a professional sheepdog.

“Shall we?” he said briskly. “I suggest we don’t let them find us here.”

“I second that,” said Lieutenant Fluellen, falling easily into the secondary place by Robert’s side, as he must, Charlotte imagined, have done many times before, away across the seas. It made Charlotte feel staggeringly superfluous. “Where to?”

“The caves.” Robert led the group away from the Abbey, into the protective lee of the shrubbery. The gravel crunched beneath Charlotte’s feet as she hurried along behind, her skirts held up in both hands. Behind her, gargoyle faces glowered from the portico. She very much hoped they were made of stone. Twin harpies, their faces proud and cruel, looked as though they might take flight at any moment, cackling as they tore apart their prey. “If the Frenchman’s lot are still searching the house, there’s a good chance they haven’t yet looked in the caves.”

“Where are the caves?” asked Charlotte, her breath coming in uneven pants as she struggled to match the others’ longer strides. Before her, the gardens seemed to stretch on endlessly, dotted with statues whose white stone gleamed dully in the moonlight and odd follies whose peaked and rounded roofs reared out of the topiary like fantastical beasts in the night. The path twisted and turned back upon itself in unnumbered tangles like a sinner’s conscience.

There was no turning back, though. The boat had already pulled away from the dock. With its long oars extended, it looked like a water insect skimming on top of the moonlit river. The lanterns — at Robert’s instruction? — had been shuttered.

“The caves are several miles inland, near the family mausoleum and the Church of St. Lawrence. We have a long walk ahead of us.” He frowned down at Charlotte. “Are you — ?”

“I’m fine,” she asserted haughtily. No need to tell him about the blister on her heel or the fact that she could really rather use a few moments alone with a chamber pot. The last thing she wanted was his solicitude. One kind look, one sympathetic gesture, and she would dissolve into his arms in a pitiful little ball of jelly, cravenly crying for warmth and reassurance. She hardened her features to try to prevent any sign of weakness from slipping through. “Lead the way.”

Robert regarded her closely and Charlotte felt herself unconsciously trying to make her spine straighter, as though posture might be an indicator of stamina.

“Right,” he said. “Onwards!”

He would have taken Charlotte’s arm, but Charlotte evaded him by leaning over to brush an imaginary leaf off her cloak.

Within a very short period of time she began to wish she had been more practical and less proud. No wonder most heroes in stories staged their adventures for summer, thought Charlotte despairingly. There was no romance to their expedition, only grim endurance and grueling cold that bit through her bones and sapped all energy and strength. Not that she had had much of the latter to begin with.

They stayed close, for safety and the meager warmth that came of keeping together. Robert took the lead, as by right, and Lieutenant Fluellen the rear, by an unspoken prearrangement as smoothly orchestrated as the movement of the mechanical devices Medmenham kept in his garden to shock his visitors. In the beginning, Henrietta and Miles kept up a quiet stream of desultory conversation, but by the time they reached the wilderness garden, with the willows weeping above their heads, the fronds catching at their cloaks like the fingers of mourning nymphs, and the mulch sopping sloppily beneath their feet, even they lapsed into grim silence, keeping their eyes on the path and reserving their strength for the task of carrying on.

There was no time to brood about Robert; every ounce of energy was expended on simply staying upright as they staggered down the tangled paths of Medmenham’s personal maze. Charlotte had thought that nothing could have been more like torture than the gravel paths that pounded her frozen feet through her thin evening slippers, but as they left the formal gardens for a carefully planned wilderness, she discovered that wood chips were worse, sinking unevenly beneath her weight and leeching forth an icy brown liquid that seeped through the sides of her slippers and made her frozen toes tingle painfully.