To Abby Vietor

For more reasons than will fit on this page 

Christmas Eve, 1803

GIRDINGS HOUSE, NORFOLK

Lady Charlotte Lansdowne’s knight in shining armor finally appeared on a cold Christmas Eve.

Not only was he three years late (an appearance on the eve of her first Season would have been much appreciated), but he appeared to have mislaid his armor somewhere. Instead of a silver breastplate, he was wrapped in a dark military cloak, the collar pulled up high against his chin. His steed was gray rather than white, dappled with dun where trotting on winter-wet roads had flung up patches of mud.

Charlotte noticed none of that. With the torchlight blazing off his uncovered head reflecting a seeming helmet of molten gold, he looked just like Sir William Lansdowne, the long-dead Dovedale who had fought so bravely at the Battle of Agincourt. At least, he looked just like what the seventeenth-century painter who had composed the murals along the Grand Staircase had imagined Sir William Lansdowne looked like.

As the visitor reined in his horse, Charlotte could hear the bugles cry in her head, the clatter of steel against steel as armored knights clashed, horses slipping and falling in the churned mess of mud and blood. She could see Sir William rise in his stirrups as the French bore down upon him, the Lansdowne pennant whipping bravely behind him as he cried, “A moi! A Lansdowne!”

Charlotte staggered forwards as something bumped into her from behind.

It wasn’t a French cavalry charge.

“Really, Charlotte,” demanded the aggrieved voice of her friend Penelope. “Do you intend to go out or just stand there all day?”