Robert’s mind boggled at the notion of the blank-faced footmen being stirred to uncontrollable passion by the Dowager’s wrinkled face and grasshopper arms.

Tommy simply looked stunned, although that could, in part, have been because the Dowager had landed on his foot in passing.

“Ah, these old legs aren’t what they once were,” mused the Dowager, wiggling a red-heeled shoe. “In my day I could outdance half the men in London. Outrun them, too.” She emitted a short bark of laughter. “Except when I wanted to be caught, that is. Those were the days.” She shook her cane in the face of a practically paralytic Tommy. “Who’s this young sprig and what is he doing in my hall?”

Robert very nobly refrained from pointing out that it was, in fact, his hall. “May I present Tommy Fluellen, late of His Majesty’s service?”

“Welsh?” demanded the Duchess.

“With the leek to prove it,” Tommy replied cheerfully.

The Dowager regarded him thoughtfully. “There was a Welsh princess married into the family in the twelfth century. Angharad, they called her. I doubt you are related.”

The Dowager Duchess turned her gimlet gaze on the Duke, for an inspection that went from his bare head straight down to the mud on the toes of his boots.

“You do have the Lansdowne look about you,” she admitted grudgingly. “At least you would, if you weren’t burnt brown as a savage. What were you thinking, boy?”

“Not of my complexion.”

“Hmph. That’s clear enough. Still, you look more of a Lansdowne than Charlotte.” The Dowager jerked her head in Charlotte’s direction by way of acknowledgment. “She favors her mother’s people.”