“Well, I never!”

            “How dare he show up three hours late to this ball! Why, if I were Mrs. Quincey, I would ask him to leave immediately!”

            “Look at the way he’s walking, too! All smug, no doubt, as though every female in the room is watching him!”

            “And how out of fashion to come here without any sort of wig! I mean, it is 1778; has the man any respect for our era? He looks downright American!”

            Charlotte did not hear any of their words as they plowed through insults without so much as a drop of shame, for her eyes were glazed over with feelings of pride, empowerment, and lust.

            There was something very, very strange about this Carlisle Cullen, and she was determined to figure it out by the end of the evening. It was not often that such a mystery crossed her path, and Charlotte was not about to allow Dr. Cullen to cross hers without so much as an inquiry.

            She gracefully left the circle of middle aged women and began to move about the room. Strangely enough, she was able to hide herself rather expertly among the extravagant hoop skirts and powdered faces, until she found herself at the window near the small guilt chair she had been sitting upon.

            She soon grew tired of staring at the stars and carelessly turned around, but as she did so, she flew into something incredibly hard, like a gigantic boulder made entirely of granite, and fell to the exquisite marble floor.

            “I am so incredibly apologetic, Miss,” expressed a young man, his voice full of regret.

            Charlotte groaned inwardly, as she did not wish to scramble away from another suitor, and looked up into the face of Carlisle Cullen, the man who she had been searching for for the better part of the entire evening.

            He extended his hand toward her. “I believe that the punishment for knocking a lady off her feet is a dance,” he said, his strange eyes catching hers.

            Purely intoxicated, Charlotte put her hand in his and realized almost immediately that the rumors were in fact true. It was quite strange; the feeling of his hand upon hers. He did not seem to be nervous or agitated at all, for his hand was smooth and surprisingly cool. It was as though she had taken a fresh breath of air from the seashore. And the way he pulled her up…it was as though there was no strength needed in his exquisitely shaped forearms, as though she were lighter than a feather in King George’s cap.