Of course, there was no way I could justify my incursions into the Selwick photo albums as work. That was a different type of curiosity entirely.

“How are the Valentine’s Day preparations going?” I asked in return. “The party, I mean.”

The gallery for which Serena worked was throwing a big party for Valentine’s Day, to showcase the works of one of their flagship artists, who apparently concentrated on deconstructing the Western tradition of romantic love. I hadn’t recognized the name of the artist, but the price tags on his sculptures were enough to make my eyes go pop.

I’m a Pre-Raphaelite girl, myself. They did such a good job of painting red-haired women.

“You and Colin don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” Serena said earnestly, once we had chatted about the mundanities of catering and guest lists and the pluses and minuses of having an event on Valentine’s Day.

“Of course we do!” I exclaimed, a little too heartily.

Serena gave me a look. She might be insecure, but she wasn’t stupid. It was probably painfully clear that my ideal Valentine’s Day had more to do with champagne for two than squinting at abstract sculptures deconstructing the gendered Western notion of “love” (quotation marks theirs, not mine).

“I never say no to pink champagne,” I added. That, at least, was true. And when it came down to it, I was just happy to have someone to be with on Valentine’s Day, whatever it was we did with it. I wished Serena had someone, too. Sadly, the Martin plan appeared to have been a damp squib.

Although he was coming to the gallery party, according to Colin. Under the influence of pink champagne, who knew what might happen?

“Pammy is coming, too,” said Serena.

“Is she bringing anyone?” I asked curiously. Between Colin and the archives, I hadn’t spoken to Pammy for a good few days. Given the way she went through men, she might be just about anywhere on the dating cycle since I had spoken to her.

“She’s bringing a friend, she said,” reported Serena, with a nice appreciation for the ambiguity of the remark.

“That could mean anything,” I said in disgust. “I’ll have to call her and ask. Oh, and did you know that Martin’s coming?”

As an attempt at casual, it failed miserably.

Serena looked at me from under the shiny waves of her hair, with an expression of resigned tolerance that made me feel very, very young and very, very gauche. For a moment, she looked a great deal like her great aunt. “I don’t fancy Martin,” she said patiently.

“No?”

“No,” she repeated firmly, adding, “but it was sweet of you to try.”

Chagrined, I stared out the window as our cab nearly took the side mirror off a double-parked SUV. “What about Nick?” I asked, throwing Pammy to the wolves. Pammy could take care of herself.

“Nick,” said Serena carefully, “doesn’t fancy me .”

“He certainly likes you,” I said.

There it was again. That resigned curve of the lips, like the cover of old Judy Collins albums, where she’s singing about being imprisoned behind the isinglass windows of her eyes. “No,” she said. “It’s just not on. Nick likes me as his friend’s sister. That’s all.”

“Mmmph,” I said. If Miles Dorrington could learn to think of Henrietta Selwick as something other than a little sister, why couldn’t Nick Whatever-His-Last-Name-Was take another look at Serena?

“No,” repeated Serena quietly but firmly.

“Okay.” Fortunately, the cab chose that moment to screech up to the curb, so in fumbling for the fare, the topic was dropped. While I was dropping pound coins on the floor of the cab, Serena efficiently paid the cabbie, rounding the fare off to the next number rather than falling prey to the American rule of fifteen percent. The cabbie, who must have heard my accent, looked disappointed.

I managed to reclaim my rolling change and get myself out of the cab without further incident, thinking soberly that I had to make myself stop treating Serena like a backward child, just because she wasn’t as manically outgoing as most of the people of my acquaintance. For all that Serena’s shyness made her seem younger, we were the same age. Depending on the date of her birthday, she may even be a few months older.

How had I come to start babying her like that? I guessed it came partly from knowing her through Pammy, who treated everyone, including me, like substandard preschoolers needing her firm hand and wise advice. There was also the fact that I’d wound up taking care of Serena on the second meeting of our acquaintance, holding her head over a toilet bowl at a party while she lost the remains of her supper. On top of that, there was Colin, who had all the protective condescension of any big brother for a delicate younger sister and who had strongly conveyed all of that to me. Not that any of those made a particularly good excuse.

It really was pretty presumptuous of me to try to give Serena advice about Nick and Martin, whom she had known far longer than I had. These were her people, not mine. When it came down to it, all of this was her world, not mine. She knew the streets, the people, the currency, the social cues in ways I didn’t and probably never would.

There are times when I don’t like myself much, and this was one of them. I felt like the worst sort of American stereotype, pushy and naïve all at the same time.

“Where do we go?” I asked with unaccustomed humility. Not wanting to brave the thronged street around the theatre, the cab had set us down some way from our goal.

Serena tugged her glove up on her wrist. “Just there,” she said, nodding.

Despite the movie’s having been out for a few weeks already, it was a popular showing, with people milling about in clumps as they filtered their way inside. Long posters hung on the side of the building, advertising the hero of the film in various dashing poses. I might like my nineteenth-century spies in knee breeches, but there was, I thought, really something to be said for martinis shaken, not stirred. “He’s so cute,” I said with a sigh, linking my arm through Serena’s.

“Yes,” she agreed distractedly, and I realized she wasn’t looking at the poster.

Following her gaze, I could see a shock of red hair, visible among the shorter heads in the crowd. It was a different shade of red than mine, with more brown in it, cut in that casually expensive male style that looks as though someone just took a hedge trimmer to it. His teeth were very white against his ski-tanned skin as he smiled lazily down at his companion. His arm was slung cozily around her shoulders.

It wasn’t Pammy — after umpteen years of school together, I would know Pammy from any angle — but it was someone of the same type, medium height, trendily dressed, with short, fluffy, expensively highlighted hair.

Of all the theatres in London we could have chosen . . . Damn. Damn, damn, damn. It was small consolation that now I didn’t have to worry about choosing between Pammy and Serena; they both appeared to have been edged out before the competition even started.

I looked over at Serena and saw her watching me watching them. The Judy Collins look was back on her face, all resigned forbearance.

“See?” said Serena quietly.

It would be hard not to. I wanted to thump Nick over the head with an extra-large box of Milk Duds. Since that wasn’t an option, there was only one thing to be done.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go get some popcorn.”

Chapter Fourteen

“Whatever is that man doing with a bolster stuck down his dress?” demanded Penelope.

In the gardens of the Residency, a makeshift stage had been delineated by means of curtains and lanterns, illuminating a farce being played out by a local troupe of mummers, mostly in dumb show.

“That chap is a man, dressed as a woman, trying to sneak into a zenana,” explained Daniel Cleave, leaning an elbow against the balustrade next to her. A slightly apologetic smile replaced the habitual look of anxiety on his fine-boned face. “Once you’ve seen these fifty times or so, you tend to get a sense of the plot. It will be the unwise horseman being fooled out of his clothes by traveling minstrels next.”

“All his clothes?” demanded Penelope archly.

The mild-mannered civil servant blushed. “Just the outer ones, generally,” he said. “At least, when there are ladies present.”

On the stage, the bosomy imposter had managed to shoulder his way into the zenana, largely by dint of bowling over the eunuchs with his enormous chest, and was attempting to clutch a winsome zenana lady in his amorous embrace, in which he was considerably hampered by his bolster.

“Take it off!” hollered Lieutenant Sir Leamington Fiske from farther down the veranda.

The sentiment was echoed by his messmate, Ensign Jasper Pinchingdale, who punctuated his advice with a fist in the air that nearly sent him toppling over the railing.

Cleave, Fiske, and Pinchingdale had arrived two days before, bringing with them an escort of eight elephants, eleven camels, and one hundred and fifty servants. Freddy had been overjoyed to have the company of not one, but three new card players, although Mr. Cleave had proved a sad disappointment in that regard. He had, he had said, not the head for high wagers, and business to discuss with the Resident besides. So Freddy and Pinchingdale and Fiske had played cards, while Penelope had made a clandestine foray into Fiske’s baggage without discovering anything more interesting than the fact that Fiske apparently thought it necessary to travel with enough medicaments to stock an apothecary’s shop, with the emphasis on opium in every form one could devise.