“Don’t know about you,” said Mr. Fitzhugh loudly, “but there’s a pie with my name on it out there.”

“It was not a good era for heads, your civil war,” said the chevalier.

“Civil wars seldom are,” agreed Jane.

“All these chaps seem to have their heads on straight. At least the ones on the walls,” said Mr. Fitzhugh in an attempt to redirect the attention of the chevalier. Arabella could feel him shift on his feet as he surreptitiously stretched out his arm, groping for the pudding.

“Well, they would, wouldn’t they?” said the chevalier, raising an eyebrow at Mr. Fitzhugh. Mr. Fitzhugh froze. Arabella was reminded of a children’s game, one called statues, where the players could only move when the primary actor’s back was turned. “One wouldn’t want to be preserved for posterity without one’s most identifiable feature. Like the Duke of Monmouth.”

“The duke of who?” asked Jane innocently.

Arabella gave her a hard look. Jane had written her own, rather mocking, history of Britain. She knew very well who the Duke of Monmouth was. But she would have her fun.

To Arabella’s surprise, it was Mr. Fitzhugh who answered. “Duke of Monmouth. He was a, um, er, child of Charles II.” He tactfully omitted the word bastard. “Got his head lopped off for treason.”

“But they didn’t do it right,” contributed the chevalier, in thrilling tones. “It took five blows of the ax to sever Monmouth’s head. And that — ”

Mr. Fitzhugh looked anxiously at the ladies. “Don’t know if — ,” he began.

“Is when they remembered that they had forgotten to paint his portrait,” the chevalier finished innocently.

“Oh,” said Mr. Fitzhugh. “Right.”

“You can see how that would be a problem,” said the Chevalier.

“History, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in,” pronounced Jane. “I read it a little as a duty; but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me.”

“How so?” asked the chevalier. Arabella wondered if he suspected that Jane was bamming him.

Jane waved a hand. “The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all. It is very tiresome.”

“That sounds like something out of a book,” said the chevalier. “Not Dr. Johnson, surely?”

Jane was at her most demure. “No, although no doubt someday someone will lay claim to it on his behalf. I have recently been informed with great authority that Dr. Johnson was the author of Camilla.”

“Nonsense,” said the chevalier blandly. “I have it on even better authority that both Camilla and Evelina were the works of Voltaire. Operating under a pseudonym, of course.”

“Of course,” agreed Jane. “And I’m quite sure that the collected works of Mrs. Radcliffe were all written by Monsieur Rousseau. In his spare time. I think I should like some of that pie you mentioned, Mr. Fitzhugh. If you would escort me?”

“I should like nothing better,” Mr. Fitzhugh said gallantly, casting Arabella an anguished glance.

It didn’t take terribly much intuition to interpret. The moment he moved, the pudding would be exposed to view.

Mr. Fitzhugh babbled on, playing for time. “Hope it’s a good kind of pie. Not that there are bad kinds of pie. Amazing thing, the pie! Sheer genius, in pastry form. You can take any type of food and wrap it in dough. Happy consumption and easy transportation, all in one. Doesn’t get much better than that.”

His fingers glanced off the side of the pudding, sending it rocking on its precarious marble perch. Gathering speed as it went, the pudding went rolling slowly backwards over the side of the monument to fall with a splat on the other side.

“What was that?”

“My reticule. I dropped my reticule,” said Arabella, diving towards the ground before they could see that her reticule was still dangling from her wrist.

From this vantage point, Mr. Fitzhugh’s boots were very shiny. She could see her own reflection in them.

“You all right down there?” asked Mr. Fitzhugh.

“Yes! Fine! Perfectly all right!”

Arabella made a show of groping around on the floor, scrabbling at the ground with her hands, before popping back up with her reticule in hand. She waved it around a few times so everyone could see that it was, indeed, a reticule.

“These strings are such a bother. I’ve nearly lost it at least three times today. Shall we? Chevalier?”

She swept forward, bearing the Frenchman along with her. Glancing over her shoulder, she could see Mr. Fitzhugh mime his approval with a little happy dance, which he brought to an abrupt halt as Jane turned to him.

“Are you joining us, Mr. Fitzhugh?”

“I say!” Mr. Fitzhugh made a show of clapping his hand to his head. “Can’t think how I came to be so clumsy. Dropped a watch fob, don’t you know. Do go on without me. Shan’t be a moment.”

“Such a rash of falling objects,” commented the chevalier.

He led Arabella out into the sunlight, directing her unerringly towards the smell of food and the sound of lute strings being tortured.

“Did you know,” said the chevalier conversationally, “that for a time it was rumored that Mr. Fitzhugh was the spy known as the Pink Carnation?”

“That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Arabella.

On the other hand, it might take a very clever man to play that much of a fool. But could anyone sustain that kind of act for that long?

“Just because Mr. Fitzhugh wears carnations embroidered on his waistcoat hardly means that he — oh, I don’t know.”

“Flies in the face of danger? Sneers at the name of risk?”

“Something like that. I should think that having carnations embroidered on one’s stockings would be tantamount to taking out an advertisement that one wasn’t the Pink Carnation.”

“You question the wisdom of Bonaparte’s secret police?” The chevalier’s lightly mocking tone invited her to join in the joke at the expense of the French regime.

“If that is the extent of their intelligence, then it’s a wonder that Bonaparte wasn’t unseated ages ago!” Flushing at her own presumption, Arabella modulated her tone. “What I mean is that Mr. Fitzhugh is a highly unlikely conspirator.”

“So was Sir Percy Blakeney in his day,” replied the chevalier. “He played the buffoon so well that his own wife did not guess it.”

“I hardly know Mr. Fitzhugh so well as that.”

“No?” said the chevalier gently, steering her towards a refreshment table, where steaming silver cups of punch had been set out on an equally silver tray.

“No,” repeated Arabella firmly. “But I would be willing to wager that he is exactly what he seems.”

“A dangerous wager, Miss Dempsey. People are seldom what they seem.”

Arabella didn’t appreciate being condescended to. She frowned at the chevalier. “Including you?”

Stopping beside the refreshment table, the chevalier abstracted a silver mug from among its fellows, lifting it to his nose to breathe in the hot, scented fragrance of it before passing it over to Arabella. “That, my dear Miss Dempsey, would be telling.”

“Telling what?” asked Lord Vaughn, coming up behind them.

“Terrible tales of scandal,” said the chevalier, reaching for a second glass and handing it to Vaughn.

Vaughn raised his brows. “Like an old lady by her hearth, enjoying a spot of gossip with her tea.”

“I’ve never known you to balk at scandal, Sebastian,” returned the chevalier, unperturbed.

Lord Vaughn looked at him with all the arrogance of two hundred years of semi-supreme rule. “I prefer to cause it, rather than discuss it. Other people’s scandals are tedious.”

“Speaking of which,” said Lady Vaughn, “you’ve just missed your aunt. She left only a few minutes ago.”

“She did?” What with one thing and another, with puddings and Pink Carnations, Arabella had almost forgotten about them. “My aunt and my uncle?” She was proud that her voice didn’t falter on the last word.

Lady Vaughn shrugged. “At that age, one wants an early night.”

Arabella pulled herself together. What had she really expected? That her aunt would fall on her bosom and tell her how much she missed her? That Musgrave would weep tears of remorse?

Fool, she told herself. Three times a fool. She knew Captain Musgrave was false and a cad, so why did she still care what he thought of her, or want so desperately to get his attention?

Habit, she told herself. Habit and wounded pride. He had courted her so assiduously for a time, discovering her interests, praising her prose, pressing her hand just a little too long in greeting. She had wanted — oh, something. Some sort of reparation or revenge. Some sort of acknowledgment.

“It’s no matter,” she said, with a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “I’ll be with my aunt at Girdings for Christmas.”

Arabella’s domestic plans didn’t interest the Vaughns. Lifting his quizzing glass, Vaughn let it trail across the shifting groups of people.

“Here comes our favorite vegetable,” Vaughn commented languidly. “Looking rather pleased with himself. He must have outwitted a rutabaga.”

Looking around, Arabella saw Mr. Fitzhugh striding towards them across the winter-wilted grass, his puce coat a splash of color against the time-weathered walls of the old castle. He had removed his high-crowned hat, leaving it to swing from one hand.

“Is he still dangling after the Deveraux girl?” Lady Vaughn asked her husband in an intimate tone that pointedly cut the others out of the conversation.

Arabella knew Penelope Deveraux. More accurately, she knew of her. It was hard not to know about Penelope Deveraux: She created an eddy of excitement around her wherever she went, a hiss hiss hiss of whisper and gossip and speculation that preceded her like the rumble of thunder before lightning.