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gallery and swung round, her farthingale swaying so violently it knocked over a small stool.
    The lady ignored the clatter as she continued to fume. “But Gareth, as we all know, is as indolent as a lizard in the sun. If it weren’t for me, this family would sink into obscurity! The most wonderful opportunity wasted … tossed aside because my dear brother can’t be troubled to bestir himself.” She fanned herself vigorously, two angry red spots burning on her cheekbones,accentuating the deeply pockmarked skin. “Oh, if only I were a man! I could do these things myself!”
    Miles stroked his neat spade beard and tried to appear deep in constructive thought, as if that could somehow achieve this oft-repeated ambition of his wife’s. He knew perfectly well that her diatribe against Gareth had its roots in fear that some disaster had befallen him. Imogen was incapable of expressing affection, and her adoration of her brother expressed itself in fierce denial. The greater her anxiety and the deeper her love, the more negative and critical she became.
    “But my dear lady, your brother
has
gone to King Henry,” he offered finally.
    “Yes, and thanks to whom?” Imogen demanded. “Would he have gone if I hadn’t begged and prayed and implored him? On my knees, month after month?”
    There was no answer to this. Lord Harcourt had certainly been hard to persuade. It awed Miles that his brother-in-law was impervious to his elder sister’s relentless pestering. Floods of tears, terrifying rages, unceasing harassment—nothing seemed to pierce his nonchalance. A nonchalance that Miles at least believed to be little more than a façade. It fooled Imogen into believing her brother needed to be directed into the right paths for his own good and the good of the family. She hadn’t seemed to notice that, regardless of her efforts, Gareth continued to go his own way.
    Gareth had, however, finally been roused to a spark of interest over this business with Maude. When Imogen had first come up with her brilliant idea to propose Maude as a possible wife to the duke of Roissy, Miles had expected the usual sequence: Gareth would allow his sister to pester him only so far, and then he’d gently but firmly put her in her place with an absolute refusal.But on this occasion, after a while Miles had seen a certain gleam in his brother-in-law’s eye—one he hadn’t seen in many a month. A look of quiet calculation even while he’d allowed his sister’s passionate diatribes to wash over him.
    It seemed that Gareth had seen the advantages to the Harcourts in such an alliance without his sister’s vehement assistance. The Harcourt family had lost so much since the massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day, because of their loyalty to Henry and the Huguenot cause, it was not unreasonable to expect their reward now that Henry and his cause had triumphed in France.
    “Have you talked again with Maude, my dear?” Miles inquired, turning his rings around on his fingers, wishing he could escape into London where he could find some convivial card-playing company in one of the taverns around Ludgate Hill.
    “I will not speak with that ungrateful creature until she agrees to do as she’s told.” Lady Imogen’s voice vibrated with suppressed violence. “I wash my hands of her.” She slapped her hands together in illustration, but her husband was not fooled. Imogen was far from ready to give up her plan.
    Imogen resumed her pacing, then abruptly she turned to the door at the end of the gallery. She said nothing to her husband as she sailed out, leaving the door open behind her.
    Miles followed at a discreet distance and when he saw her turn to the left at the end of the corridor into the east wing of the house he nodded to himself. Poor Maude was in for another savage bullying. At least this gave him the freedom to sneak out of the house on his own pursuits.
    •      •      •
    Imogen marched into the small parlor where her cousin