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in to dinner. The smell of food mingled with a damp odor that came from the heavy old curtains. The long table was laid with an elaborate spread: joints of venison, beef, and ham; a whole roast salmon; and several different pies. But Jay could hardly eat. Would Father give him the Barbados property? If not, what else? It was hard to sit still and eat venison when your entire future was about to be decided.
    In some ways he hardly knew his father. Although they lived together, at the family house in Grosvenor Square, Sir George was always at the warehouse with Robert. Jay spent the day with his regiment. They sometimes met briefly at breakfast, and occasionally at supper—but Sir George often ate supper in his study while looking over some papers. Jay could not guess what his father would do. So he toyed with his food and waited.
    Mr. Cheshire proved mildly embarrassing. He belched loudly two or three times and spilled his claret, and Jay noticed him staring rather obviously into the cleavage of the woman sitting next to him.
    They had sat down at three o’clock and, by the time the ladies withdrew, the winter afternoon was darkening into evening. As soon as they had gone Sir George shifted on his seat and farted volcanically. “That’s better,” he said.
    A servant brought a bottle of port, a drum of tobacco and a box of clay pipes. The young clergyman filled a pipe and said: “Lady Jamisson’s a damn fine woman, Sir George, if I may say so. Damn fine.”
    He seemed drunk, but even so such a remark could not be allowed to pass. Jay came to his mother’s defense. “I’ll thank you to say no more about Lady Jamisson, sir,” he said frostily.
    The clergyman put a taper to his pipe, inhaled, and began to cough. He had obviously never smoked before. Tears came to his eyes, and he gasped and spluttered and coughed again. The coughs shook him so hard that his wig and spectacles fell off—and Jay saw immediately that this was no clergyman.
    He began to laugh. The others looked at him curiously. They had not seen it yet. “Look!” he said. “Don’t you see who it is?”
    Robert was the first to realize. “Good God, it’s Miss Hallim in disguise!” he said.
    There was a moment of startled silence. Then Sir George began to laugh. The other men, seeing that he was going to take it as a joke, laughed too.
    Lizzie took a drink of water and coughed some more. As she recovered, Jay admired her costume. The spectacles had hidden her flashing dark eyes, and the side-curls of the wig had partly obscured her pretty profile. A white linen stock thickened her neck and covered the smooth feminine skin of her throat. She had used charcoal or something to give her cheeks the pockmarked look, and she had drawn a few wispy hairs on her chin like the beard of a young man who did not yet shave every day. In the gloomy rooms of the castle, on a dull winter’s afternoon in Scotland, no one had seen through her disguise.
    “Well, you’ve proved you can pass for a man,” said Sir George when she had stopped coughing. “But you still can’t go down the pit. Go and fetch the other ladies, and we’ll give Jay his birthday present.”
    For a few minutes Jay had forgotten his anxiety, but now it came back with a thump.
    They met up with the women in the hall. Jay’s mother and Lizzie were laughing fit to bust: Alicia had obviously been in on the plot, which accounted for her secretive grin before dinner. Lizzie’s mother had not known about it, and she was looking frosty.
    Sir George led the way out through the main doors. It was dusk. The snow had stopped. “Here,” said Sir George. “This is your birthday present.”
    In front of the house a groom held the most beautiful horse Jay had ever seen. It was a white stallion about two years old, with the lean lines of an Arab. The crowd made it nervous, and it skipped sideways, forcing the groom to tug on its bridle to keep it still. There was a wild look in its eyes, and Jay knew