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preferred sea chanteys, most especially those with beats that made one want to stamp one’s foot very hard upon the quarterdeck.
    The parlor, she found, when she opened the door to it, was decorated in only a little less masculine style than the rest of the house, with fawn being the color most primary. Slipping into the room quietly enough to attract no attention—everyone was too engrossed in Miss Whitby’s performance to pay any mind to her
—
Payton sat down on the first vacant seat she found, a luxuriously soft, but somewhat worn, leather sofa.
    “‘The ash grove, how graceful,’” warbled Miss Whitby.
    She had a nice enough voice, Payton supposed, but she had a feeling that’s not why Miss Whitby so loved to sing. She loved to sing because she looked so good doing it. Every time she took a breath to swell her song, her bosom rose to startling new and dramatic heights. She made quite a picture there with her blue skirts billowing about her and her bosom puffed up so much that it looked as if any second it might all spill out of the daringly cut gown she wore. Looking down at her own bosom, Payton felt rather depressed. She wondered if Miss Whitby hadn’t, by any chance, stuffed handkerchiefs into the cups of her corset to add padding to what was already naturally here.
    “‘The dear ones I mourn for, again gather here,’”  sang Miss Whitby.
    Payton was rather surprised to see Miss Whitby wasting such a fine performance on a lot of women. Surely her time would have been better spent saving her song for after dinner, when the gentlemen would be gathered round. Her bosom could be put to much better use there.
    Then again, Miss Whitby’s bosom had already done its work: it had snared her the finest catch in England. Or at least, that’s what Payton supposed had attracted Drake, since it didn’t seem to her that the odious Miss Whitby possessed anything else that would be of interest to a man.
    The ash grove, how boring, Payton thought, as she began to look about the room. She recognized quite a few of the women gathered there. There was Georgiana, of course, pretending to look engrossed in Miss Whitby’s performance. Georgiana had confided to Payton that she found Miss Whitby’s insistence on employing vibrato when she sang in front of company a bit affected. There were the wives and daughters of some of the officers with whom Captain Drake had sailed in the past. In fact, except for the rather grand-looking old woman who was entering the room just then, there wasn’t a single person she didn’t recognize. Where, Payton wondered, were Miss Whitby’s guests? Even if she hadn’t any family, surely the bride-to-be had invited someone to join her for such a momentous occasion …
    But not, evidently, the old lady who’d just entered the room. After a casual glance through a pair of lorgnettes at Miss Whitby, the woman moved with decorous intent toward the empty cushion on Payton’s couch. It was only after she’d lowered herself onto it—with the help of a handsome cane—and arranged her voluminous skirts around her legs that she leaned over and inquired of Payton in a creaky whisper, her eyes very bright behind the lenses of her spectacles, “Who is it, pray? That creature singing so abominably?”
    Payton, who’d been thinking something very much along the same lines, couldn’t help bursting out laughing at such an unexpected observation. She clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from interrupting the performance, but even so, Georgiana heard her, and turned in her chair to shoot her a warning look.
    The old woman beside Payton, however, seemed to possess not the slightest qualm about conversing during Miss Whitby’s musicale.
    “Is that the one he’s marrying tomorrow?” The old lady’s hands—which were quite elegant, despite their being flecked with age spots—clutched the handle of an ornately carved ebony cane. “That one singing?”
    Payton, recovering herself, nodded. “Yes,