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don't mind telling you!"
    "Mr. Halvey?" Melanie inquired, stopping to admire one of the portraits adorning the downstairs gallery. "Who is he?"
    "Why, he was butler here before Mr. Davies," Mrs. Musgrove said, smugly pleased at how easily she had slipped that bit of information into the conversation. The captain had told them to say he was a recent addition to the staff in the event anyone asked. "Mr. Halvey has been with the duke's family for fifty years, you know, and when he retired, His Grace brought Mr. Davies down from his country house, where he had been the underbutler."
    Melanie paused in her inspection of the curio cabinet, a faint frown puckering her forehead whenshe thought of the young butler. "Then Mr. Davies is new at his position?" she asked, feeling faintly surprised by the information.
    "That he is." Mrs. Musgrove nodded eagerly. "He's been with us but a fortnight, and I must say he is settling in nicely. Usually a new butler takes some getting used to, but Mr. Davies fits in as if he had been with us all along. Of course, Mr. Halvey did have the training of him, which probably accounts for it. Although, I still think the lad is a wee bit young," she added confidingly.
    "Yes, he is rather young, isn't he?" Melanie said, thinking of Fulford, the butler at Terrington Court. He wasn't a day under seventy, while Davies looked scarce into his thirties. One would think that any servant who had worked his way up to butler would have a few decades on him, she thought, then mentally shrugged her shoulders. So long as he did his job and stayed out of her way, she didn't care if he was still in short pants.
    Once they had explored the main floor they went upstairs to the various bedchambers and other rooms. In addition to the suites she and the others were already occupying, there were four sets of rooms, including the master suite, which Mrs. Musgrove explained nervously was always kept locked during the duke's absence.
    "I understand perfectly, Mrs. Musgrove," Melanie assured the older woman with a kind smile. "His Grace has already been more than generous by allowing us the use of his lovely home. Although I must own I am rather surprised he and his wife won't be spending the season in town. They are recently married, are they not?" she asked, recalling a piece of gossip she had learned from Mr. Barrymore.
    "Not quite a year," Mrs. Musgrove said, looking as pleased as if she had arranged the match herself. "But Her Grace is already increasing, you see, and it wouldn't do for her to stay in the city . . . begging your pardon, my lady."
    "Not at all, Mrs. Musgrove," Melanie replied briskly, mentally shaking her head at the foibles of society which dictated an unmarried girl had to be deaf and dumb about even the most basic facts of life. Eager to acquit the housekeeper of any impropriety, she added, "You forget I have spent the past five years traveling with my father, and there is little I do not know of the world. Once one has seen a beggar woman giving birth in the middle of a crowded bazaar, there isn't much left that can shock one."
    "My patience me, did you really see such a sight?" Mrs. Musgrove gasped, torn between shock and fascination. "A gently bred girl like you? Whatever could those heathen devils be thinking of?"
    "The Egyptians are more matter-of-fact about life and death," Melanie replied, pausing to inspect the hand-painted wallpaper. "And in any case, I don't think the poor woman had much say in the matter. The babe would come regardless of where she was, and there was naught we could do but make her as comfortable as we could."
    "
You
helped her?" Mrs. Musgrove's eyes widened in astonishment.
    "There was no one else," Melanie said simply, sobering as she recalled the pitiful woman's terror. "A Moslem woman would die sooner than allow a strange man to touch her, and as she had no female relations to help her, there was nothing else I could do. I could hardly walk away and leave her to die."
    Mrs.