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satanic Lieutenant Cambourne down off his mound of bloody skulls.
    He awaited them in the drawing room, dressed with old-fashioned formality: knee breeches and an unadorned tail coat of black silk. That appeared to exhaust his fund of conventional behavior. He barely looked at them, except for a swift, potent glance when Folie opened the door. There was something faintly startled in it, as if he had forgotten they were coming. Without delaying for small talk or an announcement from a servant, he merely made a taut bow and indicated the dining room doors.
    Folie and Melinda exchanged a fleeting glance. Folie could read her stepdaughter’s thoughts. An odd volume, this Lieutenant Cambourne. She started to precede them into the dining room, supposing Mrs. Cambourne must be awaiting her guests there, but to Folie’s surprise, he suddenly walked forward and offered her his arm.
    Folie felt that she must jump out of her skin, but she managed to place her fingers lightly on his sleeve. The dining room was empty as they entered. “Mrs. Cambourne is not to join us?” she asked breathlessly.
    It was something of a relief to hear her own voice. She had not been certain she could force it out of herself.
    “Mrs. Cambourne died over a year ago,” he said to the air in front of him.
    All Folie could hear was her own heart and the swish of her skirt against his leg. She walked with him in a blank daze. She had heard nothing of his wife’s death. It seemed impossible, as impossible as the fact that she walked with her hand touching his arm.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, and had no idea if it had emerged as a whisper or as a steady sentence.
    He lifted his eyebrow as he looked down at her, rather as if he were inspecting something that did not quite impress him. His height accentuated the air of aloof inquiry; he was quite tall, elegantly proportioned.
    He gave a brief nod, saying nothing. His black hair, a little sun-burnished, a little too long, curled over his neckcloth in a disorderly way. He brushed it back from his ear with open fingers.
    “Our rooms are wonderfully comfortable,” she said, vexed to feel her heartbeat tremble in her voice.
    “I’m pleased to hear it,” he said, without a trace of pleasure. “My father had the place fitted out sight unseen by correspondence from Calcutta. No one has lived here since.”
    “I see!” Folie murmured, trying to appear perfectly nonchalant about the four huge white dragons that adorned the corners of the dining room ceiling, their barbed tails hanging down to coil about the wainscoting.
    Melinda followed them into the dining room. She gave a faint gasp. “It is—marvelous! I’ve never seen anything quite like.”
    “They tell me the carpenter was mad,” Lieutenant Cambourne said dryly, holding Folie’s chair at the middle of the long table. “I’m quite certain he went mad in the process, at any rate.”
    “But you have something so unique here—” Melinda took the chair across from Folie, seated by the same young butler who had greeted them. “It must surely captivate all your party guests.”
    He left that hopeful gambit untouched, turning to nod at Lander, who began to pour wine.
    “Yes,” Melinda said gaily, looking up at the looming dragons. “We should give them all names, and make the guests conjecture.”
    Lieutenant Cambourne did not veto this notion, although he did not approve it either. He looked briefly at Folie and then down at his wine glass. It was his skin, darkened in a lifetime of tropical sun, that made his eyes seem so light and strange, she thought. And his black lashes, as extravagantly long and thick as a woman’s, under black eyebrows that were straight and severe and entirely masculine.
    “I’ll take that one,” Melinda said, lifting her hand toward one corner of the room. “I shall christen him...mmmmm...Xerxes! That sounds grand. Now you, Mama.”
    As the butler spooned clear soup into her bowl, Folie tilted her head to address the