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noticed Penfel’s eyebrows rise with interest as he studied Annabelle. He did not laugh at her; she sensed he was just interested in originals of any sort.
    It was Kate who laughed. “Lady Penfel meant Grimaldi, Belle,”she explained.
    “Oh. Who is Grimaldi?”
    “He was a clown,”Lord John explained.
    Lady Penfel went chattering toward the dining room. “I loathe all that precedence stuff and nonsense, wondering whether a duke’s eldest son precedes an earl, and a duke’s daughter a baroness. As to bishops! What a problem they are, so sensitive of their honors. A batch of schoolgirls will not care about all that stuff.”
    Lady Susan apparently cared. The duke’s daughter glided forward and attached herself like a limpet to Penfel’s arm for the trip along the corridor and around the corner to the table. Lord John latched on to Kate. Singleton’s spectacles glinted in Abbie’s direction. She pushed Annabelle forward and walked in last with Lady Penfel. Without waiting to be asked, Lady Susan took the place of honor at her host’s right hand. By some silent ocular message, she indicated to Kate that she was to sit at Penfel’s left hand. Lord John quickly took the seat beside Kate, and the others found places around the board, with their hostess at the foot of the table. Abbie sat beside Mr. Singleton, with Lady Penfel at her right hand.
    The dinner table was not the opulent display Abbie had half feared and half hoped. In fact, the dining room was not at all grand, but a cozy room with an unfashionable hearth and a table that seated eight comfortably, and with squeezing might have accommodated ten. A simple bouquet of wildflowers formed the centerpiece. The array of knives and forks was only moderate, as was the meal. The simplicity of the arrangement was soon explained.
    “Do you usually take dinner in the morning parlor, cousin?”Lady Susan asked Penfel.
    “I didn’t know Algie was coming,”his mama replied from the foot of the table, making clear she did not consider the ladies alone enough reason to set up the grander dining room. “If I had known you were coming, Algie, I would have had a better dinner. For school chits, you know, it did not seem worthwhile ordering the fatted calf. We have just got our Metcalfe relatives blasted off. They were here for two weeks, and you know how they like to eat! You were not here to shoot any game for us. The chickens are decimated. Johnnie has put on a couple of pounds, and I feel like a Strasbourg goose myself. Cook did us proud. She deserves a rest.”
    Lady Penfel had met her match in outspokenness. “The dinner is not so bad as to require an apology, cousin,”Lady Susan said. “At school, we are always served only one course and one remove. I have eaten even tougher mutton than this at Miss Slatkin’s.”
    “And at Wycliffe, if memory serves. Your mama sets a dreadful table.”She shook her head and gave a tsk. “Poor Nettie. But then she was never trained to be a duchess. Such a wretched chore for her, trying to run a house the size of Wycliffe. It only encourages hangers-on, having a place the size of a hotel. For myself, I find fifty bedchambers sufficient.”
    “Really?”Susan said, surprised. “For small house parties, I daresay you manage. A duke, of course, entertains on a grand scale. Papa spoke of adding a wing after King George and Queen Charlotte stayed with us one autumn. We had a deal of other company—it was at the time of my brother, Lord Godfel’s, marriage to Lady Sylvia Trane. Her papa is also a duke—a very suitable match in every way. Godfel, of course, is Papa’s eldest son. Their majesties brought several of their children and fourteen servants, and stayed a month.”
    “Royal servants are more trouble than their masters,”Lady Penfel scolded. “I did not find old Farmer George any trouble at all. He was as easily amused as a child, but those ladies-in-waiting! They were as proud as peacocks. Farmer George was a great