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with her, “and would not normally set my cap at him. But I cannot risk being bested by the widowed daughter of a country schoolmaster who may or may not have passed her thirtieth birthday, can I?”
    The two of them walked away, arm in arm.
    Audrey looked at Christine and grimaced. “Oh, dear, the battle lines have been drawn, I’m afraid,” she said. “You surely cannot resist such a challenge now, though, can you, Christine? You simply must win my money back for me.”
    Rowena Siddings slid an arm through Christine’s as they made their way to the drawing room.
    “How ridiculous we
all
are,” she said. “Shall you and I participate in this wager, Mrs. Derrick, or shall we keep our distance and admire the great man from afar?”
    “I believe I shall keep my distance and
laugh
at him from afar if it turns out that he is as pretentious and toplofty as he is reputed to be,” Christine said. “I do not admire greatness that has no substance.”
    “How splendidly brave of you.” The girl smiled. “To
laugh
at the Duke of Bewcastle.”
    Or at herself, Christine thought, to have been drawn into all this secretive, girlish nonsense when all she had had to do was give Melanie a firm no at Hyacinth Cottage the day before yesterday or Audrey a firm no in the sitting room.
    But she had no one but herself to blame, she conceded ruefully.

3
    T HE DRAWING ROOM WAS ALREADY FULL OF GENTLEMEN . The house party, it seemed, had officially begun—which was just as well. It could never end if it did not first begin, could it? Was it too soon, Christine wondered, to start counting the days until she could go home?
    Justin Magnus, Melanie’s younger brother, was the first man she saw. He smiled and waved at her from across the room. Lady Chisholm was talking to him, and Lady Chisholm liked to talk. Christine waved and smiled back. Small—he was half a head shorter than she—and thin and quite unremarkable in appearance, Justin nevertheless had charm and humor and intelligence to recommend him. And he always dressed with exquisite taste and elegance—unlike poor Hector, his elder brother. He had proposed marriage to Christine at that first house party long ago. But after she had refused him, and after she had accepted Oscar instead, they had settled into a friendship that had deepened as time went on until for the last few years before Oscar’s death he had seemed to be her only friend—the only one available, anyway. Her own family had been far away. He was the only one who had never believed the horrible rumors about her—even the last ghastly one. He was the only one who had spoken up in defense of her, though neither Oscar nor Basil and Hermione had ever believed him. He had remained her friend ever since.
    Basil was the next man Christine saw. Of medium stature and slender build, with thinning fair hair and a bald patch at the crown of his head, and with a narrow face and regular, rather than handsome, features, Viscount Elrick had always been cast in the shadow by his younger brother when it came to looks. He had also been more than ten years older. But he had adored Oscar and had been shattered by his death.
    He did not ignore Christine, though she had half expected that he might. He bowed with meticulous formality while she spoke his name and curtsied. And then, like Hermione earlier, he turned away to talk with the elderly gentleman Christine remembered as the Earl of Kitredge. He had not spoken a word to her.
    She went in determined search of the remotest corner of the room. It was time to become the satirical spectator of humanity, a role she intended to play for the next two weeks. If she was fortunate, no one would take any notice of her in all that time.
    Fortunately she reached the corner and settled into a chair there before the Duke of Bewcastle came into the room—she had been dreading seeing him again after that unfortunate incident earlier. But really—what was she dreading? That he would pounce upon