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he was mistaken, that I had come alone to Barton Coombs to visit my mam and dad and was staying here with your permission, and there you were walking down the stairs behind me as bold as brass, in full view from the door, to make a liar out of me.”
    “It is the mark of a good butler,” Vincent said, “that he can lie with a straight face and perfect conviction.”
    “I am not your butler,” Martin reminded him. “And what would you have been even if I were? An optical illusion? You had better come down to the kitchen and have some of the rabbit stew I made and some of Mam’s fresh bread before you go. She loaded me down with enough to feed the five thousand.”
    Vincent got to his feet and sighed—and then laughed again. This morning had been like a well-rehearsed farce and had left him wondering if the village was ringed about twenty-four hours a day with lookouts whose sole task was to give instant notice of the approach of any and all comers. Sir Clarence March had come soon after eleven, all puffed up with his own importance and magnanimity—nothing had changed there in six years. He had left, in some haste, only when a seeming army of ladies had arrived to welcome Vincent home. Miss Waddell had been the spokesperson, but she had named each of the other ladies in a slow, distinct voice and repeated the list after he had invited them all to be seated—just before he remembered the holland covers. But they had been removed, he discovered when he sat down himself. Then, before the ladies could settle into any flow of conversation, the vicar had arrived, though his wife, who was a member of Miss Waddell’s committee, had scolded him before everyone with the reminder that he had
known
the ladies were coming at a quarter past eleven and ought to have waited until at least a quarter to twelve before coming himself.
    “Poor, dear Lord Darleigh will be feeling quite overwhelmed, Joseph,” she had told him.
    “Not at all,” Vincent had assured them, smelling coffee and hearing the rattle of china as Martin carried in a tray. “How delightful it is to receive such a warm welcome.”
    He had been rather glad he had not been able to see the expression on Martin’s face.
    Several minutes later, just as the Reverend Parsons was setting the finishing touches to his windy welcome speech, Mr. Kerry had arrived with elderly Mrs. Kerry, his mother, and the volume of conversation had increased considerably, for she was deaf.
    At the first slight lull in the chatter, perhaps twenty minutes after that, Miss Waddell had delivered her pièce de résistance. There was to be an assembly tomorrow evening, she had announced, in the assembly rooms above the Foaming Tankard Inn, and dear Viscount Darleigh was to be the guest of honor.
    And at last light had dawned in Vincent’s brain. His mother! And his sisters! They had guessed he might come here, and they had probably used a pot of ink apiece writing letters to everyone they knew in Barton Coombs and within a few miles of its outer bounds.
    So much for his few days of quiet relaxation.
    With a smile on his face and thanks on his lips, he had suffered ladies dashing at him from all directions—to pour his coffee, to position his napkin on his lap, to lift his cup and saucer from the tray and set them on the table beside him where he could easily reach them, to set them in his hand a moment later lest he have difficulty finding them on the side table, to choose the best cake from the plate of Mrs. Fisk’s offerings and set it on
his
plate, to set his plate in his other hand, to set his cup and saucer back down on the table so that he would have one hand free to eat his cake—there were some amused titterings over that—to … Well, they would have eaten and drunk for him if they could.
    He had forced himself to remember that their ministrations were kindly meant.
    But
an assembly
?
    A dance?
    And right now, this evening, a private evening visit to the Marches at Barton