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of grizzled hair, a broken nose, and a mouth like an iron door.
    â€˜Like them paintings you buy over here. Why, they’ll ask six thousand dollars for a picture of some woman with a bird that you could have painted up for two hundred in New York, and the New York one’s brighter, and livens up a room.’
    At that point Cecelia Armistead rustled over – she of the three-million-dollar marriage portion – exclaiming in ecstasies at the beauties of Lord Peasehall’s London house. ‘That beautiful fireplace in the long drawing room … Can you have one made like it, Pa
pa
, for our new house? Pa
pa
–’ she carefully emphasized the second syllable, as if her governess had taught her that this pronunciation was more elegant, exactly as Lydia’s had – ‘has bought the most wonderful house for Noel and me! So ancient! It’s practically a ruin!’ She clasped her hands before her breast in delight at the prospect.
    â€˜I love ruins – don’t you?’ She smiled at Lydia, Spanish-dark eyes in the creamy oval of her face. ‘And there are just
none
in America! When we visited the old priory near Leeds, I begged Daddy – Pa
pa
,’ she corrected herself, ‘to take me back there after dark, so I could see the place by moonlight—’
    â€˜I didn’t bring you three thousand miles to have you catch cold,’ growled Pa
pa
. ‘There wasn’t a moon that night anyway. But –’ he jabbed at her with a finger like a policeman’s truncheon – ‘you say the word, honey, and I’ll send a man to photograph every square inch of that ruin and I’ll build you one just as good at Newport. We’ve got a summer place at Newport,’ he confided to Lydia, as Cece went into further raptures over Emily’s ice-blue satin dress. ‘Cost me a million-eight, but it’s every bit as fine as the Astor place or the Berwinds’.’
    Lydia was given ample opportunity to hear more about the summer place in Newport – and about the London house which Armistead had purchased for his daughter and her affianced husband – throughout dinner, as she had been seated between the American millionaire and his business partner, the equally wealthy and recently knighted Sir Alfred Binney.
    â€˜Meself …
My
self,’ Sir Alfred amended, ‘I’d kiss the doorknocker of a place that only costs twice what you’d pay new to fix it up, like you’re payin’ for Dallaby ’ouse … House. You shoulda seen Wycliffe House ’fore I bought it! Had to be half pulled apart ’fore it could be livable – oil lamps, one bog and not a bathroom in the place – tcha! ’Ere, you, let me have a bit more of that wine, ’fore you takes it away. Bottoms up to the ’appy couple!’
    Across the table, Lydia saw her mother’s old friend Lady Mary – formerly Wycliffe, now Binney – wince.
    â€˜And I’ve ’eard that place in Scotland old Crossford gave Colwich for the weddin’s worse still. Grouse moor or no, the roof’s fallin’ in, the tower’s crumblin’ to bits …’
    Lydia closed her eyes briefly against a pounding headache and an almost uncontrollable desire to brain Sir Alfred with the epergne.
    Across the table, Viscount Colwich, whose
boutonnière
of lily of the valley accorded ill with his massive six-foot frame, listened in glum silence to Cece Armistead’s gushing account of two English ladies who had seen the ghost of Marie Antoinette in the gardens of Versailles. ‘Not simply the ghost, but they were actually
transported
back into the past! When they returned to the place a year later, the paths they recalled were not the same, and both of them identified the woman they had seen – sketching in front of the Petit Trianon – from a drawing of the Queen …’
    Colwich glanced pleadingly down the