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Lady Marchfield set her cup down and said, “If you knew what I was thinking on that score, Winsome, it would send a chill down your spine.”

Serenity stared at Lady Marchfield, wide-eyed. Valor cried, “It’s going to be scary!”

“What will be scary, young miss,” Lady Marchfield said gravely, “is if you have the audacity to write one more letter to a gentleman of the ton . I advise you do not try it or you will never wed—society has a very long memory.”

“I’m never getting married anyway! It’s terrible!” Valor wept into Mrs. Wendover’s limp body.

Nelson, seeming to come to his own conclusions regarding the tone of the room, staggered up on his three legs, nipped a biscuit off the tea tray, and loped out to have it elsewhere.

“I hope you are all satisfied to have come to such a pass,” Lady Marchfield said.

The last thing Serenity could claim to feel was satisfied. It felt as if all her hopes were crumbling like sand through her fingers. She felt like she could weep for a hundred years, though little good it would do her. Little good it had ever done her.

*

Mrs. Right had very sensibly taken herself to her quarters upon the arrival of Lady Marchfield.

As she was the senior-most servant in the house, aside from the odd butler coming and going, she enjoyed a large bedchamber and a generous sitting room attached.

Both rooms had a view of the back garden, and both had cheery little fireplaces.

There was even a very small and narrow dressing room.

Though it was not as large as her accommodations in the Dales, she’d always been well satisfied with her quarters in Town.

Just now, though, she paced those quarters. At least Lady Marchfield had not arrived with the bishop in tow, though that might be next.

But what was a poor housekeeper to do when faced with an unwanted butler? It was not as if she’d had any choice. After all, the duke had made clear that he did not wish for a butler. If she was not to rid the place of him, then who would?

There was always the idea that the duke could order Mr. Cremble out of the house, just as he could have with the others who had come and gone.

But Mrs. Right knew the duke better than anybody.

He would never be satisfied with that idea, as he liked the game of seeing how they would be driven out.

He’d been all his life in a cat and mouse game with his sister.

He liked to be amused and there was not much amusement to be had in simply ordering them out.

So there it was. She’d had no choice but to convince the pious butler that she was in league with the devil. Anybody would have done the same.

Mrs. Right heard a firm rap on her door and went to answer it, presuming it was one of the maids come to tell her that Lady Marchfield had departed. She opened the door and was accosted by a heavy cross waving in her face.

“Hah!” Mr. Cremble cried. “Are your eyes burning?”

“Mr. Cremble!” she said, fighting him off, “what on earth are you doing in the women’s quarters?”

Mr. Cremble stepped back, still waving the cross as if it afforded him protection.

“I came to give you my final adieu, you diabolical woman. Lord Marchfield is to give me a living and I am leaving this godforsaken house forever! And guess what? Guess what, Mrs. Wrong? That’s right, I called you Mrs. Wrong instead of Mrs. Right, which I thought up days ago!

Guess what? Lady Marchfield is going to the bishop about you.

What do you suppose that great and pious man will make of a wicked housekeeper causing havoc in the town he is sworn to protect from evil forces?

Maybe he’ll bring back burning at the stake! Au revoir!”

With that, Mr. Cremble picked up his travel case and fairly skipped down the corridor.

Lady Marchfield was going to the bishop. The very stern and conservative Bishop Porteus.

Well that was a fine kettle of fish.

*

The following day did not dawn bright, but it was not raining either.

It was a rather foggy sort of day and Serenity was wracked with all sorts of thoughts.

She and Lord Thorpe had not discussed the efficacy of dog walking in the fog.

And then, what if the weather was no matter anyway after Valor’s ill-conceived letter outlining her outrageous demands?

She must go and find out, whatever it was to be. Lord Thorpe would either turn up or not turn up. But if he did not turn up, how was she to be certain of the cause? Perhaps he would not turn up because he thought she would not turn up in foggy weather.

Serenity had been teary-eyed all morning, her thoughts wildly swinging between imagining the best and fearing the worst. Her dear father had, of course, noticed her distress at breakfast.

“What’s setting you off,” he’d asked. “It cannot be the sunrise, as its as foggy as an old man’s mind out there. Fog doesn’t set you off, now?”

“No, Papa.”

“You cannot be still brooding over Valor’s letter,” the duke said, “no sensible man in receipt of such nonsense will take it seriously.”

“I wish somebody told me that to begin,” Valor said.

“We all wish that, Valor,” Winsome said.

“Regret is a very usual thing, as I understand it, Valor,” Verity said.

“Papa, our aunt was very decided about it yesterday,” Serenity said. “She said he is a marquess and will be a duke someday, and will expect his future duchess to be a credit to him.”

“Oh, let me guess,” the duke said, “Lady Misery imagines a duke must be all dignity and restraint, and wish the same from his duchess.”

“Well, yes, I think that is what she meant.”

“ I’m a duke,” her father pointed out. “When was the last time you caught me worrying over dignity or restraining myself in any fashion?”

None of them answered that, as they could not say.

“Never mind what Lady Misery thinks about it. She’s taken that latest butler out of the house which is the most useful thing she’s done in years.

I count on Mrs. Right to tell me how it all came about and am prepared to be amused!

Now, at eleven you’ll take Nelson for a walk.

I’ll venture you’ll find Thorpe at the gate into the square.

Valor will make a heartfelt apology, and then Winsome will escort her back into the house as she’s done enough for one season. All squared away.”

“What am I to say, though?” Valor asked. “Should I pretend to be very sorry?”

“You should in fact be very sorry, Valor,” Winsome said in a scolding tone.

“Well, I am when you talk like that to me,” Valor said, crumbling her toast.

“Say you are sorry, it was a fit of pique due to your youth, and you have been punished by foregoing dessert for a week,” the duke said. “That ought to do it.”

“I’m not to have dessert? For a week?” Valor asked, in the panicked tone that can only come from a young person watching cakes and trifles slip out of their reach.

“No, no,” the duke said. “Just say it—it will make Lord Thorpe feel better.”

“You should tell the vicar about the making people feel better part,” Valor said. “He says you can never lie, but I said you could do it to make people feel better. Like how I tell Winsome her hair looks great, even when it doesn’t. He said I am too defiant and should repent of it. I said no.”

“What about my hair?” Winsome asked.

“It usually looks all right,” Valor muttered, “but then sometimes it doesn’t, and what’s the use in saying?”

The breakfast had gone on in such a manner, as the Nicolet household’s breakfasts usually did—wide-ranging debates from one subject to the next.

And now the hour approached eleven and they stood in the hall ready to don their pelisses and bonnets while Nelson pulled on his leash. They would proceed out and Valor would apologize and they would walk. If he was there.

If he was not there, Serenity was counting on the fog to hide her stupid weeping.

The clock chimed. “Come now, love,” Mrs. Right said. “As your father would say, let’s get this circus going.”

They proceeded out with Valor trudging behind them. It really was a heavy fog, the warmer air that had descended on London taking advantage of what was left of the snow on the ground to cast up a blanket of grey.

Serenity squinted in the direction of the gate, but though squinting might work in sunshine it did nothing in the fog. She walked closer and saw the outline of a man. Her heart beat faster and she hurried forward.

Then she stopped short. She could not see the man’s face yet, but the build was not right and the dog certainly was not right. It was not the great beast Havoc, but a much smaller dog.