There was one notable exception. "A village /assembly, /for the love of God!" Elliott Wallace, Viscount Lyngate, was sprawled in his chair an hour before the event was due to begin, one long, booted leg hooked over the arm and swinging impatiently. "Could we have chosen a less auspicious day for our arrival here if we had tried, George?" George Bowen, who was standing before the fire warming his hands, grinned at the coals. "Tripping the light fantastic with a roomful of village maidens is not your idea of fine entertainment?" he asked. "Perhaps it is just what we need, though, to blow away the cobwebs after the long journey." Viscount Lyngate fixed his secretary and friend with a steady gaze. "/We? /The wrong pronoun, my dear fellow," he said. "/You /may feel the need to jig the night away. /I /would prefer a bottle of good wine, if any such commodity is available at this apology for an inn, the fire blazing up the chimney, and an early bed if no more congenial occupation presents itself. A village hop is /not /my idea of a more congenial occupation. In my experience those pastoral idylls one reads in which village maidens are not only numerous but also fair and buxom and rosy-cheeked /and /willing are entirely fictitious and not worth the paper they are written on. You will be dancing with ferret-faced matrons and their plain, simpering daughters, George, be warned. And making lame conversation with a dozen gentlemen with even duller minds than that of Sir Humphrey Dew." That was admittedly a nasty thing to say. Sir Humphrey had been genial and hospitable. And dull. "You will keep to your rooms, then?" George was still grinning. "They might be vibrating to the sounds of fiddles and laughter for half the night, old chap." Viscount Lyngate combed the fingers of one hand through his hair, sighing audibly as he did so. His leg continued to swing. "Even that might be preferable to being led about on display like a performing monkey," he said.