That is settled, then. And I must be off to study hall. With the way this day is progressing, the chances are strong that a few desks will be chopped into kindling or some sort of titanic battle will be proceeding if I do not get there soon.” Claudia sat down behind her desk after Eleanor had left, and folded up Susanna’s letter. What a very strange day! It seemed to have been at least forty-eight hours long. What on earth was she going to talk about during all the hours of the journey to London? And how was she to keep Flora from prattling and Edna from giggling? She wished fervently that the Marquess of Attingsborough were at least sixty years old and looked like a toad. Perhaps then she would not feel quite so intimidated by him. Though the very use of that word in her mind made her bristle all over again. Intimidated? She? By a mere man? By a marquess? Heir to a dukedom? She would not give him the satisfaction, she thought indignantly, just as if he had expressed the overt wish of seeing her grovel in servile humility at his feet.

2

“You will keep in mind what we have spoken of,” the Duke of Anburey said as he shook hands with his son, Joseph, Marquess of Attingsborough. It was not a question. “Of course he will, Webster,” the duchess said as she hugged and kissed her son. They had breakfasted early at the house on the Royal Crescent where the duke and duchess had taken up residence during their stay in Bath. Concern for his father’s health—and, admittedly, a direct summons—had brought Joseph here just a week ago in the middle of the spring Season. His father had caught a chill during the winter and had been unable to shake it off completely by the time he should have been returning to town to participate in the business of the House of Lords. He had remained at home instead and then given in to the persuasions of his wife to give the waters a try, even though he had always spoken w ith contempt of Bath and the people who went there to bathe in the waters and imbibe them for the sake of their health.