"Is she the pasty one with the yellow hair? Or is she the one whose body falls in a straight line from her armpits to her thighs?"

Ridley squirmed in some discomfort. "I believe the Honorable Althea Summers is blond and rather tall and, er, slim," he said.

"Hmm, she is both of those people, then?"

Ridley did not answer.

"Accept the invitation," Eversleigh decided, pushing himself with apparent effort into an upright position again.

"Your Grace?" Ridley stammered.

"James?" The duke's eyebrows rose; his right hand was closing around the handle of his quizzing glass again.

"Yes, your Grace."

Eversleigh walked unhurriedly from the room.

**********************************************************************************

The Tallants had arrived in London, all of them with marked reluctance. Giles was the only favored being who was allowed to ride his horse during the five-hour journey from Roedean. Miss Manford, with a rare display of firmness, had insisted that Henry behave like a lady and ride in the carriage. Her voice. had become quite breathless, her hands had flapped in the air as if she were conducting A particularly rebellious orchestra, and her head had nodded until a veritable shower of hairpins had released wayward strands of mouse-colored hair, but she had won her point.

Henry, dressed in an unfashionable muslin dress of laded green, a rather wrinkled gray cloak, and a brown bonnet that looked as if the parrot had been in the habit of rising it for a perch, sat sullenly in the carriage for the first few miles until a natural ebullience of spirits restored her to cheerfulness.

In fact, it would have been difficult for anyone to remain sullen and dignified for long in that coach. Miss Manford sat demurely except when, every few minutes, she panicked and imagined that some vital possession had been left behind.