Vaughn regarded a series of carved panels with distaste. The repetition of Tudor roses had undoubtedly been intended as a heavy-handed compliment to the monarch. The tapestries were even worse than the paneling, lugubrious depictions of the darker moments of the Old Testament, enlivened only by a rather buxom Eve, who seemed to be juggling her apples rather than eating them.

Sibley Court had slumbered among its memories and dust motes since the death of the current Viscount Pinchingdale's father and had only just been hastily opened for the accommodation of the viscount and his new bride. Vaughn had no doubt that the new viscountess would soon have the ancient flagstones gleaming. She was the managing sort. So far, she had already managed her guests through supper, a game of hunt the slipper, and an abortive attempt at blindman's buff that had come to an abrupt halt when the hoodsman, one Mr. Miles Dorrington, had blundered into a suit of armor under the delusion that it might be his wife, bringing the entire edifice crashing down and nearly decapitating the dowager Lady Pinchingdale in the process.

Undaunted by her brush with death, the dowager Lady Pinchingdale and her newest relation by marriage, Mrs. Alsworthy, appeared bent on engaging in Britain's Silliest Matron contest. So far, the dowager Lady Pinchingdale was ahead four swoons to three. The only one of the lot who seemed to have two brain cells to rub together was the long-suffering Mr. Alsworthy. He had proved his intelligence by promptly disappearing just after their arrival.

Between the dowager and his fellow guests, Vaughn was considering a spot of decapitation himself. Starting with his own head. It was beginning to ache damnably from the combination of inferior claret and worse conversation.

Nursery parties — for that was what the gathering at Sibley Court felt like — weren't usually in Vaughn's line.