Percy strode over and waited until they had made themselves known to Lady Llewellyn. After they had done so, he said, “Your Grace, Lady Felicity.”
“Fast off the mark, eh, Stratton?” the duke said.
Percy only smiled, as he had no intention of confirming or denying that he’d been waiting particularly.
“My father means to say, how fortuitous that we should so speedily encounter someone we know,” Lady Felicity said.
“By the by, Stratton, have you laid eyes on Lady Misery?”
“I presume you mean me to understand Lady Marchfield?” Percy said. He was not about to start referring to the lady by that name, though it was rather apt at the moment. “I have indeed, Your Grace, she is inside the ballroom I believe.”
“Hah! Well do I have a few things to tell her! Our butler has run off, for one. Take Felicity to drop her cloak and pick up her card, if you will.”
With that, the duke turned and hurried away, fast after his quarry.
“Oh dear,” Lady Felicity said softly.
“Are you fearful, Lady Felicity?” Percy asked, thinking it was not very like her. “I assure you I can be trusted to escort you to the cloakroom.”
“No, no, it is not that. I would hardly be fearful of a gentleman at a ball. It is just that my father is on the verge of sending my aunt into a right temper…when she hears all.”
They began to walk down the corridor. Percy said, “Would it be too bold to inquire into what ‘all’ is?”
Lady Felicity nodded, which Percy was not sure meant he was too bold, or he was not.
She said, “We all drove Mr. Sykes-Wycliff from the house, I’m afraid. My father does not even know the extent of it.”
Percy raised his brows. “How does one drive a butler from the house, exactly?”
“Oh, you know, the usual gambits,” she said. “We mentioned my father knocks on people’s doors in the middle of the night and then clobbers whoever answers. That sort of thing.”
“Doeshe do that?”
“Goodness no, he is a very sound sleeper. Well, he snores and sometimes shouts, but he never gets up and walks around.”
Percy was relieved to hear it, though he could well see how Mr. Sykes-Wycliff had believed the duke was cruising the corridors at night and tapping on doors. It sounded like just the sort of thing the Duke of Pelham would get up to.
“Well, I suppose Lady Marchfield cannot stay too distraught that you have lost your butler,” he said. “She’s still got her own butler, presumably.”
“That is not all, though. After she hears of that she will be told of my father’s visit to Lady Albright’s house. We were just there.”
“Returning to the scene of that debacle? I am determined never to set foot in that house again.”
“Yes, well you see, Lady Albright sent my father a bill because I stained her sofa with blood. Your blood of course.”
“Ah yes, mine. You were very good to risk your dress on my account.”
“You were very good to throw my India shawl into the cage to lure the tiger back into it.”
“It was nothing at all.”
“You have healed, then?”
“Right as rain,” Percy said, though that was not precisely the truth. “But I say, how very forward of Lady Albright to send a bill, considering her part in it.”
“Yes, that is what I thought! My father did not take kindly to it at all.”
Percy stopped in his tracks. “My god, he hasn’t gone and let the tiger out as some sort of ill-advised retribution?”
