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Muriel turned back.

Lady Chiswick sat straighter. “The thing that unnatural women have been known to straddle.”

Sir Reggie went purple. He coughed violently, sipped his tea, and coughed again.

“A broomstick!” Lady Chiswick threw back her head. “Think on that, gel.”

Muriel stood stock-still. After a moment, she gave herself a shake.

“I will,” she promised. “If I figure out how to make a bicycle fly, you will be the first to know.”

She spun on her heel to the sound of Lady Chiswick’s harrumph.

As she sidled between the tables, she could hear Lady Chiswick address her son, the command resounding.

“You will take Clarinda to Titcombe Hall today.”

Sir Reggie’s protest followed, floating on the air: “I certainly will not. The poor fellow’s parents are due this afternoon. Everything about them makes him savage. He used to open letters from home and straightaway break a window, or torture a cat. Best steer clear until the dust settles.”

Muriel stopped short. Torture a cat? And to think, Griffith had smirked affectionately about fluffy gray Athena!

“Today, Reginald.” Lady Chiswick’s voice snapped like a whip.

Muriel marched on, sparking with indignation. Horrid rake! And horrid lady! Did she truly intend to encourage an attachment between her daughter and a cat-torturing libertine? Had she no soul?

The beau monde was a blight on humanity.

Once she’d exited the dining room, Muriel scoured the hotel grounds for James, who was, in a sense, an emissary from the beau monde, for all he’d been raised in a backwater.

“You have a soul, James,” she said when she found him, sprawled in a caned chaise longue in a shady corner of the walled back garden. “How?”

“Don’t ask me.” James rested his book on his lap. “I’m a brain surgeon. All I know about the soul is that it doesn’t reside in the pineal gland.” He shaded his eyes to gaze up at her. “You’re looking peaky. The fried whiting didn’t agree with you?”

“I didn’t have the fried whiting.” She dropped into a chair and recounted the scene at breakfast.

“My God,” he said when she’d finished. “You might have been burned at the stake.”

“I’m going to burn Griffith at the stake.” She scowled fiercely. “The man tortures cats!”

“You’re on your own there.” James stretched and sat up, turning sideways in the chaise and setting his shoes on the ground. “I’m not burning anyone. I vowed to do no harm.” He brushed a lock of hair from his forehead and sighed. “On top of which, the evidence is unconvincing. Your Sir Reggie was scant on detail.”

She stared. “I don’t need to know the ghoulish particulars. You’re not defending him? What if he broke into your house and swung Fezziwig around by his tail?”

“I’m having a hard time picturing it.”

“He’s a paragon of beauty, that’s why.” She hugged herself, eyes wandering the garden, which was densely planted, flowers clustered between azalea bushes and Himalayan rhododendrons.

Those pale purple stars of clematis—they were the same shade as Griffith’s cravat.

She spoke in a whisper. “A handsome face can conceal unspeakable ugliness.”

“You don’t say,” said James dryly. “To be clear, I can’t picture Griffith holding Fezziwig by the tail, because Fezziwig would cut him to ribbons. That cat is a demon.”

“Oh.” Muriel deflated, pressing her palms to her temples.

“I have no idea what Griffith has done in the past or might be capable of doing. For all I know, he’s another Vlad the Impaler.” James shrugged. “But I always take hearsay with a grain of salt.”

“Very mature.” Muriel let her arms fall. “I always take hearsay with dried kindling and a match.”