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She pointed a finger at him. “Don’t you dare call me Grissie, you—you—degenerate! I have no idea what happened between you and Helene Godwin last night, but I can only assume that she sent you packing. And for you to turn from practically panting at the mere mention of her name—because you were, Garret, you know you were—to spreading vile rumors about her is low! Low and unworthy of you!”

“She lied to me,” Mayne forced out, walking to the mantelpiece.

“Wait!” his sister said contemptuously. “Do I hear the sound of violins wailing? So you’ve never lied, is that it? You—who’ve made a name for yourself by sleeping with half the married women in London? You dare reproach a woman for lying?”

Mayne turned around. The injustice of it had occurred to him in the middle of the night, but he hadn’t known that his little sister would agree. “I didn’t know you thought this of me,” he said, lips stiff.

“I love you, Garret,” she said, picking up her gloves in an ecstasy of irritation and slapping them down on the table again. “You know that. I love you more than any other person on this miserable planet. But that doesn’t mean I’m blind to you. You have to marry because you’re becoming more and more a fribble and less of a man of substance. It seems as if you spend all of your time wooing married women, and then when you’ve got them in the palm of your hand, you dance onto the next woman. Why, Garret? Why?”

He stared at her. “I don’t know.”

“Exactly! I think you’re bored. And boredom is making you do shabby things.”

“I—” But what defense did he have, exactly? He felt shabby. He wouldn’t have put that word on it, but he’d had a smutty taste in his mouth ever since he woke up, and a leaden sense in his belly.

“All right, I’ll marry,” he said hollowly, walking over to the fire and sitting down, ignoring the fact that Griselda was still walking around the room like a demented vixen.

“Of course you’ll marry!” she snapped.

“You can just chose someone and I’ll marry her.”

“Not until you’ve solved the mess you’ve made,” she said sharply. “You know I love to gossip, Garret. I’m thought of as a gibble-gabbler, and I am one. But I’m not vicious. Helene Godwin would never have gone to that house of her husband’s, not with a strumpet in residence, unless he forced her to do so. You should have seen that as clearly as I! I’ve no objection to jabbering about a woman—or a man, for that matter—who chooses to blacken his or her reputation by imprudent behavior. But I would never palaver about a woman forced by her husband into detestable action, never!”

Mayne felt really sick now. He’d forgotten his first reaction to hearing that Helene was staying in her husband’s house. “She said—she said he didn’t force her to stay there.”

“You’re a fool! I’ve known Helene for years, and if you didn’t even see the monstrous Puritanical streak in her, what did you see?”

“I don’t know,” Mayne said, pulling his hand through his hair.

“Godwin forced her into that house, and into the presence of his mistress—” Griselda shuddered. “I can’t imagine how humiliating that must have been for her. And you—you break her confidence, and all because she doesn’t choose to join the long line of women who’ve graced your bedsheets!”

Mayne’s teeth were clenched. “You’ve made your point,” he said, hearing a roaring sound in his ears. “You’re right.”

Griselda opened her mouth—and shut it again.

“The point is,” she said after a moment or so, “what are we going to do to change things?”

“There’s nothing that can be done,” Mayne said through bloodless lips. “I’ve ruined her. I could let Godwin kill me in a duel, I suppose.”

“Don’t be a greater fool than you already are!” Griselda snapped. “I may be extremely annoyed with you, but you’re still my brother and I won’t have you shot by that degenerate. This is all his fault, at the base of it! We just need to think. Think!”

Thirty-six

Great Minds, etc.

It is a fact long established about the human race that when a great many fine minds assert themselves to the same task, solutions are found with astonishing rapidity. At some point, a clever group of primitives came up with the wheel; a group of housewives bent on retail therapy discovered that metal disks work for bartering just as well as do chickens; a few fishermen managed to extract Napoleon from lazy exile on Elba.

And so it was.

When Lady Griselda Willoughby was announced at the Godwin residence, Helene looked confused, but Gina, who knew the precedence of every living member of English peerage, said instantly, “That’s Mayne’s sister. Show her in, Leke.”

It was during Griselda’s rather flurried and apologetic entrance that Esme suddenly said, “I’ve got it!”

Griselda instantly dropped her rattled explanation that Mayne was waiting penitently in her carriage, and said “What?”

“I think it will work,” Esme said slowly. “We just need the cooperation of one person.”

“Who?” Gina said breathlessly.