Mary let out a huge sigh as she sat upon the small settee provided for those fatigued from dancing.

“A crocodile?” Michael asked. “You’ve been wielding your pen far too artfully in my serial for The Morning Post.”

“You asked me to write the serial for you,” she pointed out.

“Yes, because I didn’t have the time to do it. Not because I wished someone to fabricate ridiculous stories. When I first arrived in town, I thought people were beginning to warm to true scientific discovery. Now I see that they were merely amazed at the preposterous tales you’ve told about my expeditions.”

“People are interested in your research. Just last week, Lord Harken-Styles said he wishes to invest even more in your adventures.”

“Lord Harken-Styles waylaid me in White’s last night and asked if he could see the arrowhead from the savage who shot me through the neck.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. His lordship seemed to be under the delusion that not only had I been shot through the neck with an arrow, but that I was such a sapskull as to wear the arrowhead around my neck as a good luck talisman.”

Her lips twitched. “I thought that was a very romantic touch.”

“And thoroughly untruthful,” he replied sternly. “Are there any other surprise adventures that I should know about? A duel over a foreign princess in the desert? A missing limb? An extra toe?”

She giggled. “It is all your fault, you know. You are such a horrid correspondent that I was forced to make up things.”

A commotion suddenly roiled across the ballroom.

“What is it?” Mary asked, who could see very little since she was sitting.

“I don’t know. Everyone has turned toward the door and—Ah! Jane has arrived.”

Jane Smythe-Haughton had been his assistant for almost four years now, and he almost couldn’t remember his life before she’d swept in and begun arranging his expeditions. Things were infinitely better with her around. His meals were more to his liking, his clothes where they should be, his pen nibs sharpened just so, and his scientific equipment always at the ready. She was extraordinarily efficient and, except for a very few times, he rarely had to think about her at all—exactly as he liked it.

Mary lifted her brows archly. “So you call her Jane, do you?”

“Of course I call her Jane,” he said impatiently, disliking the interested note in his sister’s voice. “My tongue would be weary if I had to say Miss Smythe-Haughton every time I needed a fresh pair of socks or couldn’t find one of my notebooks.”

He could see Jane standing on her tiptoes by the door now, looking about the room for him.

He lifted his arm and let out a shrill whistle.

Everyone looked startled except Jane, who began to make her way through the sea of people, her large hat making her look like a wide, yellow lily pad swimming across a pond of reeds.

Michael frowned as he saw that his sister was holding her hand over her eyes. “What’s wrong? Do you have a headache?”