“In France, where I stopped on business. I understood your dealings had to do with Duke de Valasco.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Madam,” Julian said with a thin smile, “I never discuss business when I am at work. And this waiting game—this entire affair—is to me, work.”

Lioness nodded, but Matthew saw the shine in her eyes and he thought her animal nature had been aroused. “I understood Duke de Valasco contracted you and the baron to murder his elder brother, and you were rewarded with an item of—shall we say—importance.”

“Importance is in the eye of the beholder.”

“You know what I mean,” said Lioness.

“And I know what’s going on here!” Merda crowed. “The tall lady desires some Prussian cream in her cookpot! Ha! I’d always heard the black skins were—”

He stopped speaking when Lioness came upon him like a whirlwind, grasped the lapels of his jacket and lifted him off the floor with one hand, pulling him up toward the teeth clenched in her otherwise impassive face.

Merda opened his mouth wide.

He reached up to grab hold of the teeth that appeared too large for their aperture. With a pop the entire set of upper dentures and the shiny red roof of his mouth was in his hand, and turning it toward Lioness there was another small click and two small but ugly hooked blades shot out from the device. He held the blades at the level of her eyes, and Matthew saw that the sharp tips were perfectly spaced for the task of turning light into permanent night.

“Temper, temper,” he said, his voice a bit slurred and the real front teeth only tiny pegs beneath the hard wax dentures.

She didn’t let him go at once. She smiled—a hideous grimace—while Montague laughed and clapped like a drunk monkey and Krakowski roused himself from sleep to wonder what the hell was going on.

Matthew found himself thinking that if these two killed each other right now it would be two less to worry about, and then he was horrified at himself because he was becoming too much of a bad man, pretend or otherwise.

Still, it would be beneficial.

“Truce, tall lady?” Merda asked. “It would be a shame.” Whether he meant a shame to blind her or to be shaken like a dog’s bone and thrown into the fireplace he didn’t make clear.

At that moment Miss Mulloy walked into the room with Victor. In a flash Merda’s bootsoles were back on the floor, Lioness had turned away as if nothing had happened and the blades were retracted into the dental device and inserted into Merda’s mouth.

Miss Mulloy lifted her chin, as if actually smelling the aroma of impending violence. “Is there any trouble here?” she asked.

“Just a little show,” Montague replied. “Quite entertaining.”