“As to the beetle, I wouldn’t know. But you are, aren’t you?”

“Me? How do you mean?”

“I mean that you don’t intend to live your life to please other people’s expectations. Do you?”

That was a lot more direct than he’d expected—but then, she was startlingly direct.

“Your expectations?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” she said, dimpling. “I expect nothing, William. From you or anyone else.” She paused for an instant, and her eyes fixed with his. They were gray now that she wore violet satin, and translucent as rain on a windowpane. “Unless you refer to the modest proposal I made you?”

In spite of the internal struggle going on inside him, he smiled at her reference to Jonathan Swift—though in truth, her own proposal had been nearly as shocking as Swift’s satirical essay advocating infant cannibalism as a remedy for poverty.

“That was what I had in mind, yes.”

“I’m pleased to know that you’re considering it,” she said, and though the dimple had left her cheek, it was plainly audible in her voice.

He opened his mouth to deny that he was doing any such thing—but while he had firmly refused to think about her outrageous suggestion, he was aware that his body had already accomplished its considerations and was making its equally firm conclusions known to him.

He coughed and glanced casually around the room. Papa was talking to the French diplomat and not looking in his direction, thank God.

“Well.” He cleared his throat and folded his hands behind his back. “I don’t know that ‘consideration’ is the right word, precisely—but the matter is irrelevant for the moment. I came this afternoon to see you—”

“Indeed?” She looked pleased.

“In order to tell you that I am leaving in the morning and don’t know how long it may be until I return.”

She ceased looking pleased, and he regretted that, but there was nothing to be done about it.

“Come,” he said, and touched her hand, nodding toward the French doors, open to the garden. “I’ll tell you why.”

She caught his mood at once and gave a slight nod.

“Not together,” she said. “I’ll go first. Go and have a drink, then take your leave through the front door and walk round.”

HE FOUND HER, at length, at the far end of Mrs. Fleury’s enormous garden, contemplating a small grotto, in which a stone putto was urinating on a toad that sat in the middle of a carved stone basin, its round eyes gleaming black beneath the stream.

“It’s a real toad,” she remarked, glancing briefly at him before returning her attention to the amphibian in question. “A Scaphiopus of some kind. They live mostly underground, but they do like water.”

“Obviously,” William said, but he wasn’t letting her distract him, and without ado he told her about the letter Denzell Hunter had sent to Uncle Hal. She went white and pulled her cape tight across her body, as though stricken by a sudden chill.