She paused and looked up as Cedric came into the room.

“You’re late again, Cedric,” she said.

“Since it is I who now should set the time for meals in my own house, I might say that you are early, Mother,” he said. “But in fact I am too wound up after last night’s triumph to think of joining the bean-feast. I’ve told Mrs. Broad that we’ll have sandwiches and a bottle of bubbly in my study.” He looked around the table. “And I don’t see what those brats are doing here again. I’ve made it clear that I have no wish to see my sister’s offspring more than once a day. A nursery is the place for children.”

“They are learning manners, Cedric. A skill in which I clearly failed lamentably in your upbringing.”

Cedric snorted, went to stride from the room, then spun around again and said, “I only came in to tell you that I’ve received a telephone call from our solicitor. The ship is scheduled to dock in Southampton tomorrow. He will escort the boy up to London for a briefing and plans to bring him down here at the weekend.”

“Cedric!” Edwina said in horror. “How many times have I told you that I find that common Americanism deplorable. People of our class do not have ‘weekends,’ because we do not need to take two days off from our weekly toil. We’ll have Nicholas and Katherine using it next.”

“Since they will obviously have to work for their living, they had better get used to it,” Cedric said.

“I’m sorry. Which boy is he talking about?” Irene asked.

“I assumed you’d all heard the rumors,” Cedric said. “Our dear mother has sent out her spies and managed to dig up a possible heir for me. A young man from Australia, who is supposedly Johnnie’s legal child. Naturally, I am employing my own agents to have all of his credentials checked and double checked. But he is being brought from Australia as we speak and will be in this house by—by the end of the week.”

“And I hope you will all do your best to make him feel welcome,” Edwina said. “In spite of what Cedric says, we have to accept that this boy is indubitably Johnnie’s son, and thus the rightful heir. He comes straight from a sheep farm in the wilds of Australia and will be overawed by the grandeur of this place. It is up to us to groom him to take over the dukedom someday.”

“Someday in the distant future, we hope,” Cedric said. “I’m not intending to pop off yet, Mother. And who knows what changes may occur in the next forty years.”

With that, he made a dramatic exit from the dining room.

Chapter 7

KINGSDOWNE PLACE

“What did I tell you?” Princess Charlotte wagged a finger at Cedric’s departing figure. “The spirits never lie. A stranger who means danger. That’s what they said, and that same night I dreamed of a cuckoo. A cuckoo sitting on the top of the roof, cuckooing away like mad. And someone in the house called, ‘Somebody make it stop, for God’s sake. It’s driving me insane. I’ll pay you to get rid of it.’”