“Absolutely shattered. We simply couldn’t believe he’d do a thing like that,” Simon agreed. “Then this morning, after a good breakfast, we came to the conclusion that he was just teasing, just pushing buttons. You know Ceddy—he loves to push buttons. So we decided to forgive him after all, and we were going to give him moral support with his architect, but then we couldn’t find him and it was blowing a gale.”

“So we went to work on the play in the ballroom instead,” Julian said. “We thought we’d get that problem scene all smoothed out and surprise him.”

I tried not to let my face show what I was thinking.

“We’d better not keep him waiting a second longer,” Simon said. “You know how he hates to be kept waiting. Off we go then. Fly like Peter Pan.”

And they ran down the stairs. In spite of everything, I had to smile as I climbed the last flight to the nursery. All three of the men were remarkably like Peter Pan, living in a pretend world. But as they said, they had been seriously put out when Cedric announced that he was planning to adopt his valet rather than one of them. Had they really not taken him seriously, or had they decided to stop him?

I tapped on the schoolroom door and went in. The twins were standing beside the table, with Mr. Carter behind them.

“Carefully,” he was saying. “Pour it steadily.”

They looked up in surprise when they saw me.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” I said, “But Her Grace has requested the presence of the children in the library at once.”

“Oh, crikey.” Nicholas glanced at Katherine. “What do you suppose we have done this time?”

“Nothing that I can think of,” she said. “We’ve been silent and invisible, as far as I know.”

“That’s when I’m most suspicious about you,” Mr. Carter said. “So off you go then. You shouldn’t keep your grandmother waiting.”

“But what about our experiment?” Nicholas complained. “Now we’ll never get a chance to finish it.”

“There’s always tomorrow. It can wait,” Mr. Carter said.

“Do you know what this is about, Georgie?” Nick asked. “Are we both in trouble?”

“Nobody’s in trouble, as far as I know,” I said. “Your grandmother wants to talk to the whole family.”

“At least it’s Grandmama and not Uncle Cedric,” Katherine said. “If it was him, we’d know we were in real trouble.”

“By the way,” Nick said, “speaking of trouble, we saw that funny local bobby cycling up the hill toward the house. He was having such a hard time riding in the rain and against the wind. When he was halfway up, his helmet blew off. We had a good laugh, didn’t we, Kat?”

“We did,” she said. “So what was up this time? Somebody tried to poach a deer again?”