“I can make you tea and toast, which is almost as good as crumpets, as your wife pointed out.”

“You know how to make things? Georgie—you’re a bloody genius.”

I had to laugh. “I hardly think that tea and toast constitute genius,” I said, “but I have learned a thing or two in the past week. You’ll find a fire going in your bedroom, laid and lit by me.”

I turned to lead the way up the stairs, opening his bedroom door with a flourish.

“How on earth did you manage that?”

“My grandfather showed me how to do it.”

“Your grandfather? He was here?”

“Don’t worry. He wasn’t here. I went to visit him.”

“Out in Essex?” He sounded as if I had made the journey by camel, across the Gobi Desert.

“Binky, contrary to popular belief, people have made it to Essex and back and lived to tell the tale,” I said. I ushered him into his bedroom and waited for him to compliment me on my fire and the sparkling clean state of the place. Being a man, he wasn’t impressed by either, but started to unpack his overnight bag.

“By the way, you had a visitor this morning,” I said. “A most unpleasant fat Frenchman called Gaston something. Extremely arrogant. Where on earth did you meet him?”

Binky’s face had turned pale. “I’ve never actually met him yet. We have only corresponded,” he said, “but he is the reason I have come to London now, in the hopes of sorting things out.”

“Sorting what things out?”

Binky stood there, clutching his pajamas. “I suppose you have a right to know. I haven’t even told Fig yet. I dare not tell Fig. I don’t know how I’ll ever tell Fig, but she’ll have to know eventually.”

“Know what?” I demanded.

He sank to the bed. “That man, Gaston de Mauxville. Apparently he is some kind of professional gambler, and apparently he used to play cards with Father in Monte Carlo. I suppose you’ve guessed that Father wasn’t a very good gambler. Apparently he lost what was left of the family fortune at those tables. And now apparently he lost even more than the family fortune.”

“Would you stop saying ‘apparently,’” I snapped. “If this is all hearsay, I’m not interested.”

“Oh, it’s more than hearsay.” Binky gave a big sigh. “Apparently—no, actually, this bounder de Mauxville claims that Father bet Castle Rannoch in a card game, and lost.”

“Father lost our family home? To that horrible rude, flabby foreigner?” I heard myself screeching in most unladylike tones.

“Apparently.”

“I don’t believe it. The man is a confidence trickster.”

“The man claims he has a watertight document in his possession. He is going to present it to me today.”

“It would never hold up in a British court, Binky.”

“I’m due to see the family solicitors tomorrow, but de Mauxville claims that the document has been witnessed and notarized in France and will stand up in any court in the world.”