“I know it’s a gentlemen’s club,” I said calmly. “I am Lady Georgiana Rannoch and I telephoned a few minutes ago. I need to know immediately whether my brother, the duke, is on the club premises. If he is, I wish to speak to him on a matter of great urgency.”

I was doing quite a good imitation of my esteemed great-grandmother—the Empress of India, not the one who had sold fish in the East End, although I gather she had a commanding presence and was also good at getting her own way.

The hall porter quivered but did not budge. “It is against club policy to reveal which members are in residence, m’lady. If you care to write His Grace a message I will see that it is delivered to him, should he appear in the club at any time.”

I stared at the porter, wondering what would happen if I pushed past him and took a quick look at the guest book. He was definitely smaller and frailer than I. Then I decided that such unforgivably boorish behavior would get back to HM within the hour and by the end of the week I’d be a lady-in-waiting in deepest Gloucestershire. I wrote my note to Binky and sensed the smug look on the hall porter’s face as he took it from me.

Now I had no idea what to do next. Really it was too bad of Binky to have vanished into thin air at a moment like this. I stood at the edge of Green Park, feeling warm spring sunshine on me, watching nannies pushing their little charges for an outing in the fresh air, and found it hard to believe that all around me life was going on as normal. It came to me that I had never been truly alone in my life before. A feeling of utter desolation swept over me. I was alone, unprotected, abandoned in the big city. To my horror I felt tears welling up in my eyes. What on earth had made me bolt to London without any sensible preparations? If only I’d stayed in Scotland, I’d never have found myself in this mess. I had the strongest urge to pack my bags and catch the next train home—which, of course, I realized was exactly what Binky must have done. It’s that built-in homing instinct common to generations of Rannochs who crawled back to Castle Rannoch, wounded and exhausted after the latest skirmish against the English/Vikings/Danes/ Romans/Picts or whomever they were fighting at the time. I was now absolutely sure that Binky had gone home, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Even if he had fled on discovering the body, he would be on a Scotland-bound train for hours yet, and then he’d have to make his way to Glenrannoch, which meant he probably wouldn’t arrive home until sometime tonight.