This plan of escape was foiled, though, by the sudden appearance of his cousin Olivia on the stair above, elegant in amber silk, blond hair gleaming in a lace cap.

“John!” she cried, beaming at sight of him. “There you are! I was so hoping you’d come home in time.”

“In time for what?” he asked, with a sense of foreboding.

“To sing, of course.” She skipped down the stairs and seized him affectionately by the arm. “We’re having a German evening—and you do the lieder so well, Johnny!”

“Flattery will avail you nothing,” he said, smiling despite himself. “I can’t sing; I’m starving. Besides, it’s nearly over, surely?” He nodded at the case clock by the stair, which read a few minutes past eleven. Supper was almost always served at half-past.

“If you’ll sing, I’m sure they’ll wait to hear you. Then you can eat afterward. Aunt Bennie has the most marvelous collation laid on—the biggest steamed pudding I’ve ever seen, with juniper berries, and lamb cutlets with spinach, and a coq au vin, and some absolutely disgusting sausages—for the Germans, you know. . . .”

Grey’s stomach rumbled loudly at this enticing catalog of gustation. He still would have demurred, though, had he not at this moment caught sight of an elderly woman with a swatch of ostrich plume in her tidy wig, through the open double doors of the drawing room.

The crowd erupted in applause, but as though the lady sensed his start of recognition, she turned her head toward the door, and her face lighted with pleasure as she saw him.

“She’s been hoping you’d come,” Olivia murmured behind him.

No help for it. With distinctly mixed feelings, he took Olivia’s arm and led her down as Hector’s mother hastened out of the drawing room to greet him.

“Lady Mumford! Your servant, ma’am.” He smiled and bent over her hand, but she would have none of this formality.

“Nonsense, sweetheart,” she said, in that warm throaty voice that held echoes of her dead son’s. “Come and kiss me properly, there’s a good boy.”

He straightened and obligingly bussed her cheek. She put her hands on his own cheeks and kissed him soundly on the mouth. The embrace did not recall Hector’s kiss to him, thank God, but was sufficiently unnerving for all that.

“You look well, John,” Lady Mumford said, stepping back and giving him a searching look with Hector’s blue eyes. “Tired, though. A great deal to be done, I expect, with the regiment set to move?”

“A good deal,” he agreed, wondering whether all of London knew that the 47th was due to be reposted. Of course, Lady Mumford had spent most of her life close to the regiment; even with husband and son both dead, she maintained a motherly interest.