“Met your cousin the other day, by the bye,” he remarked, wriggling his substantial buttocks deeply into the chair. “Out ridin’ in the Row—handsome girl. Nice seat,” he added judiciously.

“Indeed. Which cousin would that be?” Grey asked, with a small sinking feeling. He had several female cousins, but only two whom Stubbs might conceivably admire, and the way this day was going . . .

“The Pearsall girl,” Stubbs said cheerfully, confirming Grey’s presentiment. “Olivia? That the name? I say, isn’t she engaged to that chap Trevelyan? Thought I saw him just now in the dining room.”

“You did,” Grey said shortly, not anxious to speak about the Honorable Joseph at the moment. Once started on a conversational gambit, though, Stubbs was as difficult to deflect from his course as a twenty-pounder on a downhill slope, and Grey was obliged to hear a great deal regarding Trevelyan’s activities and social prominence—things of which he was only too well aware.

“Any news from India?” he asked finally, in desperation.

This gambit worked; most of London was aware that Robert Clive was snapping at the Nawab of Bengal’s heels, but Stubbs had a brother in the 46th Foot, presently besieging Calcutta with Clive, and was thus in a position to share any number of grisly details that had not yet made the pages of the newspaper.

“. . . so many British prisoners packed into the space, my brother said, that when they dropped from the heat, there was no place to put the bodies; those left alive were obliged to trample on the fallen underfoot. He said”—Stubbs looked round, lowering his voice slightly—“some poor chaps had gone mad from the thirst. Drank the blood. When one of the fellows died, I mean. They’d slit the throat, the wrists, drain the body, then let it fall. Bryce said they could scarce put a name to half the dead when they pulled them out of that place, and—”

“Think we’re bound there, too?” Grey interrupted, draining his glass and beckoning for another pair of drinks, in the faint hope of preserving some vestige of his appetite for luncheon.

“Dunno. Maybe—though I heard a bit of gossip last week, sounded rather as though it might be the Americas.” Stubbs shook his head, frowning. “Can’t say as there’s much to choose between a Hindoo and a Mohawk—howling brutes, the lot—but there’s the hell of a lot better chance of distinguishing oneself in India, you ask me.”

“If you survive the heat, the insects, the poisonous serpents, and the dysentery, yes,” Grey said. He closed his eyes in momentary bliss, savoring the balmy touch of English June that drifted through the open window.