Lord Breksby fully shared Braddon’s feelings about the return of the Lark. He was spending quite a bit of his time fretting over the unpleasant news that Napoleon hoped to sabotage England’s gift to Selim.

Sophie’s mother, caught up in a whirlwind of new, but not unpleasant, experiences, also wished fervently that her daughter would return to London. Eloise found the house strangely silent without Sophie, even populated as it was by some forty servants. On the other hand, she seemed to bump into George wherever she turned, whereas before her daughter married, she saw him only in the evening.

Somehow her husband wasn’t as interested in ambling off to the club as he used to be. Now that he had breached the sacred portals of his wife’s bedroom … well, it was a good bit of fun to lure his starchy marchioness into an afternoon indiscretion. But George missed his little Sophie, too. It hadn’t occurred to him just how much he counted on her blithe acceptance and love to make him feel less—could it be lonely? Shaking off the thought, George went to find Eloise. Why not bother his wife, even if it was only ten in the morning?

All in all, there was quite a flock of Londoners thinking about the Lark‘s return to port. Down in the district known as the Whitefriars, a sleek and sinuous gentleman was expressing that very wish.

“As soon as Foakes returns,” he said, turning his eyes from the spiders dangling from the dark and lowly rafters above him, “I suggest that we approach him … gently.”

His companion wrestled with his meaning. “Whether we’re gentle or not,” he pointed out, “Foakes hasn’t got the scepter. And now they won’t give it to him till he’s over there, I hear. It’s a shame, that’s what it is. A bloody shame.”

Monsieur Foucault (for so he was known when in London) sighed. He did not know how the information had leaked to the English government about his delicious plan to substitute an exploding scepter for Selim’s ruby scepter, but there was no point in weeping over it. “Clemper has been turned off, and we now have no way to obtain access to the scepter.” His tone was a delicate reprimand. “We must, therefore, obtain our goal through other means. And our goal is to ensure that the English ambassador presents a serious danger to Selim’s coronation.”

“I still think it’s a shame,” said Mole (for so he was known among his intimates). “I had it all set up so beautiful. Clemper was going to substitute the scepter in the flash of an eye.”

Monsieur Foucault sighed again. It pained him as well, since he intended to appropriate a few of the rubies with which the English government was so liberally adorning the scepter.