“It’s often made with seaweed,” Sir Richard chimed in.

“Thank you,” replied Liza pointedly just as Hanna was replying equally pointedly, “We weren’t talking to you.”

Across the table, Belloc set his menu down. “Belloc has decided,” he announced. “He will have the lamb avec les Pommes Anna.”

“That’s a kind of layered potato,” whispered Hanna.

“Didn’t ask.”

“Sorry, I’m not psychic.”

From his seat next to Lady Tabitha, Mr Ackroyd gave Hanna a look of solidarity.

“Oh no.” Hanna fixed him with a cold stare, while Liza fixed her with a stare that tried in vain to say “Please don’t start something.” “We’re not going to have a ‘women, amirite?’ moment here.”

Mr Ackroyd tried to look like butter—dulce or otherwise—wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “I said nothing.”

“You didn’t have to say it, Malcom,” Vivien told him. “We all understood what you meant.”

Reverend Lincoln politely cleared his throat. “You know, I think I saw a wren this morning.”

“Really?” Lady Tabitha, clearly able to spot a desperate attempt to change the subject at five hundred paces, turned to him. “Isn’t it rather early in the year for them?”

“I think the cold snap probably caught it by surprise,” ruminated the vicar. “Poor thing must be wondering what happened.”

The colonel wagged a finger in warning. “If a single one of you buggers mentions global bloody warming.”

“It’s called climate change,” muttered Hanna under her breath.

“What was that?” Colonel Coleman had surprisingly good hearing for a man his age.

“Did you know wrens mate for life?” interrupted Lady Tabitha.

The professor turned to a hovering waiter, ordered the duck, and then said: “Isn’t that swans?”

“I thought it was penguins,” said Sir Richard.

Desperate to be part of a conversation that wasn’t about butter sauce—although she did wind up ordering the fish—Liza jumped in. “Actually, that’s a myth. People really like to romanticise penguins, but they actually partner-swap every year.”

Malcom Ackroyd passed his order to a waiter. “Sounds like they’ve got the right idea.”

This earned him a quiet “Must you?” from Vivien and a biting-my-tongue look from Hanna.

Colonel Coleman, on the other hand, wouldn’t have bit his tongue if it was made of bacon. “You,” he told Malcom Ackroyd, “are a bloody rude man, and if I was ten years younger I’d …”

“Oh, you’d what?” Malcom Ackroyd gave him a challenging look. “You’d beat me up? This isn’t the playground, Colonel, or the parade ground. It’s a hotel, and you’re making a prick of yourself.”

The colonel didn’t dignify that with a reply but made a kind of dismissive, grumbling noise.