“Are you going to tell me, or just sit there stuttering and turning fifteen shades of red?” Charlotte asked, eyeing her friend with lips pursed in the manner of an elderly spinster aunt whom she once shocked by asking whether it was true that babies came from a giant pumpkin patch.

“A dinky,” Caroline gasped, mopping at her eyes with her lace-edged handkerchief. “Mrs. Robbins had a cucumber shaped just like a dinky. It really was most life…life…lifelike.”

Charlotte watched as her friend dissolved into a paroxysm of laughter, well aware that there really was no one else she could call friend, and thus she had to wait out Caroline’s cucumbral episode. She’d give Caro thirty seconds to snap out of it; then she’d take steps to sober her friend up. Water dashed in the face, she believed, had long been a solution to calming a hysterical woman.

Luckily for Caroline, such a drastic step was not needed. Under Charlotte’s gimlet eye, she regained control over herself, with only occasional snickers and odd little snorts that required a quick dab of the handkerchief to the eye.

“At last! Honestly, Caro, I’d lecture you on the ridiculousness of your action, but I suspect if I were to mention cucumber again, you’d be off in another bout of ninnified giggles.”

The hated “ninny” word had the effect she’d anticipated. Caroline sat up straight in her chair and glared at her friend. “I am not a ninny!”

There were many ways Charlotte could answer such a statement; surprisingly enough, wisdom gained over the last few months guided her to taking the path that would cause the least offense. “No, you’re not. You’re a very dear girl who just has a silly side that in any other circumstances I’d appreciate more fully, not to mention be likely to join, but unfortunately, today I am not in a silly mood.”

Caroline sobered immediately under both the unexpected kindness of Charlotte’s statement and the implication of her words. “What’s wrong? Is Mr. McGregor worse?”

“Quite the opposite. When I left home, he was at work on his engine with Batsfoam, Wills, Cook, and the two footmen in attendance. He seems to have regained his will to live, for which I am profoundly thankful.”

“Then why are you not in the mood to be silly? I’ve known you since we were little girls, Char, and you’re always in a mood to be silly, whether you admit it or not. For you to be so serious indicates something most horrid is afoot, and yet you tell me your husband has regained his senses…I’m confused!”

Charlotte gave in to the pout that had been hovering over her lips, dismissing the knowledge that pouting encouraged spots. If anyone deserved a good pout, it was her. “It’s this tedious business with the Pretender. I had hoped it would all be cleared up by the time Dare was up and working again, but it hasn’t. His solicitors are positively useless—I swear they’re in the pay of the Pretender—and even Crouch has been unable to prove that the man is not who he claims he is. No one but I seems to realize just how important it is that the matter be cleared up. Without Dare’s title, all his potential investors—his peers—will wish to have nothing to do with him. Mr. McGregor of Cairn Isle off the coast of Scotland may be a gentleman, but he does not carry the clout or importance that the Earl of Carlisle must surely command.”