“Yes, thank you, Caro,” Charlotte interrupted. “We take your point, assuming you have one. As for you, Patricia, I must insist that you remain at my side and take your cue from my conversations. Honestly, I would have never allowed you to read Vyvyan La Blue’s book if I thought you were going to discuss the relative merits of the Minataur’s Dance versus the Eight Heavenly Gates of Apollo with Lady Jersey! Ridiculously hidebound and old-fashioned though she might be, she is one of the leading ladies of the ton. One does not discuss connubial calisthenics with her!”

Patricia giggled. Charlotte glared at her and mused for a moment on the fact that she might be older by six years only, but she certainly felt decades wiser. “Do not giggle at me, miss! Giggling is for ninnies, and if you continue as you are, you’ll end up like Caro here.” She shook her finger with a stern countenance. God’s elbows, wild as she was, she never was a ninny.

“Char!” Patricia objected, shooting a worried look at Lady Beverly.

Caroline drew herself up to her full height and looked down her nose at her friend. “I am not a ninny.”

“Don’t you ‘Char’ me in that outraged tone,” Charlotte lectured her sister-in-law. “A ninny is as a ninny does, just you remember that! Besides, it is impolite to giggle in public.”

“I have never been a ninny!”

“You said yourself we were alone here,” Patricia said, trying to wipe the smile off her face. “No one can hear us, and I am sorry, but oh, Charlotte, you do make me laugh! Ever since you married Dare you’ve become positively priggish!”

“To be a prig is worse than to be a ninny,” Caroline said darkly.

“Priggish!” Charlotte gasped, her eyes wide with outrage. “I am not in the least bit priggish! I am the most unpriggish woman in existence! Caro, tell her! Tell her that I am dashing and daring and do many things of a nature that is completely opposite that of priggish. Go ahead, Caro, tell her.”

Caroline eyed her friend. “It is a well-known fact that ninnies keep company with prigs, therefore, since you claim I am a ninny, it follows that you are the living embodiment of priggishness.”

“OH!”

“I think it must be the bedding that’s made you this way,” Patricia said thoughtfully. “Vyvyan La Blue says that lengthy and frequent bedding is recommended for shrews and women of a flighty nature since it balances their humors and eliminates their wild ways with the calming influence of motherhood. Although you certainly aren’t a shrew or flighty, you must admit that since you wed Dare, you’ve become very circumspect.”

“Hrmph,” snorted Charlotte, bored to tears with the conversation. She leveled a stern gaze at her friend, who frowned back at her. Then she took her sister-in-law by the arm and headed off down the path past the torch-lit opening to the maze. “You shouldn’t believe everything you read. In fact, I believe you should apologize to me here and now for saying I was priggish. Since your brother has not seen fit to do his manly duty by me, any circumspection I might have is due solely to the fact that your unthinking and careless actions are driving me to an early death.”