Crouch the pirate butler danced around the edges, yelling advice and generally getting in the way. The two dogs sat in a corner and howled. It was when one of the Tremaynes landed a particularly unsporting blow to one of his brothers’ kidneys that Gillian noticed there was an extra person in the melee.

“Who is that gentleman?” she asked Devereaux, who stood with a phalanx of footmen, watching the battle with an unhealthy gleam in his eye.

“Beg pardon, my lady? Ah, that gentleman? The one just there?”

“Yes, Devereaux, the one who is currently lying flat on the floor. The one who is being sat upon by two of the Tremayne triplets, evidently having been knocked unconscious. The very same one who appears to be bleeding profusely from the nose.”

Devereaux scratched his bald little head. “Ah, that gentleman. Well, madam, I’d be hard put to say just who he is. Perhaps Crouch knows. Crouch! Attend her ladyship for a moment.”

“Aye, mistress? Ye be needin’ me?”

Crouch jumped over the thrashing leg of a Tremayne and raised his voice to be heard over their din.

“Yes.” Gillian likewise raised her voice. Really, the noise the three men were making was prodigious. How Noble put up with them was beyond her reasoning. “Piddle! Erp! Cease that howling immediately! Crouch, do you happen to know who that gentleman is?”

Crouch looked around himself in surprise, his earring bobbing wildly. “Gen’leman, m’lady? What gen’leman would that be?”

“That one. There. On the floor. Bleeding on the parquet.”

“’E’s bleedin’ on me bloody parquet?” The roar Crouch gave startled the three Tremaynes into quietude for a moment, but soon one shoved another and a third laughed, and all three were back on the floor, rolling around on each other and the poor unfortunate bleeding man.

“’Ere now! That bloody swine is spillin’ ’is claret all over me floor! Charles! Dickon! Remove the ruddy trasseno!”

“Trasseno?” Gillian spoke Italian, but had not run into that word before. “I don’t believe I’m familiar with that occupation. What exactly is a trasseno?”

“’E is, m’lady. ’E’s a right speeler for all ’e’s a swell.” Crouch watched with satisfaction as two of the footmen picked the gentleman up.

“Oh, I see.” Gillian didn’t see but wasn’t about to let her staff know that she wasn’t current with the latest cant. “Has he speeled on the floor then?”

Crouch’s eyebrows telegraphed wildly as he considered her. “Ye shouldn’t be usin’ such words, m’lady. It ain’t right ye should know about such things. ’Is lordship wouldn’t like it.”

Gillian turned to Devereaux as two of the Tremaynes, having knocked out the third sibling, stood and glared at one another.

“Is speeling an unfortunate occupation, Mr. Devereaux?” she asked.

“Yes, it is, madam. A speeler is an undesirable.”

Gillian was about to inquire after trasseno when Noble appeared from a back room where he had been attending to matters of a personal nature. “What the devil is going on here?”