“Yes. That’s why I’m here. For shooting. I like it.” Pat felt ludicrously wooden next to this bundle of excitability.

“But isn’t it terribly loud? All the bangs, and walking for miles, and the mud—not that you need to worry about mud in this weather of course—but the poor birds. To think of those treetops full of empty nests, the babies cheeping for their mothers—”

“Partridges nest on the ground,” Pat felt compelled to observe. “And it’s illegal to shoot in breeding season. And the chicks leave the nest within hours of hatching anyway.”

“Oh. Oh, well, that’s better, isn’t it?”

“Uh, probably.” Miss Carruth seemed to have a great deal of enthusiasm, but less behind the sparkling eyes than one might have hoped. Pat, who liked silence, couldn’t help a sinking feeling at the idea of three weeks of social fluttering. “If you’re asking about the morality of shooting animals, Miss Singh might be the right woman for the conversation. I’m very happy to hunt, and to eat what I kill.”

“Oh, I adore partridge,” Miss Carruth assured her. “Daddy’s cook does the breasts with a delicious cream and mushroom sauce.”

“Well, someone has to shoot those partridges before the sauce goes on, and I see no reason it shouldn’t be me.” Pat sounded a little aggressive in her own ears, but Miss Carruth let out a chirp of laughter.

“But imagine if they didn’t. Partridges strutting all over the plate while the cook chases them with a ladle of cream sauce!”

“‘I said I wanted it served rare, but this is ridiculous,’” Pat offered in a tone of dowager’s complaint. Miss Carruth shrieked.

Jimmy came over, smiling, though he looked tense. “I’m glad you two are getting on. Since we’re an informal gathering, I thought we’d mix up precedence at dinner. Pat, I wonder if I can entrust you to Preston.”

Pat duly took Mr. Keynes’ arm and they went in to dinner. The dining room was a very large, echoing space amid imposing wood-panelled walls hung with faded and motheaten tapestries. It caught some of the golden evening light now; it would be dark and cold at dinner for perhaps eight months of the year. It did not look like the future home of frothy, giggling Fenella Carruth at all.

They took their seats. The table was inevitably unbalanced, due to the odd number and informal make-up of the party, with two sets of brothers and sisters to be separated plus the married couple. The Earl had his place at one end of the table and the Countess at the other. Pat sat between Preston Keynes and Jimmy; Miss Singh was opposite her, seated between Maurice Haworth and the handsome Jack Bouvier-Lynes. Pat felt, on the whole, that she preferred her own seatmates.