“And let me introduce Princess Promila,” I added. “I’m Georgiana Rannoch, Claire Daniels’s daughter.”

“Pleased to meet you, honey. And you too, Princess,” Cy Goldman said. “My, but we are a royal table, aren’t we? I’m feeling like the country bumpkin here.”

“If there’s one thing you are not, it’s a country bumpkin, Cy,” Stella said with a laugh. “I’ll wager your palace is bigger than any of theirs.” She was looking around as she spoke. “I don’t see Juan,” she said.

“Who’s Juan?” Mummy asked.

“Juan de Castillo. A gorgeous young man we met in Spain,” Stella said. “Cy was on one of his plundering trips, you know.”

“Plundering?” Lady Digby glanced at her husband.

“Cy is creating his own castle on a hill above the Pacific Ocean,” Stella said. “He’s furnishing it entirely with antiques from Europe. He goes around raiding convents and monasteries and bringing back their treasures.”

“I do not plunder,” Cy Goldman said in his booming voice. “I pay a fair price. They need money. I need their candlesticks and refectory tables. We both end up satisfied. You should see the stuff I’m having shipped back this time: lovely wood paneling I found at this convent near Seville. All carved oak. And stained glass windows dating back to the fifteenth century, wasn’t it?” He turned to Stella for confirmation.

“Sixteenth, Cy. I told you before that the fifteen hundreds are the sixteenth century.”

Cy laughed. “It’s all the same to me. Old is old. And if it’s old I want it in my castle.”

Stella leaned toward us. “And he’s having an entire chapel dismantled and brought across stone by stone, window by window,” Stella said, looking at Cy Goldman as if he were an impossible but adorable child. “And his prize plundering this time is a pair of golden candlesticks absolutely encrusted with jewels.”

“And the painting, Stella. Don’t forget the painting.”

“Oh yes, the painting. A Madonna by El Greco. Found it in a monastery chapel. Cy isn’t letting those out of his sight.”

“Out of reach, honey. They’re locked in the ship’s safe.”

Stella turned away, her eyes scanning the dining room as mine had been. “Where is Juan? Spaniards are always so late. I take it he’s to fill that empty seat at our table?”

“No, Miss Brightwell. I’m afraid the last place at table is to be taken by an American lady,” the captain said. “Ah, here she comes now.”

I looked up to see none other than Mrs. Simpson making her way toward us across the dining room. The men rose to their feet as Mrs. Simpson approached the table, looking glamorous and perfectly groomed as always in a long black beaded dress and white mink around her shoulders.