“Drop him,” Diana finished for her. “Sauce for the gander, as it were.”

“Precisely,” Petra declared. She stood up. “We really should go back to the table, the men will be wondering what we’re doing.”

“They’ll probably have ordered for us,” Fenella said with a laugh. “And perfectly entitled to do so in the circumstances.”

She went to the mirror to adjust a hairpin in the thick chignon on her neck. Petra examined her complexion for flaws, dusting a little powder on her small nose, lamenting, “I wish I could get rid of those freckles.”

“Nonsense,” Diana said. “They’re part of you. It’s just a scattering on your nose. They go with your hair.”

Petra was actually rather proud of her hair. It was thick, straight and a rich chestnut brown with streaks of a darker red. She wore it this evening in two plaits looped around her ears, beautifully set off by emerald eardrops and a necklace of the same.

“Come on, we must get back,” Fenella urged, dropping a coin into a saucer for the attendant on her way to the door.

“Yes, we’ll talk about revenge on the baron when we have time to discuss it properly,” Diana stated, hurrying after her. “Shall we have coffee tomorrow?”

“Come to Brook Street,” Petra invited, now totally restored to her usual lively humor. “We’ll plan a strategy.”

They returned to the table, where their escorts were visibly impatient and, having finished the champagne, most of the way through a bottle of Bordeaux. “We’d about given you up,” Rupert said, standing up to pull back his wife’s chair.

“Apologies,” Fenella said, offering Edward a guilty smile as she took the chair he held for her. “We started talking about something and the time just ran away with us.”

“Nothing new about that,” Rupert said dryly. “If you’re now here to stay perhaps we could order?”

“I really am sorry. It was my fault,” Petra said without offering any further explanation. She picked up her menu again, glancing up at the attentive waiter. “I think I’d like the asparagus soup and then the rack of lamb, please.”

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Guy Granville walked into the marble hall on the ground floor of the Criterion, handing his hat and silver-knobbed cane to an attendant as he scrutinized the drinkers at the Long Bar at the rear of the hall. He raised a hand, acknowledging the greeting waves from a group of people sitting at a table, brandy goblets in front of them.