After that only one strange thing happened, or possibly two. Vlad was locked in one of the old dungeons until the pass was cleared. When the snow melted sufficiently, two days later, the cell was found to be empty. Matty and Dragomir both swore that they had not helped him to escape, and indeed the only way out of that cell block was past a door that was guarded at all times. As far as I have heard he has never been found. And I was awoken one of those nights by what sounded like the flapping of large wings outside my window. By the time I got up and managed to open the shutters, there was nothing to be seen.

Lady Middlesex departed, accompanying Miss Deer-Harte’s body home to England. She was a changed woman, subdued and grateful for any little kindness, the bullying and bluster gone out of her like a pricked balloon.

Matty and Nicholas were married as planned a few days later. Nicholas’s father decided not to postpone the wedding, decreeing that the period of mourning for the field marshal would begin after his state funeral, which would be conducted with all the pomp and ceremony and, hopefully, appease the Macedonians. I thought Nicholas was being jolly understanding, considering everything, but he seemed to be genuinely fond of Matty and she of him. As we dressed for the wedding Matty drew me aside.

“We’re friends again, I hope.”

“Of course,” I said.

“You don’t still think that I sent you down that oubliette?”

“Since you almost fell down it yourself, I have to believe that you didn’t,” I said. “Vlad must have been hiding and pushed the button after you’d gone past.”

“How awful if you hadn’t managed to get out.”

“It’s all right. I’d have eaten Queenie,” I said, laughing.

“Poor thing. She was frightfully brave, and she did save you, even if she didn’t mean to.”

We fell silent.

“I couldn’t really vouch that Vlad was in bed with me all night,” she said. “He could well have slipped out and pushed that English woman down the stairs.”

“Or his father did it to protect him. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know now.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said at last.

“I do,” I said. “Vlad was awfully good-looking.”