“My apologies. Miss Livia Naylor. Mr. Argyle, I presume? And Mr. Cooper. How do you do? We were expecting you last night. It is, of course, long past our breakfast time. Never mind, here comes the food. Sit. I shall keep you company.”

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They sit and eat under her scrutiny. Her gaze is all the more disconcerting for being patient, judicious, meek. Charlie finds it turns the toast to ashes in his mouth and the tea to bilge water. A well-brought-up boy, he forces himself to make conversation.

“Thank you for welcoming us so kindly, Miss Naylor. Will your father — the baron — will he be joining us this morning?”

But the girl gives him no help. “I am instructed to tell you he is unwell.”

“That’s too bad. Your mother then?”

“She has ridden out.”

Charlie feels rebuffed but is not ready yet to admit defeat. He adds with an increasing air of desperation: “I assume you’re home from school. Just like us. Not that we are at home, of course. But all the same. .”

She waits attentively, patiently for him to finish, but he no longer knows where he is going, is hiding behind his cup of tea, appalled at the noise he makes when he tries to take a quiet sip.

Thomas rescues him.

“You are not a prefect, by any chance?” he asks, his mouth full, a dangerous note to his question. “Back at your school?”

She meets his eyes calmly. “I have that good fortune. How did you guess?”

They cannot help themselves. Both boys start to giggle, furtively at first, then, their frames shaking, with blushing abandon, while she watches on, calm and meek and disapproving, until their hysteria dries out along with their appetites, and the butler reappears to see them to their room.

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“We’ll have an early dinner at five.”

These were Livia’s parting words. The only thing of substance that the butler added to their stock of information was the location of the bathroom, right across from the room in which they have been housed, and the exhortation that they “may feel more comfortable once they have had a moment to refresh themselves,” which Charlie takes to mean they stink. The room is prettily but sparsely furnished. It holds two beds, a press, and a little desk and chair. They remain on the ground floor; a large veranda door grants access to the gardens. The clock shows a quarter to eleven. When Charlie returns at eleven twenty from his bath, he finds Thomas at the open veranda door, watching a pheasant striding up and down the garden path. He leans out, into the pouring rain, and Charlie hears him count the windows along their wing of the house. He breaks off after three dozen, turns, his hair wet and his face streaming with rain.

“Is your house like this, Charlie?” He points for some reason at the marching pheasant who is on yet another of his rounds.