Alice decided then and there to fall in love with Sir Peregrine. For deep down at the bottom of her heart, a little flame of anger was beginning to bum. If the Duke wished to philander and kiss and fade away in that silly way, then the sooner she banished him from her thoughts, the better.

And so the young couple circulated gracefully around the floor, each hell-bent on falling in love with the other, the one for money and the other for revenge.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bessant, that worthy servant, chewed his nails in a corner and thought furiously. He was sure he had been mistaken in the identity of Alice. But the appearance of the “ghost” at the same ball was too much for him. The more he thought back to the haunting of Wadham Hall, the more convinced he became that Alice had not committed suicide but had found an accomplice and both had tricked him. There had been a gaping hole found in the northeast corner of the wall in the grounds of Wadham, and rumor had it that someone had found the old Duchess’s jewels and made off with them.

He decided at last to bide his time and to watch every movement the guilty couple made. He accordingly made his way back to the musicians’ gallery and leaned over.

Of Alice’s accomplice, there was no sign, and the girl he had believed to be Alice was pirouetting around the floor, looking so lovely and so aristocratic with a great collar of diamonds blazing on her neck, that Mr. Bessant decided the light had tricked him.

By the end of the ball, Alice had decided that she was definitely in love. She gracefully accepted an invitation to go to the play with Sir Peregrine the next evening and collected her companion and made her way out to her carriage.

She was looking forward to seeing her ghost when she got home—for she assumed that that was where he was, for she had not seen him for the past two hours—and telling him her joyous news.

But as she left the Haversham town house, a gray dawn was pearling the sky in the east and a thin mist was curling around the old trees in Hyde Park.

Alice gave a little sigh which sounded rather like a dry sob. She would need to wait and wait until darkness fell again in order to tell him how happy, how supremely happy, she was.

Chapter 7

The Duke sat in Alice’s pretty drawing room telling himself firmly that he felt very happy for her. He tried to fight down a feeling of pique. She might at least have waited for him instead of going off to the play with Sir Peregrine and Miss Fadden.

The room held two clocks, a sonorous grandfather and a chattering gilt French thing, and their noise appeared to grow louder and louder in the silence of the room.