“Really, though. The Red Cross. It’s such a smashing success. All those women, working so hard. Only you could raise all that money, organize everything so perfectly—”

The duchess laughed and turned her head. “Would you care for a drink, Mrs. Randolph? David keeps a few bottles handy in here. He’s forbidden to start drinking before seven, but once the clock strikes, why . . .”

“No, thank you.”

But she was already moving away, already opening the door to a cabinet of gleaming wood, the kind of cabinet you thought must hold important papers and that kind of thing, but actually contained about a dozen various bottles of liquor, several glasses, a siphon, a bucket.

“There’s no ice, I’m afraid,” she said, “but you don’t mind that, do you?”

“No.”

“Brandy? I like a glass of brandy in the evenings.”

“I really shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” She turned to me. “You certainly look as if you could use a drink.”

“I like to keep my wits about me.”

“I see.” She closed the cabinet door. She stood about fifteen or twenty feet away, about as elegant as a woman could possibly look, but then she had the kind of figure that sets off clothes to their best advantage. Long and angular, lean to the point of nonexistence; not exactly attractive by itself, but irresistible as a foil to what covered those bones, that flesh. Like all Southern ladies, she moved gracefully, shaping the air as she went. Her thin, tight, scarlet smile contained electricity. “Now, don’t be afraid,” she said.

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. Most people are. But I don’t bite.”

“If you did, I’d bite back.”

The duchess laughed. “You brave thing. That’s exactly what I was hoping you’d say.”

“I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear it.”

She gestured to the window seat. “Can we sit a moment? I have a question for you, Mrs. Randolph. A proposition.”

I hesitated only long enough to catch my breath. “Of course.”

We sat. The window faced north, toward the twinkling of lights that rimmed the shore and the sudden blackness of the ocean. The stars were invisible. I smelled the duchess’s perfume, her cigarettes. Around us lay that beautiful, masculine room of wood and photographs and, beyond that, the faint music from the party in the garden. I folded my hands in my lap and said again how lovely the place looked.

“Naturally the papers had nothing but bad things to say,” she told me. “How extravagant I was. How out of touch with the common man. Never mind that the house—Government House, don’t forget, the very seat and symbol of government, of the British Empire—was riddled with mildew and falling apart. Anyway, we paid for a great deal of the redecoration out of our own pockets. A great deal.”

“I hadn’t heard that.”