Sarah blanched, and Hugh suddenly recalled that first night at Fensmore, when she had started to tell him something about her family’s musicales. She had been cut off before she could finish. He never did learn what she was going to say.

“Iris won’t be able to join us,” Daisy continued, oblivious to Sarah’s reaction. “We have no cello, and Lady Edith wasn’t invited to this wedding, not that that would have done us any good,” she said with an affronted sniff. “It was very unkind of her not to let us borrow her cello at Fensmore.”

Hugh watched as Sarah threw a desperate glance at Iris. Iris, he noted, responded with nothing but sympathy. And horror.

“But the pianoforte is perfectly tuned,” Daisy said, “and of course I brought my violin, so we shall make a duet of it.”

Iris returned Sarah’s expression with one of her own. They were having another one of those silent conversations, Hugh thought, untranslatable by anyone of the male sex.

Daisy soldiered on. “The only question is what to play. I propose Mozart’s Quartet no. 1, since we do not have time to practice.” She turned to Hugh. “We performed that earlier this year.”

Sarah made a choking sound. “But—”

But Daisy was brooking no interruptions. “I assume you remember your part?”

“No! I don’t. Daisy, I—”

“I do realize,” Daisy continued, “that there are only two of us, but I don’t think that will make a difference.”

“You don’t?” Iris asked, looking vaguely ill.

Daisy spared her sister a fleeting glance. A fleeting glance, Hugh noted, that still managed to imbue itself with an astonishing degree of condescension and annoyance.

“We shall simply go forward without the cello or second violin,” she announced.

“You play the second violin,” Sarah said.

“Not when there is only one violinist,” Daisy replied.

“That makes absolutely no sense,” Iris put in.

Daisy let out a highly aggravated puff of air. “Even if I play the second part, as I did last spring, I will still be the only violinist.” She waited for affirmation, then plowed on anyway. “Which therefore will make me the first violin.”

Even Hugh knew it did not work that way.

“You cannot have a second violin without a first,” Daisy said impatiently. “It is numerically impossible.”

Oh no, Hugh thought, she is not going to bring numbers into this.

“I can’t play tonight, Daisy,” Sarah said, with a slow, horrified shake of her head.

Daisy’s lips pinched. “Your mother said you would.”

“My mother—”

“What Lady Sarah means to say,” Hugh cut in smoothly, “is that she has already promised her evening to me.”

It seemed he was developing a taste for playing the hero. Even to ladies who were not eleven years old and infatuated with unicorns.

Daisy looked at him as if he were speaking another language. “I don’t understand.”