“If there are to be replies, you’ll certainly hear his before anyone else’s,” he said.

“Now this is more like it,” Lady Danbury announced. “Look at the two of you. You’re positively bantering.”

“Bantering,” Lord Hugh repeated, as if he could not quite grasp the word.

“It’s not as entertaining for me as an awkward conversation, but I imagine you prefer it.” Lady Danbury pressed her lips together and glanced about the room. “I suppose I shall have to find someone else to entertain me now. It’s quite a delicate balance, you know, finding awkwardness without stupidity.” She thumped her cane on the carpet, hmmphed, and departed.

Sarah turned to Lord Hugh. “She’s mad.”

“I might point out that you recently said the same thing to me.”

Sarah was sure there were a thousand different responses to that, but she managed to think of precisely none of them before Iris suddenly appeared. Sarah clenched her teeth. She was still very annoyed with her.

“I found her,” Iris announced, her face still grim with latent determination. “We are saved.”

Sarah could not find enough charity within herself to say something bright and congratulatory. She did, however, nod.

Iris gave her a queer look, punctuated with a tiny shrug.

“Lord Hugh,” Sarah said, with perhaps a bit more emphasis than was strictly necessary, “may I present my cousin, Miss Smythe-Smith? Formerly Miss Iris Smythe-Smith,” she added, for no reason other than her own sense of annoyance. “Her elder sister was recently wed.”

Iris started, clearly only just realizing that he’d been standing next to her cousin. This did not surprise Sarah; when Iris had her mind set on something she rarely noticed anything she deemed irrelevant.

“Lord Hugh,” Iris said, recovering quickly.

“I am most relieved to hear that you are saved,” Lord Hugh said.

Sarah took some satisfaction in the fact that Iris did not appear to know how to respond.

“From plague?” Lord Hugh inquired. “Pestilence?”

Sarah could only stare.

“Oh, I know,” he said in quite the jolliest tone she’d ever heard from him. “Locusts. There’s nothing like a good infestation of locusts.”

Iris blinked several times, then lifted a finger as if she’d just thought of something. “I’ll leave you, then.”

“Of course you will,” Sarah muttered.

Iris gave her an almost imperceptible smirk, then made her departure, snaking fluidly through the crowd.

“I must confess to curiosity,” Lord Hugh said once Iris had disappeared from view.

Sarah just stared ahead. He wasn’t the sort to let her silence stop him, so there didn’t seem much need to reply.

“From what dreadful fate did your cousin save you?”

“Not you, apparently,” Sarah muttered before she could control her tongue.

He chuckled at that, and Sarah decided there was no reason not to tell him the truth. “My cousin Daisy—that’s Iris’s younger sister—was trying to organize a special performance of the Smythe-Smith Quartet.”

“Why should that be a problem?”

Sarah took a moment to phrase her query. “You have not attended one of our musicales, then?”