“My brother’s study?”

“Yes, my lady. You’re wanted on the telephone, and I believe it’s rather more private on the extension in there.” He gave me the hint of a knowing smile.

My heart did a flip. It was Darcy. He was back in England and I was going to see him again after all. I sprinted with unladylike haste across the great hall, my footsteps sending up a clattering echo not unlike the time Murdoch Jamie Rannoch rode his war horse into the castle and up the stairs on returning from battle, having heard a rumor that his wife was in bed with the steward. The rumor proved to be right and Murdoch Jamie dispatched both of them on the spot with a wield of his trusty claymore. We Rannochs can get rather hotheaded where love is involved.

I was so breathless by the time I picked up the receiver that I could hardly gasp out, “Hello?”

“Darling, is it you?” came a feminine voice.

My first thought was that it was my friend Belinda Warburton-Stoke, one of the few people I knew who called me darling. But then I realized that the voice was deeper, smoother, sexier, polished by years on the London stage. “Mummy?” I replied. “What’s wrong?” In my impecunious world the telephone was used only for the direst emergencies and I hadn’t spoken to my mother in months.

“Nothing’s wrong, darling,” she said indignantly. “I was just looking forward to a chat with my only child.”

“Where are you calling from?” The line had that hollow crackle of long distance.

“I’m in London, darling, where I hoped I’d find you.” She sounded peeved now, as if I were deliberately avoiding her. “What on earth are you doing up in Scotland at this time of year? My God, it must be bleak.”

“It is, rather,” I agreed. “I’ve been keeping Fig company.”

“From choice?” She sounded horrified.

“More from a sense of duty, I suppose,” I said. “She’s been awfully down since she had the baby and Binky begged me to stay on and cheer her up. He’s been rather at a loss for what to do for her, poor chap.”

“I’d have pushed her off a cliff long ago if I were he,” Mummy said.

“Mummy, you’re terrible.” I had to laugh. “Anyway, I had hoped that going down to London for Christmas might cheer her up, but you know Fig. She’s sure it’s cheaper to stay in Scotland rather than open up the London house. So we’re stuck up here. But what about you? What are you doing in London? I thought you’d be looking forward to a jolly German Christmas with Max.”

“Max is having the jolly German Christmas. I’m not,” she said. “He’s gone to spend the holiday with his aged parents in Berlin and he thought it wiser that I not accompany him, since they are very prim and proper and don’t know about me.”

“Oh, dear,” I said. “I thought he was anxious to marry you.”