“I’m proper, only in a different way,” Constantinopla said. “And I’ve completed all the theoreticals, I just have my practicum to go.”

“How exciting,” Cecilia said with an encouraging smile. “It does take some girls a few tries before they pass—”

Now Jane was the one flushing.

“—but I’m sure you’ll do well.”

A maid brought tea and a selection of food to the young ladies, and they partook of these while Jane read, Constantinopla talked about her school experience, and Cecilia tried to hear what the seniors at the table were saying.

“Jane and I had gone out to buy arsenic,” Muriel Fairweather explained.

“My fencing master’s mustache,” Constantinopla sighed dreamily.

“Such a shock, to see my own house overhead—”

“Curled with a Hungarian pomade—”

“Well, that’s what you get for trusting—”

“Men—”

“Servants—”

“Pink prancers.”

Cecilia, frowning slightly, turned to Constantinopla, who giggled. “I know, who names their shoes?” the girl said. “But he’s awfully proud of them, and I do admit they let him move ever so well—”

“Last seen over Bodmin Moor—”

“Dancing a tango—”

“We’ll get it back—”

“And then into a dip—”

“We’ll beat him with—”

“Kid gloves—”

“Hear! Hear!”

“Hair like spun gold, even with the wax—”

“And leather whips—”

“All hot and melting—”

“And then we’ll cut off his—”

“And you can eat it with—”

“Lady Armitage.”

Cecilia froze, with her teacup almost to her lips, as she listened even more determinedly to what was being said about her assassinatrix. But Constantinopla had worked herself into quite a passion about her fencing master, and any useful information was so jumbled with descriptions of the master’s manliness that Cecilia’s resulting impression was of Lady Armitage undulating her hips in skintight breeches while conspiring with the butler to thrust and twirl in Miss Fairweather’s cockpit—at which point her brain, not to mention her modesty, threatened to implode.

She set her teacup on the table and rose. “I beg your pardon,” she said, “but I might just visit the powder room.”

“You do look a little heated,” Constantinopla remarked. “Why don’t you go outside for some fresh air?”

“But it’s dark,” Jane said, shocked into joining the conversation.

“I don’t mind that,” Cecilia said. “It’s a good idea. If my aunt asks, would you tell her I’ve gone to powder my nose?”

The two other girls hesitated at the thought of lying to Miss Darlington, who was infamous for evicting a maid from her service just for saying there were no crumpets when there was in fact one remaining, green and stiff with age, at the back of the pantry—evicting her, that is, while the house was one hundred and twenty feet above Oxford Street. Had the maid’s hooped petticoat not served as a parachute, her termination might have proved terminal. But both girls were scoundrels born and bred and ultimately could not resist a deception.

“Of course,” Constantinopla said, grinning. “Take your time.” She bounced her eyebrows suggestively, as if Cecilia was going outdoors to smoke a cigar or give money away to charity.