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“Winter,” Graymont said, ignoring her. “Take the lights, please. Hold them up. Thank you.”

Cordelia clamped her lips together. Graymont reached up into the ash tree and pried Viola’s wedged boot loose. He turned, and the lantern light caught the white of his shirt, open at the collar, and the silver gleam of his waistcoat. Cordelia wondered whether he ever went about fully clothed. The muddied boot dangled from his long, lean fingers. She could not read the expression on his shadowed face, but she could guess at it with mortifying certainty. He understood the meaning of the boot in the tree and knew, as she did, what Viola had been up to.

She took the boot. “Thank you.” Henry came around the fallen tree, and Cordelia made the necessary introductions.

Graymont nodded to Henry. “I understand, Staveley, that you’ve been troubled with poachers.”

“A bit, sir. I suppose I should let them take the deer, as the beasts do more harm than good, but one doesn’t like to lose one’s birds. So, I try to keep them off with an alarm gun.”

“With the rain, it’s a wonder the old gun fired,” Graymont said.

“Oh, I built a little canopy to protect the flint,” Henry said. She heard her brother’s eagerness for another man’s approval of his arrangements. Their father would never notice.

“A canopy? Clever. Should I worry that poachers will breach my walls, Staveley?”

Cordelia cringed at Graymont’s tone of bored indulgence, and her temper flared. His walls! “Henry, I think Viola is quite chilled.” She gave her sister a nudge, and Viola obligingly shivered. “Perhaps you can show his lordship your gun arrangements another time, and we might all return to the comforts of hearth and fire.”

“A wise thought, Miss Staveley,” Graymont said. “Winter, offer your arm to Miss Viola.”

The obliging Winter stepped forward.

“Thank you, Mr. Winter, but really, we can manage,” Cordelia said.

“Well, I can’t,” said Viola, accepting Winter’s arm.

Cordelia wondered, not for the first time, how she and Viola could be related. “At least put on your boot, Viola.”

“Oh yes.” With Winter to steady Viola, Cordelia knelt and helped her sister slip into the boot. The little party set off through the wood for the drive. Henry and Graymont led the way, their voices drifting back, Henry’s voice cheerful and open, Graymont’s voice clipped and dry. Winter helped Viola, and Cordelia brought up the rear. Hector trotted along, setting small creatures rustling off through the woods.

At the drive, Cordelia insisted that Henry take Viola’s arm, and the two parties separated.

“Well,” said Viola as they passed beyond earshot of the viscount. “My plan didn’t work, but I think we gained valuable intelligence about the enemy.”

“The enemy?” said Henry. “You scared us, you peahen.”

“Pooh,” said Viola. “I was in no real danger. Do you know, Graymont has a cook? Mrs. Peachy from the village. That’s fast work. I wonder who else he will hire. If we could get someone on the inside …”

“No. We are not hiring our neighbors to spy on him,” Cordelia said.

“Why not? I can see that my ghost plan won’t work. Lord Graymont is rather coolheaded, isn’t he?” Viola halted, shaking off Henry’s hold.

“All the more reason for us to behave sensibly, Viola. We are not at war.”

“Aren’t we? Our enemy has already taken the castle.”

“Peahen,” said Henry. “What do you know about strategy or tactics?”

Viola ignored Henry and began to limp on unassisted. “Well, you were certainly wrong about him, Cordelia. You thought he was going to be just like Papa and stay in London, playing cards. You never thought he’d come to Delamere.”

“And I agree, Viola, we need to know why he came,” Cordelia said. Graymont’s unexpected arrival made no sense. “What man of fashion rusticates alone at the height of the Season with parliament in session?”

“Good point, Cordelia,” Henry added. “And with no sport this time of year.”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. It’s not because he lost at cards, like Papa,” Viola said. “It must be because of some scandal. Like Lord Byron.”

“What do you know about Byron?” Cordelia did not see the likeness. For years Byron’s name had been synonymous with shocking love affairs, debt, and self-dramatizing poetry, even after the poet had died trying to win Greek independence from the Turks. She wondered how Byron’s career had entered the curriculum at Lady Hester Britt’s Academy.

“He swims,” Viola said. “Lord Graymont swims like Byron.”