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exotic conversation (one could never predict what she might say next), or even the heightened color of her cheeks and lips. She certainly seemed to be flirting with him—although he suspected that she was only doing so to make Botsy even more jealous than he already was, poor chap.
    Making men jealous seemed to run in the Deacon family. Winston knew, of course, that Gladys’s father had shot and killed his wife’s lover. Everyone knew, and Gladys herself seemed to take a mischievous delight in the scandal.
    “Simply imagine my feelings!” she had whispered to him at teatime. “I was there when it happened, Winston, although I was only twelve at the time.” She opened her beautiful eyes wide. “My mother in hysterics, my father with the gun, still smoking, in his hand. I saw it all!”
    Winston could never be sure whether Gladys was telling the truth, for she dramatized everything. But the murder itself was all too real. Gladys’s mother was a great beauty, notorious for a string of adulterous relationships that drove her husband so mad with jealousy that he had fatally shot one of her French lovers. Alexandre Dumas had called Deacon an assassin, and the Paris newspapers were outraged at the notion that an American would kill a Frenchman who was merely engaged in the national pastime. Deacon went to prison and later died in an insane asylum. The scandal, which reverberated throughout Europe and America, inevitably tainted Gladys and her sisters. There were many in England who still regarded her as the daughter of a mad murderer and a woman who trapped unsuspecting men with her deadly beauty and wit.
    At that moment, Winston saw Sunny put a finger on Gladys’s wrist—a light touch and quickly withdrawn, but accompanied by a glance that spoke openly of intimacy and intrigue, even a kind of possessiveness. Winston felt himself flush.
    This sort of public display is taking things much too far, he thought, the apprehension pumping through him. What can Sunny be thinking?
    Winston was not the only guest who had noticed the Duke’s possessive gesture, as he realized when he glanced up and saw Botsy Northcote’s eyes narrow, his mouth tighten, and his handsome face go purple. So far, Botsy had managed to control himself, but he was not a man who handled his temper or his alcohol well, and he had already drunk several glasses of wine.
    Winston gave an internal sigh. They would be lucky if they got through the evening without an explosion of some sort. He cast a surreptitious glance at Consuelo, who was seated to his left, to see if she had noticed the Duke’s hand on Gladys’s wrist, or Botsy’s reaction to it. But the Duchess was chatting gaily with Sheridan, and seemed to take no notice of what was happening on the other side of the table. For that, at least, Winston was thankful. Perhaps it was time he had a talk with Consuelo about the situation and warned her against taking any ill-considered action. In one way or another, they all lived their lives in the public eye, and none of them could afford any sort of scandal.
    And then Winston was distracted by Gladys, who bestowed an enchanting smile on him and asked him whether he had ever visited Rosamund’s Well, on the other side of the lake.
    “Of course,” he said. “Used to go there often when I was a boy. Not much to see, though. Just a spring flowing out of a stone wall and into a square, shallow pool. Whatever else was there—Rosamund’s Bower, the famous labyrinth—they’ve all disappeared.”
    “Oh, that’s too bad,” Gladys exclaimed with a wistful air. She appealed to the Duke. “Don’t you think, Your Grace, that it would be divinely romantic to build a rustic retreat there, like the house that Henry built for Rosamund? Or perhaps a sort of Gothic ruin, surrounded by a labyrinth, where people could go and pretend to be Rosamund and King Henry, and fall madly in love.” It happened that no one else was speaking at the moment, and her light words