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    garden. Olivia, would you care to join me?”
    “I should like nothing better,” she said, all glowing guilelessness.
    In the garden
    Ten minutes later
    Lisle loomed over Olivia, his grey eyes as hard as flint.
    “Have you lost your mind?” he said. “Weren’t you listening to me yesterday? Are you becoming like my parents, hearing only the voices in your head?” To be compared to his insane parents was infuriating. Nonetheless, Olivia maintained her cheerfully innocent expression, and didn’t kick him in the shins.
    “Of course I was listening,” she said. “That’s how I realized you were completely irrational about the subject, and I would have to take desperate measures to save you from yourself.”
    “I?” he said. “I’m not the one who needs saving. I know exactly what I’m doing and why. I told you we couldn’t give in to them.”
    “You don’t have a choice,” she said.
    “There are always choices,” he said. “I only need time to ascertain what they are. You didn’t even give me time to think about it!”
    “You don’t have time,” she said. “If you don’t take control of the situation now, they’ll raise the stakes. You don’t understand them. You don’t know how they think. I do.” That was what DeLuceys did and that was how they survived. They looked into others’ hearts and minds and used what they found there. “For once, you need to trust my judgment.”
    “You have no judgment,” he said. “You don’t know what you want. You’re feeling stifled here, and my parents have offered an opportunity for excitement. That’s all you’re thinking about. I saw the gleam in your eye when I first told you about our haunted castle. I could practically hear what you were thinking. Ghosts. A mystery. Danger. To you it’s an adventure.
    You told me so. But it’s no adventure to me.”
    “Because it isn’t Egypt,” she said. “Because nothing but Egypt can be interesting or important.”
    “That isn’t—”
    “And because you’re obstinate,” she said. “Because you won’t open your mind to the possibilities. Because you want to fight, as usual, instead of finding a way to make the best of the opportunity. You’re not an opportunist, I know. That’s my specialty. Why can’t you see that the cleverest thing to do is to pool our resources?”
    “I don’t care about being clever!” he said. “This isn’t a game to me.”
    “Is that what you think? That it’s a game to me?”
    “Everything is,” he said. “I spoke to you yesterday in confidence. I thought you understood. But it’s merely sport to you, playing people as though they were cards.”
    “I did it for your sake, you thickheaded man!”
    But he was too busy being all hurt and indignant to listen to anything she said.
    He went on as though she hadn’t spoken, “You’ve played well, I’ll admit. You’ve shown me Page 36
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    you can manage even my parents and make them fall in with your ridiculous schemes. But I’
    m not them. I know you. I know your tricks. And I won’t have my life upended because you’re bored with yours!”
    “That is one of the most detestable, hurtful, willfully obtuse things you’ve ever said to me,” she said. “You’re acting like a complete idiot, and idiots bore me. Go to the devil.” She gave him a hard shove.
    He wasn’t expecting it. He stumbled and lost his balance and fell backward into the shrubbery.
    “Moron,” she said, and stormed away.
    White’s Club
    Shortly after midnight
    Lisle had spent the day trying to wear out his rage by boxing, fencing, riding hard, and, in desperation, firing at targets in a shooting gallery.
    He still wanted to kill somebody.
    He was sitting in the card room, eyeing the occupants over the rim of his glass and debating which one was worth picking a fight with, when a deferential voice at his shoulder