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before, during, and after the alterations,” she told him. “We have architects’ renderings and artists’ paintings of the old house and property from various times, too. Papa keeps a portfolio containing estate plans and such. He has made a great many changes to the property, as he may have told you. Perhaps you would like to see these documents?”
    Mr. Carsington arched an eyebrow.
    “They’re in the library,” she said. “I’ll be happy to show them to you, if you are interested.”
    He glanced at Mrs. Badgely and quickly away. “I should like nothing better,” he said.

Chapter 4
    Yes, Darius would do better to spend his time with the gentlemen.
    Yes, he was asking for trouble, following Lady Charlotte out of the drawing room.
    But he had to know: What was she up to now?
    She led him across the great hall to the library.
    The large and comfortably arranged room was obviously in frequent use. Books, covering every subject under the sun, filled the oak shelves lining the walls. In the room’s center stood an orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system. Elsewhere Darius saw a pair of globes and a telescope, several more tables of various kinds, and a ladder. All the usual accoutrements, in other words, of the well equipped library.
    The rector sat snoring, his head resting upon the back of a sofa near the fireplace. A book lay open on the table in front of him.
    “It seems I’m not the only one eager to get away from Mrs. Badger-Me,” Darius whispered.
    He received one sidelong glance from the cool blue eyes, too quick for him to read.
    “Papa has always encouraged his guests to wander the public rooms as they please,” she said. “He wants them to feel at home.”
    She continued across the room to a large table near the south-facing windows. Beyond the windows, the long summer day had ended early under a thickening blanket of clouds. Darius heard rain pattering on the terrace outside.
    Inside, pier glasses hung between the darkened windows. In their mirrors danced the flames of the recently lit candelabra standing on the matching pier tables. In the nearest glass he saw, too, the open doorway behind them and servants passing in the hall outside.
    Lady Charlotte opened the large portfolio that lay on the table.
    Darius did not immediately join her at the table. He bent and looked under it. He walked around and looked behind it. He looked up at the ceiling, then at the windows.
    “The plans are here, Mr. Carsington,” she said, tapping a slim finger on the portfolio.
    “I’m looking for the trap,” he said, keeping his voice low. “First Mrs. S, then Mrs. B, then Lady L. What next, I wonder? A hinged door that opens up beneath my feet and drops me into a vipers’ pit?”
    “I’ve never seen a viper at Lithby Hall,” she said.
    “ Vipera talka-lot-icus, Vipera henpeck-us-to-death-icus, Vipera-bankrupt-me-remodeling-my-house-icus.”
    Her lips quivered. To his disappointment, though, the placid cow expression swiftly settled back into place.
    “Here is a drawing of Lithby Hall at the end of the seventeenth century,” she said in the dispassionate tone of a lecturer. “Here it is a century and a half later. This is more or less how my stepmother found it when she first came.”
    Darius drew nearer. “Is that a moat?” he said, sliding one of the larger drawings toward him.
    She nodded. “It’s less obvious now. Grandfather turned a section into an ornamental lake. An orangery once stood where the kitchens and servants’ hall are. In this one you can see how they closed in the kitchen court. Stepmama added the vestibule, there.” She pointed. “But the greatest changes were inside. This house used to be gloomy and oppressive and cold—or so it seemed to me, as a child. She brought light and warmth.”
    He gazed at her, surprised, as he had been earlier, at the way her voice softened when she spoke of how her stepmother had transformed Lithby Hall.
    “You are fond of your stepmother,”