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or unnecessary, she disobeyed it. Which was why, when her governess told her she could not meet Mr. Kestrel until tomorrow, she decided to slip away from the schoolroom and have a peek at him that evening. “We could wait outside his room while he dresses for dinner,’* she told Joanna. “Everyone else is going to meet him tonight. Why shouldn’t we?**
    But of course Joanna would have no part of the plan. It would be improper; Mr. Kestrel would think they were nothing but a pair of hoydens. Joanna was thirteen and becoming awfully self-conscious about anything to do with gentlemen—Philippa could not imagine why. But if Joanna would not go with her, she would go alone.
    Mr. Kestrel had arrived at Bellegarde just in time for the first dinner bell, which summoned the grown-ups to dress. Joanna and Philippa had dined already, in the schoolroom with Miss Pritchard, their governess. Philippa waited till Joanna and Pritchie were busy working on an embroidery stitch, then stole out of the schoolroom. On gaining the hallway, she raced to Mr. Kestrel’s room and stood sentry outside his door.
    At last it opened, and a gentleman came out. He was all in black. Philippa feasted her eyes on him—her first real London dandy.
    He saw her, and his brows went up. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. I’m Julian Kestrel.”
    “Yes, I know!” she breathed.
    “May I ask why you’re looking at me as though I were a firework display?”
    “You’re much better than fireworks. They’re all over in a moment, and you’re going to stay for a whole fortnight. Besides, fireworks are noisy, and they make too much smoke.”
    “I’m very quiet,” he assured her, “and of course I never smoke in the presence of a lady.”
    “I’m Philippa Fontclair.” She looked at him approvingly, liking him much better than the dull, handsome men Joanna admired. He had a dark, irregular face and hair of a rich brown, like mahogany. His eyes were brown, too, but with a green gleam about them, especially when he smiled, or was looking at you very intently. He was slender and spare and not above medium height, but he had presence—the way royalty probably did in the old days, before it was fat and fussy and came from Germany. He looked splendid in his clothes, and yet there was nothing showy or striking about them, except that his linen was so spotless, and everything fit him so well. Being a dandy was not so much what you wore, Philippa decided, but how you wore it.
    She thought for a moment, then said brightly, “This is such a big house, I was afraid you might not be able to find the drawing room, so I came to show you the way.”
    “That was very thoughtful of you.”
    He doesn’t believe me, she thought. He’s smart. “Have you been shown around the house yet?”
    “No. I’ve only just arrived.”
    “Well, the house is very simple, really, if you keep straight in your mind that it’s divided into three parts. We’re in the middle part now. It’s the part I like best. It was built in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and some of the rooms have been kept just as they were in those days. Your room is one of those. The rooms down the hall from yours have been done over in a modern style, and they’re quite dull. You might as well live inside a piece of Wedgwood. They’re guest rooms, but nobody’s using them now. You have this whole corridor to yourself. The panelling is nice, isn’t it? It’s linenfold.” Julian nodded. “Very handsome.” He glanced around, getting his bearings. His room was at the end of a blind corridor. There was a table there, with a basket of flowers on it. Farther down the corridor, on the same side as his room, were two more doors, which must be the redecorated guest rooms Philippa despised.
    There was only one door opposite his room. “That's the great chamber,” Philippa said. “We can go through it to reach the stairs.” She opened the door, and they went in. “This is one of the rooms that’s