Royal Flush by Rhys Bowen

it. On one side is a giant stone fireplace big enough to roast an ox. On the wood-paneled walls hang swords, shields, tattered banners carried into long-ago battles, more stags’ heads. A wide staircase sweeps up one side, lined with portraits of Rannoch ancestors, each generation hairier as one went back in time. The floor is stone, making the hall feel doubly cold and drafty, and there are various sofas and armchairs grouped around the fire, which is never lit in summer, however cold the weather.
    To outsiders the first impression is horribly cold, gloomy and warlike, but to me at this moment it represented home. I was just looking around with satisfaction when Fig appeared in the gallery above.
    “Georgiana, you’re back. Thank God,” she said, her voice echoing from the high ceiling. She actually ran down the stairs to meet me.
    This was not the reception I had expected and I stared at her blankly as she ran toward me, arms open, and actually embraced me. She’d called me by my name so she couldn’t have mistaken me for anyone else. Besides, Fig doesn’t make anyone welcome, ever.
    “How are you, Fig?” I asked.
    “Awful. I can’t tell you how frightful it’s been. That’s why I’m glad you’re here, Georgiana.”
    “What’s wrong?” I asked.
    “Everything. Let’s go into Binky’s den, shall we?” she said, slipping her arm through mine. “We are not likely to be disturbed there. You’d like something to eat, I suspect. Hamilton, could you have the drinks tray and a plate of those smoked salmon sandwiches brought through for Lady Georgiana?”
    All right. This was Scotland, after all. My sister-in-law had been bewitched, or taken by the fairies and a changeling left in her place. But since she was offering me smoked salmon and the drinks tray, who was I to refuse? She steered me across the great hall, down the narrow passage to the right and in through an oak-paneled door. The room had the familiar smell of pipe smoke and polished wood and old books: a very masculine sort of smell. Fig indicated a leather armchair for me and pulled up another one beside me.
    “Thank God,” she said again. “I don’t think I could have endured it for another day alone.”
    “Alone? What’s happened to Binky?”
    “You didn’t hear about his dreadful accident then?”
    “No. What happened?”
    “He stepped on a trap.”
    “An animal trap?”
    “Of course an animal trap.”
    “When did MacTavish start using animal traps on the estate? I thought he was always so softhearted.”
    “He doesn’t. He swears he never laid the trap, but he must have done, of course. Who else would put a bally great trap on one of our paths, and especially a path that Binky always walks in the morning?”
    “Crikey. Is Binky all right?”
    “Of course he’s not all right,” she snapped, reverting to type for the first time. “He’s laid up with a dashed great dressing over his ankle. In fact he was extremely lucky he was wearing those old boots that belonged to his grandfather. I kept telling him to throw them away but now I’m glad he didn’t listen to me. Anything less stout and the trap would have had his foot off. As it was the trap wouldn’t close completely and he got away with nasty gashes down to the bone and a cut tendon.”
    “Poor old Binky. How terrible for him.”
    “Terrible for him? What about terrible for me with all these awful people in the house?”
    “What awful people?”
    “My dear, we have a house full of disgusting Americans.”
    “Paying guests?”
    “Of course not paying guests. What on earth gave you that idea? Since when did a duke take in paying guests? No, these are friends of the Prince of Wales, or rather a certain woman among them is a friend of the Prince of Wales.”
    “Oh, I see. Her.”
    “As you say, ‘Her.’ The prince is at Balmoral, of course, and his woman friend would certainly not be welcome there, so the prince asked Binky if he could offer her hospitality so