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"Oh, aye? Sound all right, did it?" he asked casually, sharinned and tapped his chest with her closed fan, esture of an accomplished coquette--which she wasn’t

"Oh, Mrs MacKenzie," she said, pitching her voice high and through her nose, "your husband’s voice is divinity itself! Were I so fortunate, I a in the sound of it!"

He laughed, recognizing Miss Martin, old Miss Bledsoe’s young and rather plain co while he sang ballads in the afternoon

"You know you’re good," she said, dropping back into her own voice "You don’t need me to tell you"

"Maybe not," he adh"

"Really? The adulation of the one to triangles of ahed instead, taking her hand

"D’ye want to dance?" He cocked his head toward the end of the terrace where the French doors to the drawing roo out the cheerful strains of "Duke of Perth," then back toward the tables "Or to eat?"

"Neither I want to get away from here for a minute; I can hardly breathe" A drop of sweat ran down her neck, glinting red in the torchlight before she swiped it away

"Great" He took her hand and drew it through his ar toward the herbaceous border that lay beyond the terrace "I know just the place"

"Great Oh--wait Maybe I do want so to eat" She lifted a hand and stopped a slave boy, co up to the terrace from the cookhouse with a s steam wafted into the air "What’s that, Tommy? Can I have so the napkin away to display a selection of savories She inhaled beatifically

"I want theer, seizing the chance, murmured his own request to the slave, who nodded, disappeared, and returned within er took these, and together they wandered down the path that led fro with the pigeon pies

"Did you find any of the guests passed out in the shrubbery?" she asked, her words muffled by a mouthful of mushroom pasty She sed, and becao and look this afternoon, Ie and dried pu and a Scottish funeral, do ye?"

"No, what?"

"The funeral has one less drunk"

She laughed, scattering cru her skillfully to the right of the dock, and toward the s "Ye’ll see a few feet sticking out of the bushes now, but this afternoon, they hadn’t had the tied yet"

"You have such a ords," she said appreciatively "I went and talked to the slaves; all present and accounted for, and mostly sober, too A couple of the woh"

"To say the least, froather he didn’ts; he could hear therove

"Mmm Mama said she see on bleeding her" She gave a s her shawl round her shoulders one-handed "He gives oblin or soot the cla of stinking"

"I haven’t had the pleasure yet," Roger said, a veil ofbranches, alert lest he disturb so couple that had beaten them to the stone bench, but all ell Everyone was up at the house, dancing, eating, drinking, and planning a later serenade of the wedding pair Better Duncan and Jocasta than us, he thought, rolling his eyes inwardly at soht have been interested to see a shivaree, and trace all the roots of it frohland customs--but not bloody now

It was suddenly quiet under the s,of water and the ht, and Brianna felt carefully for the bench, in order to set down her tray