Sleepily, confused, she thought: he has gone, but he promised to stay. Morning had come and her night lover had fled as Cupid had fled from Psyche to avoid the dangerous contact of the dawn, and yet he had promised... Then Ben Beauregard was saying something of more immediate import: 'We think the Red Rose has got him. We found a bunch of red roses on the doorstep of Kilbronnack House this morning. Plus their ridiculous sign: UR2. Ugh, reminds me of some kind of nuclear weapon. And their slogans: Long Live Queen Clementina the First! Down with the Usurper Henry Beauregard! Eilean Fas the Royal Island.' Her mind began to clear. The Red Rose had struck indeed: not after all at a Princess guarded at Inverness by her police and detectives and minions, but at the hated local laird, the man they regarded as the purloiner of his niece's rights, the murderer of his royal nephew... It all made a kind of hideous sense. Then her mind cleared still further.
