“Yes,” I agreed, straight-faced.

“But, I must say, I think you’ve adapted nicely. You seem a resilient girl.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“You’re quiet but smart. Modest, I suspect. Watchful.” She sent me that sideways look again. “Watchful is good. Learning by observation is a most useful skill, especially for someone in your position.”

I had nothing to say to that, so only took up the cheese tongs.

“I lived in London for a few years after my own schooling. Islington. Do you know it?”

“No.”

“No, perhaps not.” She smiled, but it seemed wistful. “London is a colossal place, after all. A splendid, stinking jewel of humanity. I read that somewhere, and I don’t believe I’ve ever come across a description more apt.”

We had reached the end of the table, and my plate was full. I looked around for a space to sit, but the duke’s truly inspired décor apparently didn’t include tables and chairs. We strolled toward the only vacant spot left on the patio, leaning together against the marble railing. One of the Chinese lanterns hung directly above us; it colored us and all the food candy-red.

“Why did you leave, ma’am?”

“Ah.” Miss Swanston was rolling a cube of cheddar around on her plate with her fork. “Well, my parents died one winter, both of them. And the house had to be sold.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes. I am, as well.” She abandoned the cheddar. “As I said before, Eleanore, I know you’re smart. I also have a reasonably clear understanding of how very … difficult your life has been up until now. Please don’t look so distressed. Mrs. Westcliffe shared your records with me under circumstances of strictest confidentiality. Your past is your own, and, as far as I’m concerned, no one’s business but your own.”

The roll I’d just bitten into had gone dry as sand in my mouth.

“Yet I find I cannot help but offer you some unsolicited advice. Stay focused on your studies. Iverson will open doors for you that you might never have conceived. Your future could be as happy as your past was not. Don’t allow yourself to waste that chance. Don’t succumb to any … distractions.”

I could only imagine my expression. Miss Swanston lowered her candy-red lashes and glanced back at Armand.

“Oh,” I said, swallowing. “No. Definitely not.”

“Forgive me. He seems quite taken with you.”

The bite of roll lodged in my throat; I coughed. “He isn’t, I assure you.”

“Eleanore, it grieves me to correct you, but he is staring at you even now. He hasn’t been able to tear his eyes from you since we arrived.”

I couldn’t tell her the truth. I couldn’t say anything like, Armand doesn’t count. Armand’s not even in the game. I’m in love with a boy made of stars, and we’re going to live together ever after on gold and smoke and moonlight, and that’s my happy future, no matter what any of you think.

I scowled down at my plate. “He’s simply …”

“Yes?” she prompted, very mild.

I searched for the right word. “I don’t know what he is,” I admitted finally, frustrated. “Bored, I suppose.”

“Yes,” she said again, just as mild. “I’m glad you’ve realized it, too.”

“But I’m not dense. He’s nobility. I know—I know what I am. I know what to avoid.”

“Good,” Miss Swanston said once more, and gave me her wistful smile.

...

Eventually, I ate my fill. Eventually, Miss Swanston became convinced that I wasn’t about to go fling myself at Lord Armand and left me at the railing, saying that no doubt the headmistress would be missing her.

Twenty wily girls roaming free in the night and three unguarded tables of French champagne. I suspected Mrs. Westcliffe was rather outmatched.

The receiving line had dissolved, and the duke and his son were nowhere in view. Adults of all sizes and shapes stood elbow-to-elbow around me, admiring the gardens and one another. Chloe and her group were making their way through the food tables; Sophia and hers loitered at the foot of the stairs below me. So I left my plate with a maid and slipped back inside Tranquility.

I’d return for the champagne later.

It was easier to breathe away from the crowded courtyard. As I entered the ballroom, the music from the orchestra dimmed from strident to agreeable, and the peculiar aroma of banquet mixed with ladies’ perfume gradually faded in my wake. But the ballroom was as empty as the gardens were full; obviously the guests were supposed to remain out there. The only other people in the chamber besides me were a pair of footmen stationed by the main doors, perhaps to ensure no one got inside.

The best way to publicly succeed at anything forbidden is to seem as if you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Especially if you don’t. Don’t stop, don’t hesitate, and don’t look back. I glided past the footmen into the main hallway with my chin up and my expression bored, an air I’d seen nearly every girl at the school assume whenever someone of a lower station was near.

Of course you must let me pass; clearly I’m a lady; I belong in satin and mansions and I know where I’m going and I definitely, definitely, won’t be filching the silverware.

Like the ballroom, the hallway seemed deserted. It stretched long and mysterious in either direction, far darker than the rest of the house; all the electric lights had been set to low. When I passed directly beneath one of their dangling glass domes, a humming drone swarmed through my head so nastily that, after that, I sidled around them.

A runner of blue and mottled olive, rich and plush, absorbed my steps. Paintings, huge and framed in filigreed wood. Discarded scaffolding, bare frames of lumber and metal holding up nothing but air. Splintery pinewood crates, most unopened but a few showing their stuffings of straw and what might have been antique firearms.

And—voices behind me. Adult voices, male, subdued, discussing something about Americans and naval blockades.

I had my hand at once on the knob of the nearest door. By the time the duke and his companion passed by, I was well hidden in the shadows of what looked to be a study—a very masculine study, with panels of mahogany and massive leather furniture and a portrait above the fireplace of Himself with a family, so it was pure blind luck that they didn’t follow me in.

But they walked on down the hallway.

I released the breath I’d been holding, suddenly fatigued, the itch inside me beginning another crawl along my nerves. I wandered over to one of the chairs and tested it for softness. It was far more comfortable than it appeared, a reading chair, clearly, with a newspaper neatly ironed and folded atop the stand by its arm.

A London paper. Yesterday’s date.

HUN DIRIGIBLES FLYING FARTHER INLAND, warned the headline. I touched my fingers to it, spinning it about to scan the rest.

Germany’s cowardly use of naval airships upon the civilian population is expanding. Bloated and slow, the zeppelins cruise far above any altitude ground artillery may reach, and often even above the firing altitude of our valiant boys in the sky.

The Minister of War has recommended that all eastern and southern coastal towns implement immediately our own very effective nighttime blackout rules… .

Well. Perchance His Grace hadn’t read this particular article yet.

I sat back in the chair and crossed my feet at the ankles. Then I glanced up at the portrait.

Definitely the duke in his younger days, and a fair-haired, gray-eyed woman who must have been his duchess. They were both gazing straight at me—at the artist who had painted them—Reginald with a trace of a confident smile, but the woman with a delicate, pensive sort of gravity, as if she felt that smiling wouldn’t be appropriate. He was standing, but she was seated on what looked to be a garden bench, her hands resting on the shoulders of not one boy but two: the first a toddler with an unmistakable blue stare; the second an older child, probably around five, and fair like his mother.

She didn’t really resemble me the least bit. I couldn’t imagine what the duke had been going on about.

I studied it through half-lidded eyes, picking out the details, how roses bloomed pink and cream in the foreground. How the clouds above their heads looked stormy, and the wedge of sea in the far back was more of a suggestion of color and shape than anything literal.

Toddler Armand held something in his hand. A key, it looked like …

I’d stay for just a moment. I’d close my eyes for only one minute. Then I’d return to the party.

...

He found her in the study. He hadn’t even known he’d been searching for her until he opened the door and there she was, relaxed in one of the chairs, her head tipped back and her hands in her lap, very much asleep.

The bracket clock on Reginald’s desk ticked away the seconds, six, seven, eight, as Armand remained at the doorway, taking her in. Then he stole inside his father’s sanctum, closing the door carefully behind him. Making as little noise as possible, he settled into the chair closest to Eleanore’s.

What was it about her, he wondered, that made her so impossible to ignore? Little orphan girl, proud skinny waif, with secrets and music inside her that filled him with a crazed combination of exhilaration and fear. Like morphine pumping through him, but sharper than that. Not muddy. She’d made it as clear as could be that she didn’t even like him, but still Mandy found himself thinking of her and fantasizing about her so often it was stupid. He was stupid.

Yet here he was yet again. Because she was here and, for whatever the hell reason, he couldn’t stop wanting to be near her.