“Yes, Mrs. Westcliffe,” they chorused as one, sweet as sugar.

There were seven of them. They smiled seven identical smiles, and the message behind each was identical, as well. It read: bloodbath.

The giggling at a table of younger girls across the chamber sharpened into laughter. The headmistress threw them a frowning look.

“Lady Sophia. I will leave it to you to make the round of introductions.”

“Yes, Mrs. Westcliffe,” responded a flaxen-haired, glacier-eyed young woman who clearly was used to being cast in the lead. She stood, revealing a frock of rose chiffon that matched the color in her cheeks to an uncanny degree. She aimed her frightening smile straight at me. I bared my teeth back at her.

Lady Sophia knew her game. Her lashes lowered, demure. “You may rely on me, Headmistress.”

“So I presumed. Enjoy your breakfasts. Oh, and, Lady Sophia, may I ask also that you escort Miss Jones to the chapel when the meal is concluded? She is unfamiliar as yet with the school grounds.”

“Of course, Mrs. Westcliffe.”

“Thank you.” She gave a nod to the table. “Ladies.”

“Goodbye, Mrs. Westcliffe,” chirped the chorus, precisely on cue.

We all watched as she clipped toward the laughing table. As soon as she was out of hearing range, I felt Sophia’s ice-blue gaze return to me.

“Eleanore, is it? That’s quite a mouthful of a name for someone so …”

“Plain,” sniggered the girl in the chair next to her, round-faced and bug-eyed, with oily, wavy black hair escaping its bun.

“I was going say penniless,” countered Lady Sophia smoothly. “But as you like, Mittie. Oh, Eleanore, this is the Honourable Mittie Bashier, of the Doyden Bashiers, of course. And on down the table we have Lady Caroline Chiswick, Lillian St. Clair, Beatrice Hart-Stewart—the Hart-Stewarts, undoubtedly you’ve heard of them—Stella Campbell, and Malinda Ashland. Ladies, Eleanore … dear me. It appears I’ve forgotten your surname already. Smith, or something like that?”

“Call me anything you like,” I answered, pulling out my chair. “I certainly understand how someone with such an abnormally tiny head would struggle to remember even the most undemanding facts. It must be quite a burden for you.”

There was a collective intake of breath. I reached for the platter of bacon and toast nearest me. My fingers trembled only a little as I picked up the silver serving tongs.

Bitch, snarled the beast in my heart, and it might have meant me.

“My,” breathed Lady Sophia, after only the barest moment of suspension. She sank gracefully back into her seat. “How nearly effortlessly you managed that. Hardly any spittle! Let us beware, girls. It appears the mudlark has claws.”

I swallowed my bite of buttery toast. “Claws, and more.”

“Indeed. I’m sure all the passing sailors and whatnot admired your pluck, Eleanore, but here,” she lifted her teacup and took a sip, staring straight ahead, “we abide by rules you will find quite unfamiliar. We are, after all, daughters of the civilized class, nothing like your own.”

“What an interesting definition you must have of the word civilized.”

Lady Sophia’s lips formed a derisive curl, but before she could respond, a handbell was rung from the teachers’ dais. Girls began pushing back their chairs.

“Time, ladies,” called out Mrs. Westcliffe, still holding the bell. Her tone stretched high and thin; she knew she was attempting to herd cats. “Off to services! Miss Faraday! Miss Turner! Put down your spoons, thank you very much. Yes, Miss MacMillan, I see you there. Walk on. Walk, I said. We are gentlewomen, one and all. We do not rush, but let us not keep the good reverend waiting!”

My tablemates had nearly all left. Mittie smirked at me before moving off; Sophia paused to dab her mouth with her napkin, then offered me her shark’s smile. “A pity you arrived so late. I do hope you had enough to eat.”

“Yes, quite.” I smiled back at her.

...

The lovely thing about brown, and about brown twill in particular, isn’t merely that it doesn’t show dirt. It also disguises grease spots quite well.

Although I admit the pockets of my skirt did smell suspiciously like bacon until I thought to rinse them out again.

...

The morning sky had brightened into blue velveteen, and, surely only because a pair of teachers strolled behind us, Sophia and her minions let me tag at their heels out of the school and across the green to the chapel.

The sun felt warm on my head, a pleasing heat after the stony-cool inside air. My shadow strode long and rippling over the grass, lapping at the edges of the others, never quite cutting in.

I was deliberately lagging behind. I could not seem to stop gawking up at the castle.

I supposed us to be now on the opposite side from my tower; nothing around me looked familiar. I couldn’t see the bridge to the mainland or anything of the sea. In fact, I could no longer even hear it and wondered how large the island could be.

There was no question that Iverson itself was truly massive, enormous dun stones scrubbed pale near the top and blotted with lichen and moss along the base. It went on and on, a big squatting hulk of limestone, gripping its solitary fist of land fast against all comers.

The grounds seemed velveteen, too, perfect as a painting, with clean-cut grass angled sharply around flower beds, tidy shrubs and roses and fruit trees, all precisely arranged. Even the hedges bore the brunt of human design: I realized that they were shaped as animals, all of them, giant rabbits and lions and unicorns scattered about. Everything contained, everything pruned and clever, until the rough woods took over, real nature at last, encircling us.

I caught sight of Mr. Hastings on his knees by one of the beds, a spade in hand. Then the winds turned, fingering through my hair, and that was when I heard Jesse. His music.

I missed a step, glancing all around me. One of the girls a few paces ahead—Malinda? Caroline?—gave the girl next to her a poke with her elbow.

“Oh, my,” she said, loud enough to carry. “Look there, Mal.”

So the elbower was Caroline. Malinda slapped her back with a slim hand.

“Stop it!”

“You know you’re desperate to see him!”

The entire cluster of girls slowed, allowing me closer. Past their shoulders I glimpsed him at the distant brink of the woods, loose-shirted and fluent He breached a hill and strode toward Mr. Hastings without glancing over at the bunching mass of us. Sunlight kissed him from head to toe; he was a figure of splendid radiance.

“Jesse’s your beau, Malinda!” crowed Lillian.

“Yes!” That was Beatrice, bright and malicious. “Come to pay a call!”

“Stop it, I say! Stop it, all of you!” Malinda’s voice had taken on an edge of panic. “He’s not deaf and mute! He’ll hear!”

“If only he could speak to you! He’d tell you about how he wants to whisk you away to his horrible little cottage!”

“And have his way with you!”

“And marry you and have lots and lots of little mute babies, just like him!”

“Jesse’s not mute,” I said, before I could stop myself.

I had put my foot in it, it seemed. All the girls paused and turned to me. Malinda’s cheeks were red as apples; Sophia arched a single plucked brow.

“What did you say?”

I decided to plunge on. “He’s not mute.” It occurred to me belatedly that mute might be their private code for something else—dirty or forbidden or so savory for a stable boy—but Lady Sophia only raised the other brow.

“And you know this because, what, in your sole night here, he’s already spoken to you?”

“Yes,” I said.

Sophia released a melodic laugh, one that everyone but Malinda immediately copied.

“Impoverished and a liar,” Sophia said to them, and shook her head. “Dear me. Not a propitious start for you, Eleanore.”

“I’m not—”

“Jesse Holms doesn’t speak,” interrupted Lillian. “Not to you or to anyone else. It’s why he can’t sign up for the war. Even the Tommies won’t have him. He’s simple. Don’t you understand?”

“Perhaps she’s simple, too,” suggested Mittie.

Sophia turned around, linking arms with Malinda. “A perfect couple, then! Cheers to them!”

I stood there and let them leave. I moved again only when the teachers behind me caught up and shooed me onward.

Before I entered the chapel, I threw a look over my shoulder at Jesse. He was seated alone on the grass where Hastings had been, watching me with a hand held to his eyes to block out the sun.

...

Sunday services were cold. Later on, that was mostly what I remembered. The pews were hard; the chapel was cold. The vicar was roughly two hundred years of age and he spoke slowly—slowly, with biting clear elocution—about warfare and chastity and virtue, somehow eventually entangling the three. By the time we were dismissed, the tips of my fingers felt numb.

I wanted outside again. I wanted to feel the sun again.

I wanted to see if Jesse was still there by the bed of flowers, free of Sunday lectures, illumed with light.

He wasn’t. Only students dotted the green now, girls spreading out in spokes from the chapel door. Most seemed headed back to the main entrance of the castle. A few wandered in groups the other way, toward the gardens.

I thought of the orange in my room and trailed after the castle girls. Perhaps I could sneak it out in my blouse. There had to be a private place somewhere out here where I could sit in the sun and eat in peace. Maybe an arbor or a meadow in the woods.