“Taking tea is an art,” Harriet began, raising her voice in competition with another clap of thunder. Hell’s bells, what a clamor. Did she hear hoofbeats, or was the back door banging open? It sounded like the confounded apocalypse. She glanced around the room in rising irritation. She was anything but a model of propriety. She still struggled to shackle her tongue when something upset her. The coalman cheating Cook, for example. A nob whacking an apprentice with his walking stick. The prospect of a ruined practice tea. The students had started to wiggle, sensing that Harriet was not paying attention to protocol.

One of the girls sitting at the window gasped. “Oh, golly! Look at that.”

The dowager at the distracted student’s side sprang out of her chair. As the gathering watched on in happy apprehension, the distinguished guest parted the curtains for the entire assembly to behold a jet-black carriage with enormous wheels rolling to a dramatic halt at the pavement. A spume of mud splattered the lacquered red dragons emblazoned on the door panel. A man in a top hat sat behind the carriage window.

“Who is he?” Miss Martout demanded, craning for a look.

“I believe it is the Duke of Glenmorgan,” the dowager said after a pause. “I saw that same carriage pass through Berkshire two years ago when his brother was still alive.”

Harriet turned to question Charlotte, who had half risen, shaking her head in denial.

“But he isn’t meant to arrive until Thursday,” Charlotte whispered in panic. “I wrote it down.”

Harriet rolled her eyes. “This is Thursday.”

Charlotte pushed away from her chair, white as marble. “Assert your authority, Miss Gardner, lest we have anarchy on our hands.”

Harriet clapped her hands. “Ladies, please remain in your places.” That was futile. There wasn’t a single girl left at the tables. “Girls! There is nothing worse than lukewarm tea!”

“You’ll have to come up with a more dire threat than that to control them,” a cheerful voice commented over her shoulder. “A duke will trump a cup of hot tea any day.”

Harriet opened her mouth to reply, but it was too late. The stouthearted Lady Hermia Dalrymple had surged past the students to the windows as if she were a schoolgirl herself and not a widow in her late sixties. To look at her, one would never guess she was as celebrated for her painting circle, which featured half-naked Boscastle men posing as deities, as she was for her place in the family as a beloved aunt-in-law.

“Where is he from?” a younger student asked, climbing onto a chair to see above the other girls peering through the curtains.

“Why is he here?”

“No one has told me, but I saw him first.”

“How could you? He hasn’t even stepped out of the carriage.”

“For all you know, he isn’t even in the carriage.” Harriet strode across the room, snagging a sash here, an elbow there. “That could be his valet or his uncle. Back to your seats this very moment. I shall not tell you-”

“He’s stepping out of the carriage-”

“That’s a lady’s foot, you ninny,” another student noted. “And all those lovely feathers in her hair are going to be soaked and leave her battered like a wet hen before she reaches the front steps. Where are the footmen?”

From where she stood, Harriet could discern neither bird nor beast through the rain washing against the windows. The temperature in the drawing room dropped. Few of the candles had survived the frantic dash of a dozen girls at once. Harriet’s shawl had fallen to the carpet. A furtive shape moved in her peripheral vision. She turned to glimpse Charlotte sneaking toward the door.

“Where are you going?” she asked in alarm.

“I have to change,” Charlotte said quietly, pressing her finger to her lips. “I’ll only be a few moments.”

Change? But everyone looked so fresh, so lovely. Like a watercolor of fairies gathered under a rainbow-before a big nasty storm appeared to ruin the day.

“I know the duke is a distant cousin,” Harriet said in bewilderment. “But I thought he would only be leaving his niece at the academy, and-why do you have to change?”

Lady Dalrymple hurried after Charlotte, agile for a woman of her ample build. “It’s his aunt, you understand.”

“Understand what?” Harriet asked, suddenly feeling like the lone rat on a sinking ship. “Wherever are you going?”

“We have to freshen up, dear,” Lady Dalrymple whispered. “Lady Powlis and I attended school together long ago. I’d never dream of greeting Primrose without putting on a fancier pair of gloves. She notices things like that. Charlotte, you don’t mind if I share your dressing closet for a few moments?”

“Who is going to welcome the duke with all these girls gone wild?” Miss Peppertree, the academy’s senior instructress, a spinster, and a sourpuss, asked in an aggrieved voice.

“Miss Gardner won’t mind,” Charlotte called back distractedly.

Harriet frowned, staring at the academy’s finest shoving one another aside to stand on the highest chair. “I won’t?”

Lady Dalrymple paused to deliver an unhelpful bit of advice before disappearing into the hall. “It’s good experience, dear. One day you might be employed in a grand house and have to answer to a duchess.”

“But in the meanwhile I haven’t the faintest notion what to do with… a duke,” Harriet muttered, feeling more abandoned by the moment. Even worse, she sensed herself to be in trouble. As subdued as her street instincts might be, they rarely failed to warn her when her well-being was at stake. In her experience, people who caused this much bother when they arrived only meant a load of work for everyone expected to please them.

Miss Peppertree propelled her toward the door. “Just be polite and let him guide the conversation,” she said anxiously. “I’d go in your place, but one of us has to remain here to calm the girls down. It is quite clear they are not listening to you.”

Harriet sighed in resignation. The duke, being a Boscastle, would undoubtedly disregard pretension and put her unfounded fears to rest. Lady Dalrymple was probably right. The social experience might prove to be a better lesson than teaching the girls to pour tea without spilling.

The students would witness that the calm reception one afforded a duke differed little from that granted an ordinary gentleman. Harriet had bluffed her way thus far through life. She should be able to pass this minor trial. Besides, the man had not been born who could make her lose her head.

“Wait.” Miss Peppertree clamped a bony hand around Harriet’s wrist. “It is only fair that I advise you to be on your highest guard.”

“He’s only a duke, Daphne.” Harriet pried her wrist from the talonlike grasp. “Good heavens. All this fuss over a person none of us have even met. I shouldn’t have to remind you of what I have dealt with in the past.”

Miss Peppertree nodded unconvincingly, turning to confront what she clearly perceived a less dangerous duty. The drawing room had erupted into chaos. Dames and schoolgirls alike seemed to have fallen under some wicked enchantment. It disheartened Harriet to think that in the end a shove onto the path of holy matrimony mattered more than… a hot cup of tea.

She gave Miss Peppertree a reassuring smile. “I’ll be fine, you silly goose.”

“You don’t know about him, do you?” Miss Peppertree was edging away, a frown of impending doom settling over her thin, pale face.

“What?” Harriet scoffed. “Are you going to tell me that he’s a rake? That all the ladies fall at his feet? You ought to be used to that sort of nonsense by now. I have never known a Boscastle who was a saint.”

“You have never known one who murdered his brother for a dukedom, either,” Miss Peppertree whispered in a dire voice.

Harriet snorted at the warning.

Duke or darling. In her estimation, his grace’s arrival would prove much ado about nothing. He wouldn’t be the first nobleman to be accused of doing away with his brother for an inheritance. That was actually none of her business. What involved her was that he had chosen to darken the academy’s door on the very afternoon she had meant to distinguish herself. To think she had purchased a new frock for the occasion with her paltry savings. The duke would not care.

No doubt he would blow in and out of the school as swiftly as the present storm. He would drop off his ward as casually as the morning post and expect her to be transformed into a proper miss by his next return.

And it might well happen. But not until everyone stopped oohing and aahing and got back to work.

“One more thing,” Miss Peppertree said at her shoulder. “Do you know what he is named for?”

Lord help her. What a time for a history lesson. “Another duke?”

“Not his title-his given name.”

“I shall hardly be on a first name-” Harriet gave a sigh. Far be it for her to spoil Daphne’s small pleasures in life. “Go on. What is his name?”

“It is Griffin.”

Harriet waited a few moments for further clarification. When none appeared to be forthcoming, she released her breath. “Well, I’m glad you told me. I shall bear that in mind when I bring him in from the storm.”

“You have no idea what a griffin is, do you?”

Harriet hung her head. “You have caught me out again.”

“It is a fabled beast.”

She glanced inadvertently at the window. “And here I thought I was greeting an ordinary duke.”

“There is no such thing,” Miss Peppertree said, sounding oddly pleased.

“As a griffin?”

“A sharp tongue will not protect you from the world, Harriet.”

“I know that better than anyone you have ever met.”

Miss Peppertree sniffed. “I admit that when you first came to the academy, I thought you were a hopeless cause. But I have seen you transformed into a living young lady one could almost admire.”