chapter VI

I WOKE UP WITH KITTENS ALL OVER MY FACE. I RAISED a hand to brush them off, but they turned out not to have any legs or tails. My uncle the mad duke was sweeping swathes of velvet over me, cheerfully urging, “Get up, get up—have some tea and tell me which one you like best.”

I pulled the blankets up around my neck. The swathes were attached to several large bolts of fabric, which a nervous shop assistant was holding while the duke tried them against my face. I looked around for Marcus, but he, thank god, was not there to see; only Betty stood by, patiently holding a cup of tea. I seized it from her and drank, and said, “My sword!” I had put it away dirty last night. Blick, blick, blick, as Venturus would say. I’d be ages getting the rust out.

“Never mind that,” my uncle said. “Just tell me which one you like best.”

“I like them all,” I said, playing for time while I tried to wake up. There was a fire in the hearth, and the sun coming through the thick old windows was mid-afternoonish. I remembered coming home in the thin light of dawn, my uncle a dead weight in the sedan chair beside me. He’d had his fill of the red-haired artist and a number of other stimulants, besides. There’d been no moving him without two hefty footmen. I’d tumbled into bed without a thought for anything other than how soft it was.

“Well, you’re not having them all, just one.”

“One what? You shouldn’t be here,” I groused. “I’m not even dressed.”

“Don’t be prudish. You can defend yourself perfectly well. You proved that last night. I am very, very pleased. Also relieved. I’m making you a present: a lovely velvet cloak. Made to your measure, with room to grow. Now, which do you like best?”

I clutched at the nearest velvet, and to my shame I started to cry. It was unbelievable. I had almost killed a man last night, and now I was going to have the cloak of my dreams. And my friend Artemisia had been forced in a crowded ballroom, in her beautiful lavender gown.

I T’S NOT TO BE BORNE.” LADY FITZ-LEVI PUT HER HANDS on her breast. “Really, Fitz, it is intolerable.”

“Agreed.” Her husband shifted his chair closer to the fire, and picked a spot of egg off his vest. “Something must be done.”

“Indeed.”

“I can hardly bear it.”

“Terrible.” Her husband shook his head in annoyance. “What on earth was she thinking of, running off like that? A young lady betrothed, and to such a place. It’s a wonder she wasn’t set upon by rogues of the vilest kind.” His lady nodded. “Of course, Ferris had no business taking her there. A grown man like that, helping her in a schoolgirl prank. I thought he had more sense.”

“It was she, my dear, who lacked sense. I’m sure she just twisted Ferris round her little finger, as she always does. She got in over her head, and now she’s sorry and wants to call off the wedding. Well, I’m not having it. She’ll take the consequences of her folly and make us proud in the end, and that is that.”

“I saw those flowers he sent this morning; man’s besotted.”

“He surely must be. She’s a lucky girl and doesn’t even know it. Refusing her food like that. I’ve tried all morning, but I cannot talk sense into her.”

“Well, girls have their humors. We cannot force her to eat.”

“Do you think so?” Nervously his wife twisted her lace fichu in her ringed fingers. “They always forced me to eat. Boiled carrots. I hated them.”

“I think she’s a bit old for boiled carrots,” said her husband. “But you’re welcome to try.”

“She’s a bit old to be carrying on like a baby! Maybe boiled carrots is what she deserves.”

“Why don’t you make her something she particularly likes? A nice cake, or something.”

“She refused her toast and chocolate; am I to treat her like an invalid? No, indeed. She must know that I am very displeased. All she will say is that she wants you to challenge Lord Ferris.”

Lord Fitz-Levi snorted. “Why would I want to do that? Ruin the wedding and ruin her name at the same time? And ruin our highest ally in the Council of Lords? I’m counting on him to help Robbie to a good post this year. What a lot of fuss over nothing.”

“That’s what I told her. Do you know, I think we should move the wedding up? They’ll have to work harder on the gown, but it will be worth it. Oh, she’ll make a lovely bride!”

T HE DUKE TREMONTAINE PERSONALLY SIGNED THE order for his niece’s new garment, all three yards of it, silk lining and tassels and all. He signed it with a flourish, and picked up his next piece of business, ignoring the opening of the study door, since he knew perfectly well who it was.

“Are you happy now?” the Ugly Girl said. “Your niece is the talk of the town.”

“How would you know?” the duke asked, amused. “You don’t get out much.”

She held up a cheap sheet of paper, as cheaply printed. It was a rude cartoon of a tall, thin, unhappy-looking man and a bosomy girl with a sword pointed upwards; the words underneath were: “Oh, no! My Tool is useless, I must find a Girl to do the Work for me!”

He took the page from her, and held it up to a candle. “Don’t let her see it. And if she does, don’t explain it to her.”

“What about you? Don’t you mind?”

The duke singed the edges of the page so that they were evenly crisped all round. “About this one more than any of the others? Why should I? I’m a popular figure. They like doing my nose.” He turned it around again; the lowest letters, which named the printer and engraver, blackened away. “Alcuin’s not the first of my discards to try something like this: nasty drawings, imprecations on my manhood. Horrible, isn’t it?” he said cheerfully. “Do you think I should have him killed, or what?”

“You’ve already subjected your pretty friend to a fate worse than death, haven’t you?” she said peevishly. “Let’s leave it at that. What I want to know is, are you through with the girl, or just beginning?”

“I didn’t know you were so fond of her,” the duke said.

“I’m not. It’s a theoretical question. I’m interested in the way your mind works—or doesn’t work, depending.”

“Do you mean: she’s done her trick, now I should find some nice nobleman and marry her off? In that case, no, I’m not done with her. Besides, she’s company for Marcus. He needs more friends his own age.”

T HE FIRST LETTER REACHED ME THE NEXT MORNING. It was addressed to the Lady Katherine at Tremontaine House, and had clearly passed through several hands, not all of them clean. The sealing wax was scented, and the loopy handwriting was in violet ink. But there were spots on the paper where tears had made the ink run, and the letters sloped downward across the page.

Dearest Friend, it read. I am beset. I am without hope. My parents Know All, but my woe means nothing to them. They are monsters and tyrants. They want me to marry him, still. I will die, first. You understand. You are the only one who does. I will never forget your kindness to me. Do not try to visit me. I am a prisoner here. But if you can contrive to send a line or two of simple hope to me in my wretched misery, it will speak more than volumes of insincere verse from less noble souls than yours. I hope this letter finds you well. I will bribe the underhousemaid with my last year’s silk stockings to bring it to you from your own—

Stella

I stuffed it in my pocket when Marcus came in. Of course he noticed.

“From your mother?” he said.

“No. You know that’s not allowed.”

“I don’t care.” He studied his nails. “I’m your friend. I’ll help you, if you like.”

“I don’t need help, thanks.”

My friend took a step backwards. “I guess not. After that swordfight, and all. The duke’s pleased, anyway. Do whatever you want; you could fill your room with apes and parrots, and he’d only ask if you wanted to feed them oranges.”

“I don’t want parrots,” I said. He did not look happy. “Do you want to play shesh?” I asked, partly to make him feel better, and partly to distract him from the letter.

“Not really.”

“Well, then…do you want to hear about my swordfight?”

“Dying to tell me, are you?”

“Well, who else am I going to tell?” I was dying to tell someone, after all. It was my first real fight, and I had won! I almost wished that Venturus were still around, so I could tell him. Marcus lacked expertise and enthusiasm, but at least he would listen. I decided to ignore his mood and continued ruefully, “Betty will only start going on about how I should have seen St Vier in his heyday or something; besides, I want to get it all clear in my head before I have to run through it for Phillip Drake so he can tell me everything I did wrong.”

Marcus wasn’t interested in the subtleties of my swordplay, but he was very enthusiastic about the results. He’d disliked Alcuin more than most, and utterly approved of his public humiliation at the Rogues’ Ball. “You’ve got a real future, Katie,” he concluded approvingly, “in hitting irritating people where it hurts. No wonder the duke is pleased with you.”

He didn’t ask again about my letter, but then, it wasn’t the only one I got. Sabina actually wrote to thank me for providing such wonderful entertainment at her party, and did I want to do it again for a private event? Two people offered me jobs as a guard, and a theatre asked if I would be interested in entertaining crowds between shows. The duke’s private secretary, Arthur Ghent, offered to open all my letters and take care of the crazy ones for me. But I didn’t want him to see what was coming to me, because I was expecting another one soon from Artemisia.

I had written her back saying:

Stella—

To live is to hope, and while we breathe, we hope and live. (That was from the book.) Though I serve another, I am yours to command. (So was that; it was a line of Tyrian’s, but I liked him sometimes better than Fabian. He had sense.) Be brave, be strong, and know that you are ever in the thoughts of your faithful—

KT

Getting it delivered to the Hill without any of my friends on the duke’s staff knowing about it would be tricky. In the end, I went out on the streets of Riverside and picked the hungriest kid I could find.

“Watch it, pal,” he said, and I said, “You!” because it was the one who had tried to rob me that first day in the snow. He had nerve, even if he didn’t have much sense. His name was Kevin, and I gave him two coppers to carry my letter to Artemisia’s maid, with the promise of five more if he came back with a ribbon to prove it had gotten there.

It was a lavender ribbon. I tied it around my wrist under my shirt, as a token not to forget.

A FTER A FEW DAYS, ARTEMISIA’S PARENTS WERE AT their wits’ end.

“I am at wits’ end, Fitz,” his lady said to him for the third time that hour. “She’s showing no sense whatsoever.”

“Seems simple enough,” her husband repeated. “Easy for her, really. She’s already agreed once to this marriage. She just has to do it again. Simple.”

“It’s not as if we forced her into it, is it? We let her choose for herself, and she chose Lord F.”

“Certainly she did.” Lord Fitz-Levi examined his neckcloth in the mirror. It had held up remarkably well under the morning’s stresses. “All this fuss over a little cuddle in the dark.”

“They were, after all, betrothed.”

He gave a final tug to put it in place. “She’ll settle down once she’s married, god love her.”

But their daughter seemed to have suffered a sea change. She spoke wildly, most unlike herself. She had no wish to go out, she said, lest she encounter him. She refused even the most tempting food, and would not try on her wedding dress, although it was magnificent. There was talk of a physician, or a trip to the country, and they put it about that she was down with the grippe. No one but her maid noticed the purple inkstain on her middle finger.

G entle Friend,

Do not believe anything they say of me. Not even if you hear the wedding is going forward. If it does, it is without my consent. They say I am to blame. I do not understand how that could be. Men are supposed to protect women. And when they do insult them, their fathers and brothers are supposed to rush to their defense, not call them horrible names and laugh at their distress.

How I envy you. Your uncle may be mad, but at least he lets you fight back.

The anguished,

Stella

I replied to her at once:

L ady Stella,

I am not so gentle a friend that I am not filled with righteous wrath on your account. By no means hearken to the voices of those who say it was your fault, because it wasn’t. Any more than it is my fault that I have to learn the sword and wear funny clothes. They are bigger than we are, and older and have more money and can make us do things we don’t want to. Remember when we met at my uncle’s ball? I thought you were so brave and elegant and daring, and you were, too. I wished I could be like you.

I have a new cloak now. It is moss green figured velvet with gold tassels and a silk lining called moth’s wing. I wish you could see it.

Your family is wrong, that’s all. Don’t get married to him, whatever you do.


I looked at our two letters, sitting side by side. He lets you fight back. What would I do in her place? Well, that was the wrong question, because I would never be in her place. Thanks to the duke, no one like Lord Ferris was ever going to want to marry me. Did that mean my uncle was protecting me? If someone violated me, would he have them killed without question? I bet he would. But did that mean he cared, or just that he was crazy and bloody-minded? How could Artemisia’s parents love her and not believe her now?

Oh, it was hopeless. I wasn’t Artemisia, and she wasn’t me.

I liked the way Artemisia saw me as a heroic swordsman. Was St Vier heroic? He was, in his way, as much a legend as The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death. What would he say about Artemisia? He’d probably say she shouldn’t have been there in the first place without knowing how to defend herself, and he was probably right. But what did he know about it? He’d always been able to defend himself. He’d probably never been to a ball in his life, and if he had, he didn’t know what it was like to hope you were pretty, and that people would like your dress and ask you to dance…. What did he know? What did any of them know?

Of course her father and brother were hopeless. They didn’t know, either.

I did.

I picked up my pen again.

T he insult is not to be borne, I wrote. If neither father nor brother will rise to your defense, then the lot must fall to one who, however unworthy of the position, is eager to stand as your champion. Not only for your own sake, but for that of all ladies misprised. What, after all, am I doing here, anyway? To what end my skills, if not for this? I wear your ribbon, and will avenge your wrong. And woe to he who stands in my way!

Your loving friend and staunch defender,

KT

But don’t worry, I added in postscript. I’m not telling anyone.


I sealed it with candlewax and went looking for Kevin to deliver it. He was eager for the work. “So am I, like, your new guard or something?” he asked. “I’d make a good guard.”

“You are my private messenger,” I said. “It’s very confidential.”

“Huh?”

“Secret. Go and return within the hour, and I will have another task for you. Now, make it snappy!”

Then I went and found Arthur Ghent and asked the secretary a lot of intelligent questions about the Council of Lords and its officers: the Crescent Chancellor, the Raven and the Dragon, and all the rest. He was pleased that I was taking such an interest in government. “Would you like to visit the Council Hall someday?” he asked. “His Grace’s attendance is, ah, spotty, but I usually know when he’s going to take his seat. You could accompany him, and watch it all in action.”

“Thanks,” I said.

But I wasn’t going to wait that long. It was a bright, clear day. I dressed warmly, and strapped on my good sword and dagger, and waited for Kevin to come and take me to where the Council of Lords met across the river.

I had never crossed to the East Bank before. It was in the oldest part of the city, the part built by the old kings and queens that had ruled before the Council of Lords deposed them. Kevin didn’t know anything about that; his sense of the place was based entirely on where he had or had not gotten into food or into trouble. The docks and warehouses were especially fertile grounds for these reminiscences, but as we came up upon the Old Fort and finally to Justice Place, he ran out of narrative.

He wasn’t stupid, he just didn’t know about anything. I decided to instruct him, since it distracted me from being nervous and might do him some good. “These are very historic buildings,” I told him. “The Council Hall was once the Hall of the Kings—see those heads carved all along it? They’re carvings of the old kings.”

“I hate kings. We always kill the king on Harvest Night—throw him in the fire, and he burns up like this—blam!! If I saw a king, I’d kill him dead. What are you doing here, anyway? You gonna kill someone?”

“Stick around and find out. But make yourself scarce for now, so nobody sees you. I’ll pay you when we get back to Riverside.”

Kevin faded back into the buildings’ shadows, and I was alone watching the great doors of the Council Hall remain resolutely closed. My fingers were cold. I bought some hot chestnuts from one of the vendors that scattered the plaza, and that helped some, although they turned dusty in my dry mouth. At last a bell rang, as I knew it must. Servants and secretaries started coming out the door, and then carriages began pulling up along one side of the plaza, to carry their masters home.

And there he was on the steps. It wasn’t hard to recognize Lord Ferris from the secretary’s description. There might be more than one tall, handsome middle-aged man with black hair streaked with silver, but there was only one with an eyepatch. Arthur Ghent had neglected to mention that his mouth was cruel. At least, I thought so. He was talking to another noble, waiting for the carriages to come round. I took a deep breath, and walked boldly up to them.

“Lord Ferris?” I asked, and he nodded. “Um, Anthony Deverin, Lord Ferris, Crescent Chancellor of the Council of Lords of this city and this land, I challenge you.”

He looked down his long nose at me. “Whatever for?”

“I’m not sure you want your friend to hear.”

The other man blinked and laughed. “Good lord! It’s that chit of Tremontaine’s! My valet told me about it. Were you at that famous ball, too, Ferris?”

“Ask your valet,” Ferris retorted.

“What can you have done to offend Tremontaine this time?”

“What can one do not to offend him?” Ferris drawled. His friend laughed, but the Crescent’s look on me was fierce for a moment. “Come, young lady,” he said with smooth civility, “let us discuss this matter out of the cold.” I followed him back up the shallow steps of the Council Hall. At his nod, the guards drew aside. Lord Ferris led me into a small room, wood-paneled like the Riverside house, with a small fire just dying in the hearth. “Now then,” he said, “what is this nonsense?”

“It’s not nonsense. I challenge you.”

“My dear.” Lord Ferris unpeeled his gloves from his hands and held them to the fire. “Please tell your uncle that this descends well below the annoying to the merely pathetic. If Tremontaine has a quarrel with me, let him say so himself, and not send a girl to do his business for him.”

“It’s not his quarrel. It’s on behalf of someone else.” Ferris tilted his head inquiringly. I did not like looking at him, knowing what he’d done. I found it hard to speak the crime out loud or say her name. “A friend of mine. You forced her. Against her will.”

“You know nothing about it.” But he didn’t sound so smooth now.

“I know that honor has been violated. I know you did it, and that it has gone unpunished. On behalf of Artemisia Fitz-Levi, I demand satisfaction. I challenge you to combat in the place and time of your choosing, with what champion you will, until honor is washed clean with blood.”

Ferris laughed, and I hated him. “The girl is not without family. She has a father. She has a brother. If honor has been violated, as you so quaintly put it, it is their business, indeed their duty, to call challenge on me.”

“But it isn’t their honor, sir. It’s hers.”

He went on as if I hadn’t spoken, “And have they come after me with swordsmen? They have not. Indeed, I hope to be married soon. So you just run along.”

I was so angry I wanted to cry. I swallowed my tears. “It’s hers. Her honor, not theirs.”

“You don’t seem to understand,” Lord Ferris said. “It is not the duke’s business to interfere in this. Whatever strange notions he holds about women—and if your situation is an example of them, I hope you will not take it as an insult when I say that they are very strange indeed—” He lifted a hand against my interruption. “Stop just a moment and think. You’re an intelligent girl. I mean you no harm. Why should I? Your uncle, the Duke Tremontaine, is a dreamer and a lunatic. His treatment of you should tell you that, if nothing else. My dear, I know you’re in a difficult situation. A poor relation, he’s got you where he wants you, and no fault of yours….” I let the insults go by. A good swordsman doesn’t pay attention to words in a fight. Lord Ferris turned his head to look me full in the face with his one good eye. “But I am here to tell you that if you persist in this, you’ll only make fools of the lot of us.”

“The challenge stands,” I told him. “Artemisia’s the only one who can call it off now, and I bet she won’t. You could, I suppose, try going down on your knees and begging her forgiveness. I’m not sure it would work, but you could try. Otherwise, name the time and the place, and look to your honor and your sword.”

He said, “How quaintly old-fashioned. No, my dear, it is you who will withdraw the challenge. There will be no time and no place, and we will not speak of this again.” He did not wait for my answer, simply pulled on his gloves and opened the door to the little room, saying with the practiced heartiness of someone who is always telling people what to do, “Now, you are going to walk out of this building and back to Riverside and tell your uncle what I said. And there will be no more of this nonsense.”

The sun was very bright. I walked stiffly across the expanse of Justice Place, not looking behind me. It was my guide who caught up to me.

“You didn’t kill him,” he accused. “I was sure you were gonna kill him.”

I said, “I wish I had.”

L ORD FERRIS STROLLED WITHOUT HASTE TO WHERE a knot of noblemen awaited carriages to take them home to a hot dinner. “Trouble, Tony?” Philibert Davenant asked. “I heard there was something like a challenge.”

“Something like.” Ferris smiled. “Only a joke, that’s all. Just more madness from poor Tremontaine.”

His friends nodded. In recent years few of them had not been touched by some slight or folly of the duke’s.

“Someone should do something,” grumbled old Karleigh, and Ferris said, “Perhaps someone should.”

I TOOK KEVIN DOWN TO THE KITCHENS WITH ME TO see whether anyone would feed him or give him a real job. If he ever learned to shut up, I thought he’d make a good guard or footman or something.

“Bread and cheese,” the undercook told me, “that’s all you’re getting at this hour, with a host of starving scholars coming tonight that always expect the best, with hardly any warning, and woe betide us if they don’t get it, too! He’s more particular about his scholars than about his ladies and gentlemen.”

At the other end of the long kitchen table, behind a stack of cabbages, beets and half-plucked fowl, someone made a choking noise. It was Marcus, coughing on a crumb from a large meat pie, or possibly his bowl of soup. I grabbed his soup bowl and offered it to Kevin.

“Hey!” Marcus protested.

“You don’t need it.”

“I do need it. I’m growing. I need my strength. Arthur Ghent says so, and he’s got five brothers, he should know.”

He was growing, it was true. “Marcus,” I asked, “what about you? Do you have any brothers?”

“All thinking men are my brothers,” Marcus said loftily.

Kevin lowered the soup bowl from his face for a moment. “I ain’t your brother, pal.”

“You can say that again.” Marcus examined him. “Where’d you pick this one up?”

“Same place as you,” Kevin cheeked him, and called him a name.

Marcus shoved back his bench. He rose towering above the scrawny Kevin. “Give me my soup back.”

“Make me.”

It looked as if he would, too. I could not believe it. “We are not starting a brawl in this kitchen!” I hissed at them both.

Marcus shrugged and drew back. “Have you checked your pockets, Katie? I would if I were you.”

Kevin put down his soup and raised his hands. “I never did! You think I’m stupid or what? Not with the duke’s own, never, I swear.”

“Oh, honestly!” I huffed. “He was helping me, Marcus, to keep me from getting lost, that’s all.” I didn’t like lying to him, even indirectly. But I wasn’t ready to tell anyone about the challenge to Lord Ferris, not even Marcus. It was Artemisia’s secret.

“I’m sure he was. But what do you think he does for a living, when he’s not helping you cross the street?”

I stared hard at my friend. He reminded me of a farm dog when someone’s on his territory. “I can guess,” I said. “But it’s none of my business.”

“You think he’s only a pickpocket? Not likely. Guess again.”

“It’s none of my business,” I repeated doggedly. “And it’s not very polite to talk about him in front of him like that, as if he weren’t really there.”

“Yeah,” Kevin jeered. “Where was you raised, fella, in a ditch?”

Marcus grabbed his collar. “Out,” he said. “Now.”

“You kids are all outta here, right now!” The senior cook descended on us like the wrath of the storm god. “You think this is a schoolyard, or what? Out—or do I need to call Master Osborne?” Master Osborne was the steward. He had a lot of time for Marcus, who made his life so much easier by explaining what the duke really wanted, but you wouldn’t want to risk getting on his bad side. Master Osborne was the one who decided how often your sheets got changed and how much firewood was in your room. “There’s work going on here; someone’s gonna chop you up instead of an onion, you don’t yield space this minute!”

While Marcus was busy placating the cooks and I was busy avoiding him, Kevin disappeared with the soup bowl and a handful of beets.

S O THAT WAS WHY MARCUS STILL WASN’T SPEAKING to me. I didn’t have much to say to him, either. Around the duke and his people, Marcus was always very poised and subtle; I’d never seen him downright rude before. To be fair, he’d lived in this house a long time, and he wasn’t going to learn manners from my uncle. But I saw no reason for him to be so mean to some poor starving Riverside kid. He’d been edgy ever since my fight at the Rogues’ Ball. Had he guessed that I was keeping secrets from him? If he was my friend he would ask me himself, not take it out on a boy I was trying to help, wouldn’t he?

I don’t know how long this would have gone on if Lucius Perry hadn’t made one of his regular visits to the Riverside house.

I got out of the way just in time. One of the servants was guiding him down the hall to my uncle’s bedroom, and I was coming the other way, and I realized that meeting Perry here after the events of the Rogues’ Ball would be more awkward than I could bear. So I grabbed the nearest doorknob and ducked inside, which was not very swordsmanly of me, but swordsmanship is not made for awkward social situations.

I turned, and there was Marcus, sitting at his shesh board, wrapped in a quilted silk robe. “You should knock first,” he said snarkily. “Where were you raised, anyhow?”

“Look, I’m sorry,” I babbled, “but it’s him and I forgot to tell you but I know who he is now!”

He put the piece he was holding carefully down on the board. “How intriguing.”

“I’m going to kill you,” I snapped. “I know how, and all.”

“One blow, straight to the heart…if I have to hear it one more time, I’m going to kill myself, don’t bother. Who’s in the hallway?”

I inclined my head toward the duke’s bedroom.

“Alcuin?”

I couldn’t resist a smile. “Lucius Perry.”

“Who the hell is Lucius Perry?”

I told him.

Before I had even finished, Marcus was dressing to go out. “Rope,” he said. “This time, we’re going to get over that wall.”

“What on earth for? We already know who he is.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I thought you were worried about your friend and him.”

“It turns out he’s her cousin, that’s all, I already told you. What he does with his spare time is his own business.”

“Or ours.”

“Or the duke’s,” I said primly, remembering my uncle’s admonitions.

“It’s the duke’s business only if we want it to be. But we don’t. What do you bet His Lordship doesn’t even know about that little house?”

“So what? It’s just a regular house, Marcus. If we were going to follow Lucius Perry to Glinley’s House of You-Know-What, that would be something.”

“Next time,” Marcus said, pulling on his boots, almost breathless with excitement. “Oh, Katie, can’t you see it? Your Perry is a nobleman who lives all these different lives, and nobody knows about all of them, not even Tremontaine. We’re the only ones; we’ll be the only ones who’ll have all the pieces.”

“I don’t want to hurt him,” I cautioned. After what I’d witnessed in the kitchen, I wasn’t sure I knew Marcus as well as I thought. “I mean, if you were thinking of extortion or something….”

“Don’t be silly.” Marcus pulled his boots snug. “I just want to know. Don’t you?”

W E WERE NEITHER OF US VERY BIG, BUT SOMEHOW these past weeks Marcus had gotten taller than I. He was walking so quickly that I had to break into an undignified trot to keep up. “What’s the hurry?” I panted as we toiled up the sloping street across the river.

“Are you sure you remember the house? I want to get there before him. I want to see him come in, see what he does.”

We had a brief dispute about which alley it was, and then we recognized the cherry tree limb sticking out over the back wall of the house—it was definitely cherry, I could tell, now that it was showing signs of budding—so we knew we were in the right place. We did clever things with the rope and the branches, and then it was really pretty easy for us to skimble up and over the wall with hardly any whitewash on our legs.

It was a smallish garden, nicely laid out with little stone paths running between bushes and herbs that had been cut back for the winter, and patches covered with straw that would probably be flowers or strawberries. The back room of the house had tall windows that looked onto the garden. The tall bushes against the wall gave us a perfect spot for hiding, and a perfect view of the room and its occupant.

It was a woman close to my mother’s age, with a strong face and auburn hair that looked like it had been carefully dressed in braided coils and a chignon that morning, but turned into a bird’s nest by the succession of pens and paintbrushes she was pushing in and out of it. Her eyes were very wide set, and her lower lip was so full that it looked as though someone had taken a dessert spoon and scooped a little out from under it. She was not plump, but she was large, somehow, like a heroic stone sculpture. And even under the loose smock she wore, I could see she had quite a bosom.

The woman sat at a long table, staring intently at a bowl of fruit. Then she pulled a paintbrush out of her hair, licked the tip, dipped it into some paint and drew a few lines on the outside of a white bowl.

“What on earth is she doing?” Marcus hissed in my frozen ear.

“Painting china.”

“Is she a painter, then? Is that all he’s doing here, getting his portrait done?”

“This is different. It’s very stylish; everyone wants painted china. Even ladies do it sometimes.”

We watched her work on the bowl. It was turning into the petals of a flower.

“Is she a lady, then? She doesn’t look like one. She’s got paint on her smock, and her hands are dirty.”

“Maybe it’s his sister. Let’s go,” I whispered to Marcus; “I’m cold.”

“Put your hood up,” he murmured. “Wait ’til he comes.”

I shifted uncomfortably. The shrub was scratching my neck. The woman looked up, and I was sure she’d heard me, but it was the maid coming into the room, and after her came Lucius Perry.

As soon as the maid had left with his cloak, Lucius Perry leaned over the woman and kissed her. He drew the pens and brushes out of her hair one by one, and he put his fingers into it and pulled it way out over her shoulders. It was very thick and lush, the woman’s hair. You could tell from the way he was holding it that it weighed a lot. He kissed her again, and started to draw her toward the couch by the window.

“That’s enough,” I said, trying not to sound nervous. “I’m going.”

“Shh!” said Marcus. “Do you think we can get closer? I want to hear what they’re saying.”

“They’re not saying anything, Marcus. Just Ooh, ahh, my darling or something like that.”

“They’re talking,” he said. “She’s annoyed with him.”

“Maybe she’s just found out about Glinley’s.”

“Not that annoyed.”

“So what is she saying?”

S HE WAS SAYING, “I’VE GOT TO GET THAT LAYER DONE before it dries, Lucius. Really.”

“Paint it over.” Lucius Perry was untying her smock with one hand, and feeling underneath it for her bodice with the other. “Later. I’ll help you.”

“Goodness. Such enthusiasm.” Pulling herself up on one elbow (and pulling her chemise back over her shoulder), she ran a finger along his lips. She felt his hands loosen, his mouth part a little, and she smiled. “What have you been up to, to be so inspired?”

“Paying the duke his fee.”

“I should have known. You always like that.”

He lay back in blissful reflective surrender, and in a flash she’d leapt off the couch and over to her work table.

“Teresa!” Lucius Perry leaned precariously off the edge of the daybed, reaching across the studio to her. “Don’t leave me like this!”

“Go to bed, Lucius,” she said, and picked up a brush. “I mean, to real bed. I’ll come to you there when I’m done.”

“When?” he asked plaintively, lying back and staring at the ceiling.

“What does it matter, when? You’ll go right to sleep, I know you. You’ve been up all night at the one place and half the day at the duke’s already.” She saw him arranging himself in an attractive position, left arm flung carelessly over his head, right-hand fingers curled against his thigh. He stretched like a cat in the weak winter sun, so that everything he had to offer was clearly defined.

Teresa took a sip of tisane that had gotten good and cold. “Now, listen,” she said. “This afternoon Helena Montague is coming to take chocolate. She’s one of the few still speaking to me; I cannot disappoint her. And she’s asked me for six matching bowls.” She curled her brush around the rim of this one, making an azure border. “I showed her my work last time she came, and very admiring of it she was. Claimed it was quite the prettiest she’d ever seen, and wanted a complete set, if I wasn’t too busy.” Teresa smiled dryly. “I assured her I was not. I can’t imagine what she’ll do with them; give them to her hatmaker or something, I suppose, but she’s going to pay me good money, and that’s what matters.”

“Good money?” Lucius said dreamily. His body had gone slack, as if he were talking in his sleep, which he practically was. “I’ve got money.”

“I’m sure you’ve got plenty. Buy yourself a new hat.”

He closed his eyes at last. His face was suddenly as still and holy as a king’s on a tomb. “Marry me.”

“Not this year,” she said. “Maybe next. Come on, wake up,” she said without looking at him, still working on her bowl. “Don’t you want to be able to marry a respectable woman? If Helena Montague finds you lolling on my daybed looking like a model for the Oak God’s lover, whatever is left of my name will go up in smoke like bonfire wishes.”

“Marry…”

“Mmm-hmm. Well, at least they dry quickly. Though I suppose I’ll just have to keep giving her more cakes until they do, so she can see. I should have started these last week, but I got a new idea for my first act. I do wish writing paid as reliably as painted china; it’s so much more entertaining. But the public is fickle, and the theatre such a quagmire…. I’m sure Sterling is cheating me on the gate. I wish I could do something original. I wish I could do comedy, but I’m just not—Lucius!” She said it so loudly that the two listening in the garden heard her voice bounce off the walls. “Wake up and go to bed. And send Nancy in to do my hair; it’s come all undone.”

W E WATCHED LUCIUS PERRY GET UP AND DRAG HIMSELF out of the room. “It’s sooo exhausting,” Marcus whispered, “working for the duke.”

I giggled. “Now what?” I said.

“Back over the wall, Katie, quick! We have to see if he goes out the front.”

“If he does, we’ll follow him, right? Maybe he’s got another girl somewhere else.”

“Two girls! And don’t forget the pony….”

We barely made it over the wall, and when we had watched the front of the house for long enough (in a not-very-good hiding place next to a house down the street—“Bring knucklebones next time,” said Marcus; “we’ll need to look like we’re playing, like we belong here.”), we went back and wrestled the rope out of the tree. No one set any dogs or guards on us, so we must have been quiet and stealthy enough, though we were so charged up with the thrill of our triumph, I was sure we’d be caught.

Flushed and sweaty and grinning, we stowed the rope away. “And so?”

“Gingerbread,” said Marcus. “It’s traditional.”