ceiling till she bumped it with her head. The knock surprised her and she reached up, rubbing where it hurt, and then her foot slipped free and she was dangling one-handed, fifteen feet above the hardwood floor.
Frances yelped. Lord Bell jerked around and banged his fist upon the table. One of the table leaves jumped and hit Nicholas’s jaw, and Molly weakened at the sound, losing her purchase on the shelves. Nicholas stood and clasped his mouth, bloody at the chin, and Molly fell from the bookcase, her petticoats and hair fluffing up around her.
Lord Bell tried to catch her but she crashed through his arms and hit the floor hard, knocking out her wind and battering her hip. Frances, in her fright, had fallen backward in the doorway, ghastly white with vivid red hives around her neck. Molly scrambled to her side. Frances held her close until she finally got her breath, and she was just about to cry when she remembered Nicholas and pushed away, running across the room to see his wounded mouth.
Lord Bell caught her elbow.
“I’m sorry, m’lord,” Frances said, wobbling to her feet. “It was all my fault. We were running in the garden.”
“You were not to go running in the garden,” Bell said. “You were to keep her calmly occupied while Nicholas was studying.”
“Yes, m’lord, I’m sorry, sir. As I said, it wasn’t her. I allowed it and I chased her. She was frightened of the chase. She didn’t mean to climb—”
“I did!” Molly shouted. “Let me go!”
“Return to the garden,” Bell said to Frances. “I will summon you when Nicholas’s lessons are complete.”
“M’lord—”
“Now,” he said, squeezing Molly tight enough to bruise. “Close the door behind you.”
Frances nodded with a curtsy that was virtually a swoon. Tears clung like little bubbles to the governess’s eyes, and then she left and shut the door with the gentlest of clicks.
“Nicholas is bleeding!” Molly said.
Her father cocked an eyebrow and looked toward her brother. He was startled by the sight, glancing back and forth as if the siblings were deceiving him, but Nicholas’s mouth was genuinely bloody.
“How—”
“It was you!” Molly said. “You struck the table and it jumped!”
Nicholas confirmed it with a quick, sharp nod.
“I would not have struck the table if you hadn’t climbed the shelves,” Bell said.
“I didn’t mean to hurt him!” Molly yelled and tried to free herself.
Bell gripped harder. “Show me your mouth,” he said to her brother.
Nicholas approached him.
“Take away your hand—a split lip, nothing more. Let me see your teeth. Ah,” Bell said.
Molly wilted at the sight. Her brother had lost a fragment of his upper left incisor. Molly pinched herself as fiercely as she could and started crying.
Bell turned to her and said, “See what your unruliness has wrought.”
“Nicholas, I’m sorry!”
“No,” Bell said, looking at her brother, who for one bright second had regarded her with sympathy. “She mustn’t be forgiven. She has injured you and injury requires proper justice. Think upon your lessons. Lex talionis. You have seen it in the Book of Light, as well as in the histories of clans and ancient kings. Even our own common law demands equality of recompense for certain types of crime.”
Molly sobbed and shook her head, knees buckling underneath her.
Nicholas faced their father with a grave, princely dignity. “A thief would lose his hand.”
“Yes,” Bell said.
“A man who killed his neighbor’s ox would have to pay an ox.”
“He would.”
“And if a rider dropped his reins, distracted by a bellman, and trampled a child in the street,” Nicholas said, “should the bellman himself be trampled, or the bellman’s own child?”
Bell hesitated briefly with a flicker of his eyes. “One should never drop the reins. The rider is to blame.”
“Then you should lose a tooth,” Nicholas told his father. “It was you who lost control in a moment of distraction.”
Bell straightened up and answered with a grin: half a dozen of his pale beige teeth, neatly ordered. “I have told you more than once you have a future at the bar.” He offered Nicholas a handkerchief, immaculately white and monogrammed B. “Still, she must be punished,” he continued, looking down at her. “Tell me, Molly: did Frances start the chase or was it you?”
“It was me.”
“Then Frances lied.”
“No.”
“She either chased you or she lied. Which is it now? The truth.”
“That isn’t fair!” Molly said, twisting free with her heart beating quicker than a bird’s.
“Very well,” Bell said. “I will hold you and Frances equally responsible. Unless you choose to bear the total punishment