hear your feelings on the troubles in Floria,” he said to Molly, who at least had the sense to look at her father for permission. It was not directly granted.
“But we can’t leave Tremendous here alone,” Molly said.
“Perhaps you would escort me to the study,” Graves said, “while your father and the staff see about your horse.”
* * *
“Father sat and listened for an hour,” Nicholas said, “while the two of you talked about horses?”
“General Graves asked him questions now and then,” Molly said. “We also talked about Floria and ocean travel.”
“And then the general left?”
“It wasn’t that abrupt.”
“It must have seemed so to Father. He’s been waiting all week to chew the general’s ear.”
“It’s true,” Frances said, sitting in a rocking chair and sewing silver buttons onto a shirt. “I found him in the night, quarter past three, poring over maps and planning what to say. ‘I have it,’ he said as I was bringing him a sherry. Said the whole war was plain as day, plain as day. He acted right certain that the general would agree.”
“Instead he spent an hour listening to Molly,” Nicholas said, bottling his mirth until his eyes began to pool. He had color in his cheeks, a flush that even the sun, searing every day throughout the hot Bruntish summer, had failed to raise as fully as his sister’s wondrous story. “What happened to Tremendous?”
“Burke and Stevens led him out.”
“How?” Frances asked. “The conservatory leads—”
“Directly to the hall,” Nicholas said. “And from the hall they must have led him—”
“Through the study.” Molly laughed. “The three of us were sitting there, talking over biscuits, when they opened up the door and walked him past the table.”
Frances clapped her mouth, rigid at the thought. Nicholas erupted and his laughter—boyish and ebullient, so at odds with his cadaverous demeanor—tickled Frances’s nerves and set her laughing just as fully. It was worth every penalty their father would decree to hear them both laughing like a pair of giddy children.
“Your poor father,” Frances finally said, sweating from the unaccustomed fun at his expense.
“Bah,” Nicholas said. “He hoped to make an impression. What more could he ask?”
The trio laughed again, louder than before, with the humid little drawing room cushioning the sound. Molly knelt to lay her head upon her governess’s lap.
“Mind the needle,” Frances said.
Nicholas grew preoccupied, losing all his jollity. Molly wondered at her brother’s studious expression.
“Will he still go abroad?” she asked.
“Yes,” Nicholas said.
“And we’ll be rulers of the house.”
“I will be the ruler of the house,” Frances answered. “I hope you treat me kinder than you treat your father.”
“We’ll treat you like our mother,” Nicholas said.
Frances held her breath and put the needle in her cushion. Molly looked at her, assuming she was basking in the sentiment, but Frances and her brother turned their heads toward the door. There were footsteps steadily approaching in the hall, the claps so sharp Molly wondered if Tremendous might have somehow found his way back inside the house.
Her father opened the door.
“Get off the floor,” he said to Molly. “Frances, you may go.”
Molly wobbled when she stood; the sudden rise swirled her head. She had hurried from the study when her father walked outside to see the general into his carriage, and she had done her best—successfully till now—to drive away the fear of what would happen to her horse.
“It wasn’t Tremendous’s fault,” she said, wishing that her voice were not so childishly high. “You always say the rider is to blame if there’s an accident. I was reckless, it was me. I will write to General Graves, apologizing—”
“No,” Bell said, with something like a smirk. He smiled so rarely, the expression was difficult to read and so it scared her, as thoroughly as Nicholas’s laughter had enchanted her.
Bell stepped aside to let Frances out. She slipped around him with a nod. He was curiously blank, refusing to acknowledge the governess but almost, with a lowering of his chin, seeming drained when she was gone and he had shut the door behind her.
Nicholas stood without a sound, eyes fixed upon their father.
“As it happens,” Bell began, “General Graves thinks highly of my powers of authority. Give us a thousand soldiers like your daughter, he said, and the continent is ours. He was jesting, of course, and yet he trusts in my ability to lead, to build a regiment as spirited and strong as I have built our little family. If your intention was to drive him off and keep