no rule against letting common-born boys take the exam. Not expressly. It wasn’t like he was overthrowing the monarchy by giving them the chance to try. After all, the academy reserved three places each year to admit late students, and after taking on the military history master’s nephew, two late places still remained unfilled. But the trustees were in the other room, waiting to convey their dour disapproval.

The trustees! In all the excitement of his daughter’s return, Lord Winter had forgotten the hour.

“Wait here,” he instructed Frankie. “I’m late to meet with the Knightley trustees, and they’ll likely hand me my head on a platter, but you and I aren’t finished with this discussion.”

“We aren’t?” Frankie queried, raising an eyebrow. “Because I can continue this talk on my own, thanks. ‘Oh, Francesca, you’re such a disappointment. Oh, Francesca, you’re running out of schools to be kicked out of.’ Believe me, Father, I’ve heard it all before.”

Lord Winter resisted a very strong urge to sigh. “Just wait here,” he instructed, striding purposefully toward the dining room and pushing open the vast carved doors.

“Terribly sorry, gentlemen, but something unexpected came up,” Lord Winter said, taking his place in the only empty chair at the large round table.

“That’s quite all right, Anthony,” Sir Frederick said merrily, helping himself to another cup of tea.

But the others didn’t share Sir Frederick’s outlook. In fact, the looks on their faces were quite sour indeed.

“Come now, Lord Winter, what is the meaning of all this?” A particularly wizened old man asked, slamming a newspaper onto the table so forcefully that his teacup rattled in its saucer, sloshing cold tea over the side.

“Really, Lord Winter, what were you thinking?” another ancient gentleman asked, banging the table with his fist so that his teacup trembled in its saucer.

“I was thinking,” Lord Winter said, raising a hand for silence, “that the times are changing, and if we’re not careful, Knightley could very well become a relic of the past. Look how few countries have held on to their history of training knights.”

“Or held on to the notion of polite society at all,” the man with the newspaper muttered to the gentleman on his left.

“This isn’t about other countries,” Sir Frederick put in. “It’s about progress. You can’t stand in the way of progress, gentlemen. I fully support Anthony’s decision to admit a few common students. In fact, I’ve thought for some years now that Knightley could do with widening its applicant pool. Diversifying and all that.”

“Next thing, he’ll suggest we abolish the aristocracy, like Mors did in the Nordlands,” muttered the man with the newspaper again to the gentleman on his left.

“This isn’t about the Nordlands, Lord Ewing,” Lord Winter said sharply. “Truly, it isn’t. You greatly throw off the proportions of what we’re trying to accomplish. I’m not saying that we do away with our class system, but merely that you allow this one opportunity for a few worthy commoners to better the lot they’ve been cast. Surely even you can’t see any harm in that.”

“You’d understand where Anthony is coming from if you’d met the boy from Midsummer,” Sir Frederick put in.

“Ah, yes, that ghastly servant we’ve taken as a pupil,” Lord Ewing said, drumming his fingers on the newspaper.

“He speaks five languages with remarkable fluency, and they kept him in the kitchen washing dishes,” Sir Frederick said. “What a waste of talent! He’d be there still if I hadn’t let him take the exam. And that ‘ghastly servant,’ as you call him, managed to earn the highest score that we’ve seen in five years.”

A few of the men seated around the table exchanged glances; they’d heard that some servant had passed the exam, but they’d never dreamed that the boy had beaten every other student at Knightley.

But still, one could always be counted as a fluke. What would people think if they let more commoners into the academy?

“Everyone is so sensitive toward change these days,” Lord Winter pointed out. “But have you ever stopped to think that this might give people hope that the turn of the century is nothing to fear? That it may, in fact, bring more good than harm?”

“I still don’t like this,” Lord Ewing conceded. “But so long as these common boys score well on our exam, I propose we see what happens when they actually attend Knightley. If they succeed, then perhaps you men might be right about letting anyone take the exam next year. But if they fail, this year’s ‘progress,’