classics?”

Henry shrugged. “I don’t see why not.” And then he told Frankie about Professor Stratford and the Midsummer School, the only interruption being when Frankie delightedly shrieked, “He does fall asleep at breakfast!”

“So how about you?” Henry asked, tucking his feet onto the bench and clasping his hands around his knees. “I mean, it’s not the best luck to be stuck at a boys’ school for the year.”

“Nowhere would have me,” Frankie said proudly. “I’ve been kicked out of three finishing schools already.”

“What for?”

Frankie grinned. “See, that’s the problem with people. Everyone’s always too polite to ask what I’ve done. But anyway, Headmistress Hardwicke at the Maiden Manor School for Young Ladies dismissed me over embroidery.”

“Embroidery?” Henry didn’t think he’d heard correctly.

“Madame did say we could embroider the cushions with whatever words we wished. How was I to know she didn’t mean it?”

“What did you write?” Henry asked.

Frankie told him.

Henry choked. “You’re joking.”

“Not at all. And it looked so lovely displayed on a chair in the school parlor.”

“You didn’t!” Henry laughed.

“Well, it worked, didn’t it? No more of those prissy, proper girls who talk only about the weather and their suitors, as if I could care.”

Before they knew it, the sunlight was slanting toward the hedge maze, leaving the bench to cool in the shadows. The sound of the chapel bells ringing startled them both.

“Blast,” Henry cried, standing up and brushing off his uniform. “Did you know the time?”

“Maybe,” Frankie said, grinning evilly. “Loosen up, Grim. Be tardy. Who cares?”

“Have you met Lord Havelock?” Henry asked, gathering his books.

“You mean Count Dracula?”

“He’s head of my year.”

Frankie swore.

“Go! Run like breaking wind,” she called.

“I thought it was ‘Run like the wind.’ ”

“It’s funnier my way,” she said cheerfully.

And if Henry hadn’t already been sprinting back toward his room, he would have agreed.

THE QUEST FOR STRAWBERRY TARTS

Girls are rubbish,” Adam said over supper, dismissing Henry’s story about the headmaster’s daughter. “Trust me, I’ve got two sisters.”

“All they talk about are their gowns and the weather,” Rohan agreed, forking up a mound of mashed potatoes. “And they giggle at everything you say, even if it’s not funny.”

“Well, Frankie didn’t,” Henry protested. “I don’t know. She’s lonely. We should visit her during free hour.”

Rohan dropped his fork.

“Are you mad?” Rohan asked. “You can’t just visit girls. It’s not proper. It’s not done.”

“Yeah, mate,” Adam said. “You need chaperones, and her family has to approve of yours and all that rubbish.”

“Just to visit?”

“You can’t visit girls,” Rohan hissed.

“Fine. I get it,” Henry said crossly, letting the subject drop.

After a late night spent studying military history, no one was in a very good mood the next morning.

Henry swayed sleepily as he bent over his prayer register an hour after sunrise, his eyes red and scratchy. His brain begged for another hour’s sleep, and the lull of the pipe organ made it hard not to give in.

Beside him in the pew, Adam gave a small snort. Henry elbowed him.

“Wake up,” Henry murmured.

“Just resting my eyes,” Adam muttered, slumping lower.

Rohan stepped on Adam’s foot, jolting him awake.

“Thanks, mate,” Adam said, straightening his shoulders.

That morning’s sermon went on for ages. Henry’s stomach, the only part of him that was fully awake, grumbled.

And then, up front, the chapel echoed with a sneeze.

“God bless you, my child,” the priest said, and then returned to his sermon.

Another sneeze. And another.

Everyone looked around, trying to see who was dying of a cold.

Another sneeze.

The sermon had stopped.

Henry, now wide awake, began to grin.

“What’s funny?” Adam asked as the priest resumed his sermon, only to be interrupted once more by a bellowing sneeze.

“Frankie,” Henry said.

Adam and Rohan followed his gaze. Sure enough, with an apologetic grin, Frankie had wrapped herself in a shawl, as though cold. But she wasn’t fooling Henry. He rather suspected that, before embroidery, Frankie had been kicked out of finishing school for sneezing.

Later that morning, in languages, Professor Lingua, a small round man with small round glasses and fingers like fat sausages, frowned at his bookshelf.

“I could have sworn I had twenty-five copies of Novice Latin, not twenty-four,” he murmured. “In any case, we’ll begin with French. I’m sure many of you have already studied Latin and Greek, the backbone of a gentleman’s education, but French—before girls learned it to sound pretty—was the language of politics. And it is still the preferred language by many of our neighboring nations for diplomatic discussions.”

Professor Lingua strutted across the front of the classroom, his sizable stomach swelling beneath his waistcoat.

“Bet you he pops a