no, I won’t join you, and I think that your ideas about the way the world should be are the most unchivalrous thing I’ve ever heard. It’s never right to exclude anyone in order to include someone else. That’s elitism and snobbery and the opposite of everything we’re taught here at Knightley. The Code of Chivalry teaches us to do right by everyone, not to force the world to take on a different shape that looks good from far away but up close is a bleak and utter disaster.”

Henry’s fists were clenched, and his eyes were narrowed, and he couldn’t believe he’d just said all of those things aloud.

“I won’t let this war happen,” Henry said, more calmly this time.

“Oh, really?” Sir Frederick asked nastily. “You and what credibility? Because what I see here are two common little boys who think they’re too good to fight for the Nordlands, who believe in a tired aristocracy because it’s been good to them, and who no one will ever listen to, because this afternoon, I will personally see to it that you are expelled from this academy and that a war with the Nordlands is brought down with swift and sudden force.”

“We’ll find a way,” Adam said. “Professor Stratford believed us.”

“Ah, yes, that gullible tutor of yours. Pity he’s been fired from his last two jobs, was it? Such a credible source.”

Sir Frederick patted his waistcoat pocket and removed a small, glittering charm on a chain—Adam’s necklace.

“Such a pretty little charm,” Sir Frederick said. “I wonder how much this would fetch if I melted it down?”

“Don’t you dare,” Henry said.

At the same time Adam exclaimed, “My necklace!”

“Of course,” Sir Frederick continued, dangling the necklace from his fist, the charm swinging back and forth pendulously, “you could have this back if you changed your mind.”

The look on Adam’s face was one of pure torture.

At that moment, the door burst open, and Lord Havelock stood there, his master’s gown swirling around his ankles, his cheeks peppered with stubble, a horrible sneer stretching over his lips. “I’ll thank you to stop distracting these boys from their detention,” he snapped.

“Come, now,” Sir Frederick said with an indulgent smile. “Surely their detention can wait.”

“Can it?” Lord Havelock asked, his sneer growing so large that it rather resembled a snarl. “And how about your plans for a war with the Nordlands, and your little ambitions to be headmaster? Can those wait, as well?”

Sir Frederick’s face twitched.

“Ah, yes, Frederick,” Lord Havelock continued. “I’ve heard everything.”

Henry experienced a momentary disorientation. He was so used to fearing and loathing Lord Havelock and feeling grateful to Sir Frederick, but now everything was reversed.

“Have you?” Sir Frederick asked nervously.

“You see, I think we have a bit of a misunderstanding here,” Lord Havelock continued, his voice dangerously calm. “I agreed to help you rid the academy of these commoners and of our pesky, idealistic new headmaster, but had I known that you planned to take over this school by turning it into a military command center filled with commoners, to end the Hundred Years’ Peace and go to war with the Nordlands, I would have turned you in to the authorities for high treason and sheer stupidity.”

“Would you really, Magnus?” Sir Frederick asked, and it took a moment for Henry to realize that Lord Havelock had a first name.

“Do not test me, Frederick,” Lord Havelock threatened.

The tension in the room thickened, and the silence that followed Lord Havelock’s threat was ominous indeed.

Despite all this, Henry’s mind whirled to process what he’d just heard. Lord Havelock had been helping Sir Frederick. It had been Lord Havelock sabotaging Henry and his friends after all! It hadn’t been his imagination; it had been real. More real than Sir Frederick playing the role of a sympathetic mentor and confidant, anyhow.

Sir Frederick and Lord Havelock were shouting now. Calling each other horrible names that Henry didn’t think even Valmont would dare to use.

Henry exchanged a glance with Adam. It rather seemed as though, at any moment, it might come to blows between Sir Frederick and Lord Havelock.

And then there was a knock at the door.

Sir Frederick stopped shouting midsentence. Lord Havelock composed himself.

Sounding just like the confidant and friend he had once been, Sir Frederick called, “Who is it?”

“Augusta Winter,” was the haughty reply.

Without waiting for an invitation, Grandmother Winter opened the door and stared reproachfully at the crowd she found inside Sir Frederick’s office.

“The rest of the trustees have arrived,” she said primly, her mouth set in a