we edged our way out of the salon to the wraparound deck.
To my surprise, the yacht was moving. It was very smooth and very quick; the dock had already receded to the size of a pencil, all the other boats dwindling to the size of toys. A cloud bank had mushroomed up beyond the hills and waterfront homes of the mainland, dove gray near the top, a darker pewter below.
“See those?” Armand gestured to the clouds, sloshing some of the champagne out into the channel.
I nodded.
“And see all the boats still docked? Even the fishing boats?”
I nodded again, uneasy.
“I believe it might rain,” he said.
I had to keep a hand on my hat; all my pins were giving. “Why are we still heading out?”
“Oh, because it’s such ripping good fun.” He took a long gulp of champagne. “Being trapped at sea during a gale because Reggie wants to. What could be better?”
“Armand—”
“Don’t worry. If we sink, we’ll swim back together to shore. We’ll use your bewitching chapeau as a float.”
The nose of the yacht dipped hard, then rose. The wind began a low howl around us.
“I’m not blotto,” he said, in response to my expression. He turned to the railing and chucked the empty flute to the waves. “Not yet, in any case.”
I went to stand beside him. The flute had sunk beneath the surface already, on its way to an eternity of sand and tide.
“That’s good. Because I can’t swim.”
“Why did you go swimming in the grotto, then,” he asked too pleasantly, “if you can’t swim?”
“I wasn’t swimming there. I was smoke, at the ceiling, when you came in. Falling into the water was an accident.”
“You’re welcome,” Armand said.
I refused to ask for what. We both knew.
The clouds built. The yacht nudged farther into the sweep of blue.
“Jesse thought you might have questions,” I said at last.
His smile came sardonic. “Jesse.”
“He thought you might like asking me better than him.”
“Why does he call you Lora?”
I hadn’t expected that, and angled a glance up at him. He was facing the distance still, his profile sharp, his jaw set. The color of his irises exactly matched the far waters.
“It’s just my name.”
“Not the way I heard it.”
I pulled at some loose hair that had blown into my lashes, nettled. “Is that really what you want to know?”
“No, not really. I want to know if you’ve slept with him.”
Oh, if I could be any girl but me. A thousand responses flitted through me, a thousand different things to say, ways to behave. And from the thousand, all I could capture was:
“Why?”
He faced me. He said nothing.
I found, to my dismay, that I could not hold that burning look. I ducked my head and began to remove my hatpins, and when I finally spoke, I made certain my words remained beneath the wind.
“Did you locate Rue?”
“There was no marchioness named Rue listed anywhere in the history of the peerage,” he said tonelessly. “There was no name that even sounded like that.”
Without my hat on, the world seemed abruptly much brighter, and much louder, too. I took hold of one of the brass-fire rails as the yacht gave another dip.
“Have you ever wondered,” Armand said, “if anything around you is really real? What if it’s all made up? What if all this is just my mind playing tricks? Dragons and smoke and bloody gold stars. What if you’re an illusion, Eleanore? Wishful thinking?”
I couldn’t help my laugh. “Do you truly suppose you’d wish for me?”
His lips tightened. He shook his head, squinting out, and I knew I’d said the wrong thing. His knuckles had gone white on the railing.
“I want to show you something.” Still clutching my hat and pins, I pushed back the cuff of my sleeve, lifted my arm before him so that my wrist showed. “Do you see that? That scar?”
Armand tossed the other champagne glass overboard—it whistled end over end before making its splash—then used both hands to bring my arm closer. “No … wait. Yes.” He looked up. “What’s it from?”
I said, very steady, “That’s what happens when you tell other people about the foolish things that live in your head. When you begin to wonder aloud about illusions and reality to those around you, when you have none of the power and they have it all. You become dangerous to them. You’re a threat, even if you’re only a child. We hear the songs. They don’t. But they’re right and we’re wrong, and when they strap you into