“Obvious,” echoed Runny-Nose, pulling out her chair, too.

I had forgotten. I’d gotten dressed and even ensured I’d picked the skirt without the rip, but I had forgotten all about my hair. It hung loose and tangled down my back, and in my haste I hadn’t noticed it at all.

Chloe was shaking out her napkin, her back to me. Snug against the laden table, snug amid her bootlicking friends, she had all the power and she knew it. “Run along, guttersnipe. Your stench is truly overwhelming. I swear, you’re already curdling the milk.”

Blood rushed to my cheeks. I came closer. I placed my hand on her arm.

“Listen—” I began.

I don’t know what I might have done just then. What I might have said. I was angry and mortified and angry that I was mortified, and the darkness in me–magic or dragon or whatever it was–was rising in my throat like a black vicious bubble. It was my power and I was going to use it. But then two separate things happened, and I never got the chance to finish my sentence.

Mrs. Westcliffe walked by, so near her skirts brushed mine.

And Chloe spotted my cuff.

“Why, what a cunning bangle!” she said, in a far louder voice than any of the nastiness before. “Didn’t you think so, Mrs. Westcliffe?”

The headmistress dutifully stopped and turned around.

I made myself still. I made myself swallow the black bubble and keep my hand at my side instead of jerking it behind my back, as I wished to do. It wouldn’t matter that it wasn’t technically a bangle; it was precious and I was poor, and that would be reason enough to raise suspicion.

Yesterday’s brooch might well have been borrowed. Yesterday I had been Cinderella, and the roses pinned to Lady Sophia’s dress hadn’t raised an eyebrow.

Today I was plain cinders again.

“A bangle?” Mrs. Westcliffe moved her hawk-sharp gaze to me.

“I only just noticed it myself,” Chloe said, all innocence. “Rather interesting piece, so modern, especially for an Iverson girl. Of course, since you approved it, Headmistress, I’m sure it’s fine.”

I didn’t wait to be asked. I lifted my hand and allowed the flowers to show against my wrist, gleaming their delicate gold. Mrs. Westcliffe bent down for a better look.

“I was going to bring it to you after chapel,” I improvised. “I didn’t want to bother you before breakfast.”

“Ah,” was all she replied. And then, “Where did you get it?”

“It was a gift.” I turned my gaze to Chloe. “From Lord Armand.”

The effect of this little burst of brilliance was truly gratifying. Her eyes bulged. Her mouth fell open. No sound emerged.

“Oh?” said Mrs. Westcliffe, in a very different tone.

“Yes.”

“Liar!” exclaimed Chloe, apparently unable to stop herself.

“Lady Chloe,” said Mrs. Westcliffe at once, “I’ll thank you to remember who and where you are and maintain a civil discourse.”

“But—he …” She trailed off, biting her lip, her face growing brighter and brighter.

“Ask him,” I said to both of them, to everyone listening—which by now was everyone within earshot. I wasn’t thinking about the consequences of pulling Armand into it or of a single moment to come beyond this one. I was brimming with the confidence of my lie, skating fast and happy on Chloe’s bitter chagrin.

Who’s curdling the milk now?

“He gave it to me during the tea yesterday. I tried to refuse it, of course, but Lord Armand insisted, saying it was a welcome gift and that he would be insulted should I not accept it. And I thought, well, as a guest of the duke, as a student of the school, I could not graciously continue to decline.” I looked straight into Mrs. Westcliffe’s eyes. “Was it the wrong thing to do, ma’am?”

Her head tilted, just slightly. I was mightily aware of being judged, of my words, my sincerity, being weighed. I was a nonentity compared to Chloe Pemington; all the sincerity and credibility in the world be damned, she was a member of the peerage and I a nameless orphan, and nothing would ever change that. But throw in the backing of the school’s noble patron and his son …

“No,” Mrs. Westcliffe concluded at last. “From your description, it appears you behaved correctly, Miss Jones.”

“But—” Chloe clenched her hand into her napkin.

“Yes, Lady Chloe?”

“She didn’t even show it to you before wearing it! She broke the rules.”

“That specific rule applies to jewelry worn with the school uniform. As it is Sunday, and Miss Jones is not in uniform, the spirit of the rule remains intact.” Mrs. Westcliffe gave a nod. “Good morning, girls. Oh, and, Miss Jones. Kindly do put up your hair before chapel.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Another nod, and she was gone.

All through the meal, the girls at my table kept pretending not to stare at the cuff. I didn’t attempt to hide it, nor did I attempt to flaunt it. I acted just as I imagined any of them would, allowing it to slide oh so casually along my wrist as I ate my food, as I sipped from my cup. When a short-lived sunbeam slipped across the table and I reached into it for the sugar, a spray of light dappled my skin and the china bowl like sparks from a bonfire.

All the girls appeared curious, but none of them appeared either especially pleased or dismayed, except for Lady Sophia.

From her place down the table, Sophia looked from the cuff up into my eyes, making certain I noticed. Then she smiled, smugly satisfied, like the cat that’d gotten the cream.

...

Whatever else Chloe cared to insinuate, I did have hairpins. In fact, as luck would have it, I had two in my pocket that I’d stuck in there last weekend, because I’d been bored and restless in chapel and they’d been digging into my nape.

Two were sufficient to hold up my hair—perhaps not as neatly as the other students’, but then again, none of them were of my particularly inferior blood. So who cared?

I had Jesse’s gold and Jesse’s attention, and they didn’t, so who cared?

It saved me a trip to my room and granted me an extra fifteen minutes of delicious breakfast, which is why it was after chapel and well after noon when I finally made my way back to the tower. The clouds were shedding their promised rain, decreasing the temperature by a good ten degrees and tinting any light that seeped into the castle the shade of murky steel. Raindrops peppered every window, as if the wind could not decide in which direction to blow.

I would need my oilskin for the trip through the woods. Magical or not, I’d caught colds before.

Shadows lapped the tower stairs, charcoal over gray. My door was ajar, but I thought nothing of it. Gladys would have been in and out by now, making my bed, straightening my things, likely spitting in my water.

The bed had been made, but the quilts were all rumpled. That’s what happened when someone sprawled atop them, as Lord Armand was when I opened my door. Armand, in a wrinkled shirt and trousers and black woolen socks, his coat and tie and shoes dumped in a soggy heap on the floor. It looked for all the world like he’d been napping.

I stood for a moment without moving, my fingers tight and cold on the knob.

“Hullo,” he said sleepily, rubbing a hand along his jaw.

He’s here in my room, right in the middle of the afternoon. Great God, there’s a boy in my bed in my room—

I came to life. “Get out!”

He yawned, a lazy yawn, a yawn that clearly indicated he had no intention of leaving. In the moody gray light his body seemed a mere suggestion against the covers, his hair a shaded smudge against the paler lines of his collar and face.

“But I’ve been waiting for you for over an hour up here, and bloody boring it’s been, too. I’ve never known a girl who didn’t keep even mildly wicked reading material hidden somewhere in her bedchamber. I’ve had to pass the time watching the spiders crawl across your ceiling.”

Voices floated up from downstairs, a maids’ conversation about rags and soapy water sounding horribly loud, and horribly close.

I shut the door as gently as I could and pressed my back against it, my mind racing. No lock, no bolt, no key, no way to keep them out if they decided to come up… .

Armand shifted a bit, rearranging the pillows behind his shoulders.

I wet my lips. “If this is about the kiss—”

“No.” He gave a slight shrug. “I mean, it wasn’t meant to be. But if you’d like—”

“You can’t be in here!”

“And yet, Eleanore, here I am. You know, I remember this room from when I used to live in the castle as a boy. It was a storage chamber, I believe. All the shabby, cast-off things tossed up here where no one had to look at them.” He stretched out long and lazy again, arms overhead, his shirt pulling tight across his chest. “This mattress really isn’t very comfortable, is it? Hard as a rock. No wonder you’re so ill-tempered.”

Dark power. Compel him to leave.

I was desperate enough to try.

“You must go,” I said. Miraculously, I felt it working. I willed it and it happened, the magic threading through my tone as sly as silk, deceptively subtle. “Now. If anyone sees you, you were never here. You never saw me. Go downstairs, and do not mention my name.”

Armand sat up, his gaze abruptly intent. One of the pillows plopped to the floor.

“That was interesting, how your voice just changed. Got all smooth and eerie. I think I have goose bumps. Was that some sort of technique they taught you at the orphanage? Is it useful for begging?”

Blast. I tipped my head back against the wood of the door and clenched my teeth.

“Do you have any idea the trouble I’ll be in if they should find you here? What people will think?”

“Oh, yes. It rather gives me the advantage, doesn’t it?”

“Mrs. Westcliffe will expel me!”

“Nonsense.” He smiled. “All right, probably she will.”

“Just tell me what you want, then!”

His lashes dropped; his smile grew more dry. He ran a hand slowly along a crease of quilt by his thigh.

“All I want,” he said quietly, “is to talk.”

“Then pay a call on me later this afternoon,” I hissed.

“No.”

“What, you don’t have the time to tear yourself away from your precious Chloe?”

I hadn’t meant to say that, and, believe me, as soon as the words left my lips I regretted them. They made me sound petty and jealous, and I was certain I was neither.

Reasonably certain.

Armand’s smile briefly grew wider, then vanished. His fingers moved back and forth, playing with the dips and peaks of the crease.

“Where did you learn that piece?” he asked. “The one you played on the piano yesterday?”

And there it was again expanding between us, that electric, ill-defined challenge that felt like danger. Or excitement. I knew his question wasn’t casual. He might have been a selfish wretch, but I wasn’t the only one who’d get in trouble if we were discovered. It was Visitors’ Day, after all, and he could have easily cornered me at the tea. If he’d felt it necessary to sneak all the way up to my room to ask me about the song, it meant he didn’t want anyone to overhear.

Perhaps that might give me the advantage.

I remembered how his face had looked when I was finished playing. How white. How shocked.

“Why do you want to know?”

The shrug again. “Just wondering.”

“Really. You’ve skipped your lawn tennis or duck hunting or whisky drinking or whatever else people of your sort do all day, only to come all the way out to the island to ask me about the piano piece. Because you were just wondering.” I pushed away from the door. “Coming here to kiss me would have been more believable.”

“Well, it was second on my list.”

“I’m not intimidated by you,” I said, blunt. “If you’re hoping I’ll turn out to be some pathetic, blubbering little rag-girl who begs you not to ruin her, you’re in for a surprise.”

“That’s good.” Lord Armand met my eyes. “I like surprises.”

We gazed at each other, he on the bed and me by the door, neither of us giving quarter. It seemed to me that the room was growing even more dim, that time was repeating the same ploy it had pulled in Jesse’s cottage, drawing out long and slow. The storm outside railed against the castle walls, drowning the air within. It layered darkness through Armand’s eyes, the once-vivid blue now deep as the ocean at night.