I honestly wasn’t used to seeing my own reflection. It was with a little jolt of surprise that, when I bent my neck to stick another pin into my hair, I saw a corner of a girl doing the same nearby.

I dropped my hands, curious, and picked up the frame. Yes, there I was. Hair of indeterminate color—but at least I’d gotten it up into its roll—eyes of indeterminate color. Eyelashes, eyebrows, reddish lips. Complexion, not the perfect peachy silk of a debutante but something more like … like stone, really. I tipped my head this way and that, critical. My complexion was probably my best feature, I decided, mostly because my skin was unblemished and uniformly marble pale.

I returned the glass to its place. I looked exactly like what I was, a slum girl from the city, where hearty meals were rare and the sun was a stranger.

I was ready when Gladys gave her next knock. I smoothed my hands along my hair one last time and followed her down the stairs.

...

I heard them before I saw them: high, chattering voices swelling and fading above the unmistakable clatter of flatware against china. The doors to the dining hall were open as we approached. I glimpsed a space deep and wide with pastel plastered walls and yellow spears of sunlight falling in precise angles from windows unseen. Chandeliers glittered with crystal. Tables gleamed with food. And girls in gowns of every hue were seated in chairs along the tables, rows and rows of rainbow girls, some beaded, some ruffled, gobs of lace.

As Gladys led me closer to the entrance, the vivid colors and increasing noise reminded me of nothing so much as a flock of parrots, swept into the castle to dine upon kippers and tea.

I would learn later that this confusion of colors was unique to the weekends at Iverson. For every other day of the week, we all wore the same uniform in the same style, crisp white shirtwaists paired with long, straight, dark-plum skirts and black-buttoned shoes. No doubt then we resembled a rather stilted colony of penguins, milling here and there in our ladylike shortened steps.

Gladys paused by the doors, and so did I. She seemed disinclined to take me forward, and as I wasn’t particularly inclined to go forward I merely stood there, allowing the voices and the delirious aroma of hot fresh breakfast to wash over me, looking at all those elite-of-the-empire girls and wishing I was anywhere, anywhere, else on earth. Even Moor Gate.

I dropped my gaze to the folds of my skirt. I’d accidently chosen the one with the rip in it, after all. They were both plain brown twill; we’d all worn brown at the orphanage, because it didn’t show dirt.

The toes of my boots stuck out, light and dark with scuffs.

“Miss Jones,” said a voice right in front of me.

Mrs. Westcliffe. No tear in her gown. The tips of her black leather pumps shone like glass against a discreet pleated hem.

I lifted my eyes.

“Late again,” the headmistress noted, with that pinch to her mouth.

I glanced back quickly at Gladys, but she’d vanished without a word.

Thanks ever so much. You bony cow.

“I beg your pardon,” I mumbled. I had the dismal feeling I was going to be using that phrase quite a lot in my time here.

“Breakfast begins at precisely eight-thirty every morning. Do make a note of it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mrs. Westcliffe sighed. “Very well. Let’s find your table, shall we? Seating is assigned for all meals, barring teas. Follow me.”

I did. And as soon as I took my very first step into the hall, all the girlish, parroty chatter choked into absolute silence. I suppose that was the moment the other students realized I wasn’t merely some disgraced scullery maid popped out of uniform, but instead someone who was going to be seated at a table, which meant—horrors!—one of them.

By my fifth step, a new sound had taken over the hall: the hiss of a hundred whispers escaping cupped hands, punctuated with giggles. It rose with every group we passed, heads turning, and by then Mrs. Westcliffe had apparently recognized her mistake, for her back grew very stiff and her heels began to strike the floor as hard as castanets.

I weighed at least three tons. Three tons of sluggish lead and shame clunking step by step in my scruffy orphan boots into the sumptuously decorated hell that was this dining hall, and what a terrible wonder that the ground did not crack apart and swallow me whole.

We ended up before a table that had a conspicuously empty chair at the far end. The students filling all the other seats gazed up at us with sparkling, hungry eyes.

“Good morning, ladies. May I introduce to you Miss Eleanore Jones, late of London. She will be in your tenth-year classes with you. I trust you will all bid her a very gracious Iverson welcome and will do your best to ensure that she feels quite at home with us.”

“Yes, Mrs. Westcliffe,” they chorused as one, sweet as sugar.

There were seven of them. They smiled seven identical smiles, and the message behind each was identical, as well. It read: bloodbath.

The giggling at a table of younger girls across the chamber sharpened into laughter. The headmistress threw them a frowning look.

“Lady Sophia. I will leave it to you to make the round of introductions.”

“Yes, Mrs. Westcliffe,” responded a flaxen-haired, glacier-eyed young woman who clearly was used to being cast in the lead. She stood, revealing a frock of rose chiffon that matched the color in her cheeks to an uncanny degree. She aimed her frightening smile straight at me. I bared my teeth back at her.

Lady Sophia knew her game. Her lashes lowered, demure. “You may rely on me, Headmistress.”

“So I presumed. Enjoy your breakfasts. Oh, and, Lady Sophia, may I ask also that you escort Miss Jones to the chapel when the meal is concluded? She is unfamiliar as yet with the school grounds.”

“Of course, Mrs. Westcliffe.”

“Thank you.” She gave a nod to the table. “Ladies.”

“Goodbye, Mrs. Westcliffe,” chirped the chorus, precisely on cue.

We all watched as she clipped toward the laughing table. As soon as she was out of hearing range, I felt Sophia’s ice-blue gaze return to me.

“Eleanore, is it? That’s quite a mouthful of a name for someone so …”

“Plain,” sniggered the girl in the chair next to her, round-faced and bug-eyed, with oily, wavy black hair escaping its bun.

“I was going say penniless,” countered Lady Sophia smoothly. “But as you like, Mittie. Oh, Eleanore, this is the Honourable Mittie Bashier, of the Doyden Bashiers, of course. And on down the table we have Lady Caroline Chiswick, Lillian St. Clair, Beatrice Hart-Stewart—the Hart-Stewarts, undoubtedly you’ve heard of them—Stella Campbell, and Malinda Ashland. Ladies, Eleanore … dear me. It appears I’ve forgotten your surname already. Smith, or something like that?”

“Call me anything you like,” I answered, pulling out my chair. “I certainly understand how someone with such an abnormally tiny head would struggle to remember even the most undemanding facts. It must be quite a burden for you.”

There was a collective intake of breath. I reached for the platter of bacon and toast nearest me. My fingers trembled only a little as I picked up the silver serving tongs.

Bitch, snarled the beast in my heart, and it might have meant me.

“My,” breathed Lady Sophia, after only the barest moment of suspension. She sank gracefully back into her seat. “How nearly effortlessly you managed that. Hardly any spittle! Let us beware, girls. It appears the mudlark has claws.”

I swallowed my bite of buttery toast. “Claws, and more.”

“Indeed. I’m sure all the passing sailors and whatnot admired your pluck, Eleanore, but here,” she lifted her teacup and took a sip, staring straight ahead, “we abide by rules you will find quite unfamiliar. We are, after all, daughters of the civilized class, nothing like your own.”

“What an interesting definition you must have of the word civilized.”

Lady Sophia’s lips formed a derisive curl, but before she could respond, a handbell was rung from the teachers’ dais. Girls began pushing back their chairs.

“Time, ladies,” called out Mrs. Westcliffe, still holding the bell. Her tone stretched high and thin; she knew she was attempting to herd cats. “Off to services! Miss Faraday! Miss Turner! Put down your spoons, thank you very much. Yes, Miss MacMillan, I see you there. Walk on. Walk, I said. We are gentlewomen, one and all. We do not rush, but let us not keep the good reverend waiting!”

My tablemates had nearly all left. Mittie smirked at me before moving off; Sophia paused to dab her mouth with her napkin, then offered me her shark’s smile. “A pity you arrived so late. I do hope you had enough to eat.”

“Yes, quite.” I smiled back at her.

...

The lovely thing about brown, and about brown twill in particular, isn’t merely that it doesn’t show dirt. It also disguises grease spots quite well.

Although I admit the pockets of my skirt did smell suspiciously like bacon until I thought to rinse them out again.

...

The morning sky had brightened into blue velveteen, and, surely only because a pair of teachers strolled behind us, Sophia and her minions let me tag at their heels out of the school and across the green to the chapel.

The sun felt warm on my head, a pleasing heat after the stony-cool inside air. My shadow strode long and rippling over the grass, lapping at the edges of the others, never quite cutting in.

I was deliberately lagging behind. I could not seem to stop gawking up at the castle.

I supposed us to be now on the opposite side from my tower; nothing around me looked familiar. I couldn’t see the bridge to the mainland or anything of the sea. In fact, I could no longer even hear it and wondered how large the island could be.

There was no question that Iverson itself was truly massive, enormous dun stones scrubbed pale near the top and blotted with lichen and moss along the base. It went on and on, a big squatting hulk of limestone, gripping its solitary fist of land fast against all comers.

The grounds seemed velveteen, too, perfect as a painting, with clean-cut grass angled sharply around flower beds, tidy shrubs and roses and fruit trees, all precisely arranged. Even the hedges bore the brunt of human design: I realized that they were shaped as animals, all of them, giant rabbits and lions and unicorns scattered about. Everything contained, everything pruned and clever, until the rough woods took over, real nature at last, encircling us.

I caught sight of Mr. Hastings on his knees by one of the beds, a spade in hand. Then the winds turned, fingering through my hair, and that was when I heard Jesse. His music.

I missed a step, glancing all around me. One of the girls a few paces ahead—Malinda? Caroline?—gave the girl next to her a poke with her elbow.

“Oh, my,” she said, loud enough to carry. “Look there, Mal.”

So the elbower was Caroline. Malinda slapped her back with a slim hand.

“Stop it!”

“You know you’re desperate to see him!”

The entire cluster of girls slowed, allowing me closer. Past their shoulders I glimpsed him at the distant brink of the woods, loose-shirted and fluent He breached a hill and strode toward Mr. Hastings without glancing over at the bunching mass of us. Sunlight kissed him from head to toe; he was a figure of splendid radiance.

“Jesse’s your beau, Malinda!” crowed Lillian.

“Yes!” That was Beatrice, bright and malicious. “Come to pay a call!”

“Stop it, I say! Stop it, all of you!” Malinda’s voice had taken on an edge of panic. “He’s not deaf and mute! He’ll hear!”

“If only he could speak to you! He’d tell you about how he wants to whisk you away to his horrible little cottage!”

“And have his way with you!”

“And marry you and have lots and lots of little mute babies, just like him!”

“Jesse’s not mute,” I said, before I could stop myself.

I had put my foot in it, it seemed. All the girls paused and turned to me. Malinda’s cheeks were red as apples; Sophia arched a single plucked brow.

“What did you say?”

I decided to plunge on. “He’s not mute.” It occurred to me belatedly that mute might be their private code for something else—dirty or forbidden or so savory for a stable boy—but Lady Sophia only raised the other brow.