A Thousand Perfect Things

Prologue

January 18, 1857

Lord Nelson’s statue perched on its granite column in the square, but to Edwina Banning it appeared that his shoulders stooped, as though he were weary of the heroic pose. It might have been a trick of the light.

Presently satisfied that the great naval hero was not drooping--and how, indeed, could a statue droop--Edwina tipped her parasol back into place and turned to watch six-year old Anna who was feeding pigeons with her father. The day darkened as a sudden high cloud tented the sky wintry gray. A horse pulling a coach shied in its traces, for a moment disrupting the decorous progression of carriages. Anna’s father pulled her close.

But the grand square with its flags and well-dressed gentlemen--all these lent Londinium a reassuring presence, an everyday glory, well-earned. Scotland was long subdued, the famous naval victory at the Firth of Clyde having united the island after centuries of war. And as to the mystic continent with its troubling ways, it was now possible for traders to reach it in ninety days and never worry about winds or kraken--thanks to that wonder of engineering, the Great Bridge.

Papa, Anna said, pointing at Lord Nelson on his column, the statue is bleeding.

Mr. Banning held his top hat on as he craned his neck to see. Pigeons do make rather a mess, he said.

"But the mess is red."

Edwina Banning turned to look, noting with alarm a red slime oozing down the column. Just as she was trying to imagine how this could be, she stared hard at one of the lions anchoring a corner of the plinth. The metal sculpture opened its mouth in a cavernous yawn. It was said that the iron lions had been cast from Scottish cannons. She had always found satisfaction in that story, and therefore it took her a moment before she entirely grasped that the animals were awake.

They stirred.

As Mr. and Mrs. Banning gaped in stunned denial, blood oozed from under Nelson’s coat and dribbled down the granite column.

Edwina’s lips parted for a scream just as one of the lions--the one facing the church of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields--leapt through the air and landed on a peanut vendor, crushing him to the ground. Then the second lion found its prey: a top-hatted gentleman with a cane. The cane crashed down on the beast’s head, but as the lion was made of iron, it had no effect. The square erupted with shouts and screams. Pigeons flew up in a clatter of wings and demented cooing.

Lord Nelson sagged and fell to one knee, clutching his chest.

The rampage began. The lions rushed to the slaughter, breaking necks with mighty paws and tearing at throats. They did not linger to feed, but turned from one victim to the next, finding their quarry closely packed in the square, though trying to flee. The fastest among them got as far as the steps of the National Gallery before falling.

Mr. Banning yanked open the door of a carriage, and surprised the lady inside by throwing his daughter into her lap and shoving his wife in as far as he could. He jumped inside and slammed the door closed. As terrified horses charged away, their careening carriages in tow, people in the square threw themselves on top of the conveyances, or clung to riding boards.

From the floor of the carriage where she huddled with her mother little Anna whispered, They’re not real lions, though.

Edwina clutched her daughter tightly. They weren’t, they weren’t at all.

But they killed.

It’s terrorism, and straight from Bharata. Lord Palmerston said. They grow stronger, your majesty.

King Albert nodded at the Prime Minister. Bharata and its damned mysticism. He turned to face Arthur Helps, Clerk of the Privy Council. We have traded with the continent for 200 years. Why should their priests of magic decide to turn against us now?

Helps said, It’s the Bridge. We were fine before the Bridge.

And the lions are all . . . dead? The Prime Minister asked.

Yes, Helps answered. It took a full company of Grenadiers, but they prevailed. Threw them into the estuary for good measure.

The king shook his head, muttering, Good God. Forty people torn limb from limb. Nor had it been a proper military attack. It was a damnable convulsion, an intrusion of magic from a land devoid of science, religion or decency.

Helps piped up. It began with the Bridge.

The king sighed. So you have said, sir. On numerous occasions.

Please pardon me, Your Majesty. I only meant--

Yes, the Prime Minister said, crossing a leg and assuming that bland look he had perfected over his long government career. That the Great Bridge causes the realms to mix. But the Bridge also smoothes the way for imports upon which our nation utterly depends. Need I remind you? Lumber, cotton, diamonds, tea . . .

And blood, Helps added.

Blood is always the price of prosperity.

The king flicked his wrist in dismissal. Gentlemen. The Bridge is here. It has been accomplished. Spilt milk to lament it now.

He went on, We must convert them to our way of thinking, and then we shall have peace. He moved to the window of his audience room, hands clasped behind his back, gazing out on St. James Park. My speech to Parliament must be along those lines. Magic would only give way to scientific rationalism when the people of Bharata enjoyed the benefits of education and civilization.

Yes, Your Majesty, came Helps’s tepid response.

King Albert rounded on the man. Well? Out with it. You are our advisor. Let us be advised.

We could sink the Bridge.

The Prime Minister rolled his eyes and crossed his legs in the other direction. The king stared at Helps in high distaste. Sink the Bridge? But it had only just opened!

Part I

A Contagion of Magic

Chapter 1

In the greenhouse cottage, Grandpapa kept the curtains drawn against the winter chill and against watchers in the trees. Tori suppressed the urge to throw open the drapes and casements of the study to freshen the air, heavy with the smell of greenhouse specimens. But she did not want, any more than her grandpapa did, to face the thing in the tree.

Sir Charles’s pen scratched across his notebook, a beloved and familiar sound. He knew how to write with one hand while leaning into the eyepiece of his microscope, a feat Tori greatly admired. At nineteen, she had learned taxonomy, botany, illustration, three languages and the art of preserving plants in a herbarium book. But as for writing while not looking; that she had yet to master.

He glanced up, sensing her gaze upon him.

She tucked back into her illustration of the sweet pea Lathyrus brevis, discomfited to have been caught watching him. They all watched him these days--her parents, her sister, the servants--alert for signs of confusion. He was determined to thwart them, however, and in this Tori was his most staunch ally. It was insufferable for Sir Charles to have his capabilities called into question when science and the Crown had bestowed every scientific honor upon him including a knighthood.

This was why he couldn’t admit that he had seen something very odd in the sycamore tree. It was often there--as it was right now--but just as often it was not. So if one were to alert the household, and if say, Papa came to investigate, it would not look well to have the thing gone.

That the watcher in the tree had returned again today was disturbing. Not because it was likely a magical being, but because it did not seem a neutral magic. That is, it did not seem well-meaning. Not that anyone in Anglica truly understood magic and its workings.

Nor was this the worst of Tori’s worries. It was her grandpapa’s state of health.

She could not deny that at seventy-eight Sir Charles was slipping away from everyday things. Even today, his normally punctilious habit of dress was marred by a stain of morning porridge on his cravat. And worse, at times he lost hold on what year it was--indeed, what decade--and spoke of things long past as though they had just happened. Thus one could never be sure whether he was speaking of things real or less so.

The watcher in the tree, however, that was genuine.

Tori had never before been afraid of magic. True, always before it had been something that intruded in Londinium and centers of commerce, not in pastoral Shropshire, at Glyndehill Manor with its well-ordered fields and orchards. Furthermore, magic was the subject of their current venture, the treatise upon the golden lotus. And since magic was the very theme of their inquiry, it was unseemly to fear it.

Sir Charles took off his glasses, rubbing the profound indentation in his nose. "You might open the window, piari. An inch. No more." She loved that he called her piari--dear, in Bharati, her third language after Latin.

She managed to push the casement ajar without opening the drape.

As she turned back, Sir Charles was regarding her. On either side of him lay the morning’s accumulated herbarium volumes, closing him in like giant bookends. He cleaned his spectacles on his handkerchief, his hands steady, still capable of that lovely script in which he catalogued his herbarium.

"You’ve finished Lathyrus brevis?"

Yes, Grandpapa, roots and all. She was a competent illustrator, but she would much rather do real science. Brevis was a variety of sweet pea Sir Charles had developed; it grew only a foot high, but carried a profusion of flowers. Now it was time to put brevis on the map.

Plucking a pin from the tray, she turned to the wall. Here was a faded, yellowish map, with the world’s two continents placed side-by-side as though mirror images of each other, although their shapes were distinct, with Anglica’s lobed oblong and Bharata’s nearly diamond shape. The world ocean narrowed between the two continents to a mere eleven hundred miles. Tori placed her finger on the spot where the new pin would reside, in the pin-rich environs of Glyndehill Manor, West Midlands, Anglica. She paused for Grandpapa to give her the nod, then stabbed in the pin, certifying that the sweet pea specimen had been properly curated with taxonomy, herbarium sheet and sketch. Tori had begun the pin map as a child, chronicling her grandpapa’s botanical discoveries and neither one of them had outgrown it.

"I don’t suppose I may pin up aureus?"

Leaning in to his microscope, he said--as he had so many times before--We have no sketch.

Scanning the continent of Bharata--its provinces and states demarcated with a child’s colored pencils, Tori knew just where the pin for Nelumbo aureus would go: south and west in the great land mass, in the princely state of Nanpura. There were many pins in the Bharata map. Sir Charles’s old expedition had shipped back four hundred and three heretofore undiscovered plant species, but after fifty years, one botanical treasure still remained aloof from her pin project and from Sir Charles’s highest hopes: the golden lotus.

No sketch.

This summed up the missing prerequisite for a pin in the map: after taxonomy and a real specimen must come the sketch. Grandpapa had named the genus long ago: Nelumbo for species lotus. Aureus for its color. They had, of course, a petal specimen preserved on a herbarium page, but even Sir Charles had never seen an entire golden lotus. He had acquired the petal on his famous Bharata expedition, but had not actually seen a full specimen, the thousand-petaled lotus which--if legend followed fact--was the color of the sun. With most unusual properties.

But we know it exists, Tori persisted. We have a lotus petal as long as my arm. She wanted to say, and it is my map. I have kept it up for fifteen years. I know what every pin signifies and which herbarium book the specimen rests in. The pin should be there.

A pin in a map would not convince the scientific world. Those who believed that science had no room for magic had heaped derision on Sir Charles for even suggesting the lotus existed. But at least here in the greenhouse cottage, couldn’t Tori have it all as it ideally should be?

Grandpapa looked up again and sighed. "The ways of science are exact, piari. If they were not, we would have everyone with opinions, and no one the wiser for proofs. One must show respect for learned traditions, even when turning them on their heads. There are things which one must be careful to couch in the terms of the day, you see. We do not rush into the fray making claims and upsetting all that has gone before."

But surely that is what your monograph will do?

He smiled, making a notation in his notebook. Yes, but prudently. Prudently, as Darwin did with his transmutation of the species.

It befitted the age of science in which Anglica now found itself, and Tori was thankful that religion put no constraints on scientific investigation. Yet people managed to impose an orthodoxy in any case.

From outside, someone called. It was her sister. Jessa always called out, thinking it less intrusive to Sir Charles than a knock on the door. Tori slipped out to intercept her, clunking out the library door and into the greenhouse proper, past the tables of seedlings and jars of specimens too large to compress in sheets.

She met Jessa on the walkway between the greenhouse cottage and the great house.

A visitor! Jessa declared, waving a note. Arriving this afternoon.

Tori felt a crimp of disappointment that she would not have her afternoon free to read The Natural History of Oxfordshire, recently arrived by mail coach. Who?

Captain Edmond Muir-Smith. He’s coming to visit Papa.

Tori vaguely remembered that a Muir-Smith had served under her father in the Pict campaign.

Jessa’s color was high. Mama’s in a tempest, though he’s just an army officer. One to whom I suppose papa will try to marry me off.

With her sister’s recent broken engagement tarnishing her prospects, any eligible male visitor raised immediate interest. How old is this one?

Um. Not old.

For all that Jessa was making light of the visit, her cheeks did have a flush. How not old?

Twenty-eight. A captain in the King’s Company of the fusiliers. Mama says he’s first in line for a baronetcy. Just returned from a voyage to Bharata. Papa says he’s a pleasant looking chap. He dislikes whist but plays backgammon. She finished, And he’s taller than I am.

Tori felt a smile break out. How long do we have to tear apart the closet to find something to wear?

Jessa grinned. Not long enough.

Looking at her sister, younger by one year, Tori could not imagine that she wouldn’t impress the captain no matter what she wore, with her light brown tresses framing a heart-shaped face, and that full figure that neither her sister nor her mother shared, both slender and willowy as they were.

Looking back toward the library, Tori said, I’ll be right up.

Jessa laid a hand on her arm. Mama said perhaps not Sir Charles this time.

Tori bristled. She wished that Jessa would speak up for him, and not always defer to mother whose highest ambition seemed to be avoiding discord at tea.

I’ll just see if he he’d like to stop in to join us. You go on.

As Jessa ran off, Tori paused, glancing up at the roof of the greenhouse cottage over which the sycamore tree loomed. She moved to the end of the path and turned to face the great, spreading tree. The sycamore always managed to gather shadows this time of day. With its flaking bark and patches of dusty green algae it was easy to see in it something that wasn’t there.

Oh, but this time, it was. Her throat went dry.

It perched on a branch quite close to the trunk of the nearest tree. At first impression, it was an owl with bluish purple feathers. Its rotund body was very bird-like, but it wasn’t a natural creature, not with that visage. The face was almost human. A bulbous nose flabbed down the length of its face so that both human and owl aspects were equally repugnant.

Its head rotated around to her. Large eyes, chillingly light-filled, met hers. She backed up a step. It was . . . it had to be, a manifestation of magic. Do not be afraid, she charged herself. Every child learned there was magic in the world, but far away, in the other continent, in Bharata.

She shivered under that maladroit gaze. Sometimes magic killed, Anglics had come to learn. Such visitations from Bharata were called contagions, a term that so perfectly represented Anglic fear of the unscientific. Sometimes contagions presaged a malign event: for example last month’s attack in Londinium, or the disaster in Oxfordshire when the train went off its tracks and went four miles before plunging over a cliff. But that said nothing about magic as a practice, for any endeavor might be turned to horrid purpose by those who abused knowledge. She did not wish to judge the intrusion in the sycamore. But the face . . .

It looked away, as though to prove it had other business. But then, slowly, the head swiveled back in her direction. Her stomach tightened. Oh, it looked at her. Assessed her. She yanked her gaze away, lest its eyes drag something out of her--she knew not what.

Why had it come? Oh, leave us in peace, she wanted to plead, but found herself unable to speak. Backing up, she felt a most unseemly haste to be away from it, and turning, rushed up the walkway. She hurried back through the greenhouse--though with a club foot, such haste was neither very fast nor easy to manage.

In the library she found Sir Charles asleep, stretched out on the window seat.

The curtain was open a few inches. So he had checked outside. She leaned over him to look for herself. As she did so, Grandpapa’s eyes fluttered open. "Daitya," he whispered.

"Daitya? It was a Bharati word. Demon. Daitya, Grandpapa?"

Yes, child. He gazed past her to the draped window. Down to hell. The last kingdom, isn’t it?

Tori looked at him in dismay. No, Grandpapa. There is no such thing.

To be fair, he said, in sudden clarity and looking directly at her, you haven’t been there.

But we are safe at home now, she whispered.

He groaned softly in protest. Looks like a . . .

She leaned in closer to hear him. Like a what? she asked.

"Like one of those . . . you know. Daityas." His eyes slid closed.

Carefully, Tori reached over him and pulled the drape aside.

The shadowy owl had vanished.

Chapter 2

T ori, dear, can you wear the mauve? In the upstairs hall, Tori and her mother had chanced to meet. The mauve gown becomes you, Mrs. Harding said.

The dreadful thing made her look like a giant peony. I haven’t seen it in ages.

Oh, but I laid it out on your bed.

The two women faced off, at odds already and they hadn’t spoken since breakfast. Olivia and Tori Harding were in many respects similar to each other: slender and dark, with wide mouth and a nearly aquiline nose. Of course her mother did not clunk when she walked, there was that difference.

Jessa needs me. Tori turned to enter her sister’s room.

You invited Sir Charles.

Turning back, Tori steeled herself for a disagreeable conversation. He knows we’re having company.

Mrs. Harding frowned. "This is an important acquaintance for your sister. Colonel Harding particularly invited him."

Then our visitor should certainly meet the whole family.

Mrs. Harding’s frown sank deeper, but she refrained from argument, leaving Tori having to be unpleasant all on her own.

Let’s say they get engaged and then Grandpapa suddenly appears at tea in his pajamas. Why not drag out the hidden family all at once?

Jessa threw open the door, standing in her under slip. Tori, are you ever coming? She glanced from mother to sister and back again, falling silent.

Mrs. Harding put starch in her tone. They will meet, but not this afternoon.

Making a pleading face at Jessa, Tori carefully drew the door shut again.

She knew it was best to accept her mother’s edicts since she was famously immovable. But hopeless causes did have their attraction. Must I pretend no one is coming?

My dear, he won’t ask. And if you tell him, he won’t remember. She paused. Do you think this is easy for me?

It was horrible for everyone. But the rest of the family could only see Grandpapa’s lapses. They didn’t devote the time with him to be amazed by what he knew, to page through his herbarium books, to hear his stories of discovery. To acknowledge what remained.

Lowering her voice lest Jessa hear through the door, she said to her mother, The more desperate you act, the more anxious she becomes. Whoever she finds, can’t we just let it happen?

You don’t let things happen. You make them. That is the lesson from Sir Charles’s long career and your father’s. The women of this house do the same.

Tori watched in consternation as her mother retreated down the hallway. A discussion of even such a thing as wardrobe turned so quickly to marriage!

In Jessa’s room she found gowns thrown on the settee, the bed, the chest and the dressing table.

I can’t decide, Jessa admitted ruefully.

You don’t say.

Jessa waved her maid out of the room. We’ll manage, Ginny. To her sister: You had words with Mama about Grandpapa again.

Yes, and with the usual result. She brought the conversation back to Jessa’s dilemma of the gowns, snatching up a cream-colored frock with yellow silk bodice. Try this.

She ballooned the dress over Jessa’s head, and her sister wiggled into it. As they stood in front of the mirror, Tori thought Jessa would make a kitchen apron look fine.

As Tori laced up the back, Jessa asked, Is it too much?

Not in the least. It suits you so well!

An array of opened shoe boxes littered the floor and bed, spilling out slippers in silk and creamy leather. Tori’s own shoes were specially made, thick and black. But she cared nothing for fashion. Her hope was to someday achieve membership in scientific circles; in a learned society. The Linnean, for example, or The Royal Society. Women must someday be allowed into their ranks, but it would come only from a great accomplishment in natural history. And while that might appear unlikely, hadn’t she received her training from the foremost botanist in Anglica?

Mother says you will wear the mauve, Jessa said, still turning to and fro in front of the mirror.

The dark blue, I think.

But it is too plain, surely?

Tori ignored her, searching for shoes that might match Jessa’s dress.

"Perhaps Muir-Smith will prefer you."

Tori looked up from her position on the floor among the shoe boxes. I wouldn’t care if he did. Which he won’t.

Papa says Muir-Smith considers himself quite the naturalist. You’ll have things to talk about.

Well, I’ll speak to him in Latin, then!

After a pause, Jessa said, You mustn’t give up, Tori.

Well, but you know what I want.

Yes. You want to publish papers and collect your specimens.

If they let me.

Oh, but if you do it well, they have to let you.

It was sweet of Jessa to declare herself a supporter, but she had little grasp of the difficulties, first, in being a woman, and second, the controversial subject matter of Sir Charles’s latest hypothesis. She and her grandfather would both be tarred by the same brush if the scientific disciplines balked at it.

The idea goes harder than we had looked for.

The idea, Jessa stoutly recited, that magic can give benefit to science.

Yes. That it is a way of knowing, just as science is, and while they may take different paths, they may each one cast light on the other.

Who could take exception to such a gentle proposition?

Sir Charles’s colleagues, at least a few. Some people take pride in recalcitrance.

Narrow-minded and dreadful old men, Jessa murmured.

It would be mean-spirited to point out that their own family lacked somewhat of an open mind, so Tori only said, Grandpapa says we must be sure to frame the argument so that it is the more readily accepted. The same as Darwin did with religion and science, befriending the archbishop, who is now a firm champion of the scientific approach.

Jessa eagerly concurred with this pleasant summation. That’s it exactly!

Tori held up a pair of butter-yellow shoes. These will suit, I think.

She knelt before the divan and helped Jessa into the slippers, lovely, but so impractical, of course.

Jessa rose, taking Tori’s hands and bringing her up. Thank you. This will be such fun. Her smile wobbled.

You’re nervous, aren’t you?

Horribly.

Sea monsters, by God, Colonel Harding said. Glad to see you safely home, Edmond.

Mrs. Harding, commanding the divan which she shared with Jessa, poured tea for Muir-Smith. Indeed, we must be thankful your ship did so well, Captain.

Captain Muir-Smith accepted the cup. We left the altercation one mast short, but I think the kraken came off the worse for it. He had a knack for self-deprecating good humor, and used it to fine effect. No doubt it was the result of dozens of match-making teas, where he must be agreeable without presuming on a lady’s affections.

What do they look like, Captain? Jessa asked. "As fierce as the drawings in the Times?"

All drawn from vivid imagination, Miss Harding, but not an ounce of truth, I’m afraid, Muir-Smith responded. The creatures are more like a snake than a whale, with strong jaws filled with teeth.

Oh, Jessa said, overwhelmed by the story and Muir-Smith’s sandy-haired good looks. Tori had to admit his army uniform was a bit dashing, but she wished Jessa had not given over to adoration so quickly. He was decidedly pleasant-looking, and both her sister and her mother clearly had their noses into the wind.

Perhaps it goes as well on land, like an amphibian, Tori said.

Colonel Harding laughed. This is a kraken, my dear, not a frog.

Muir-Smith pronounced, Yet who can say whether they might venture ashore like seals? We know nothing of their natural habits. He turned back to Colonel Harding. Your daughter has a fair point.

Tori noted how the captain was at pains to make everyone feel well-regarded. She hoped that Jessa would not make too much of his easy pleasantry. Her father caught Tori’s eye, not bothering to hide a small smile of pride.

Turning to Muir-Smith, he said, I’m glad to see you none the worse for the wear, Edmond. A moment’s silence swept the room. Colonel Harding had informed the family of the death of Muir-Smith’s brother, a navy officer lost in a kraken battle last year. "We must welcome the Bridge. The beasts can’t sink that, by God. It will last the ages, make no mistake."

Muir-Smith murmured, It’s a marvel of engineering.

Colonel Harding accepted a slice of cake from Mrs. Harding. Bharata reachable by coach and wagon! Engineers are now foremost in science, and Henry Culp the most brilliant among them. I attended his knighting at Buckingham. He shook his head. A thousand miles, and all on pontoons.

Jessa slid a glance at her mother, fretting that a topic to which she could not contribute was not yet exhausted.

The key insight, Muir-Smith said, was to create the understructure of wood--heavily treated against rot--while the surface is girded with iron.

Heedless of Mrs. Harding’s pointed look, Colonel Harding went on, I’ve heard some surmise that the Bridge permits magic to flow unnaturally in our direction.

Muir-Smith nodded. The altercation in Londinium.

Tori did wonder if magic passed over the Bridge as a natural phenomenon, or if magical practitioners found the great Bridge inimical to their interests and were inspired to use it as a road for mischief.

She ventured, We have seen more contagions since the Bridge opened.

Muir-Smith turned a surprised look in her direction. There are always fanatics. Some of them look on everything foreign as contamination. But theirs is a hopeless cause. The princely states depend on Anglic trade.

I beg your pardon, Captain, Tori said, but do not some people find an over-matched cause fuels their resolve?

He frowned. The resolve of so few can hardly shake our purpose.

But perhaps we might take the trouble to learn their doctrine, lest our recalcitrance makes us near-sighted.

"I think it is not we who are near-sighted, Miss Harding."

Into the subsequent gaping pause Mrs. Harding interjected, Oh, but let us go to pleasanter things!

Father clapped his hand on his thigh, saying, You must stay to dinner, Edmond, and we’ll hear more of your adventures.

I certainly hope, Mrs. Harding was swift to say, we may enjoy your company for another day. Can your regiment spare you?

Muir-Smith set down his plate. I’m hard-pressed to imagine a more delightful respite, Mrs. Harding, but I fear I’m expected in Londinium.

But we must hear your Bharata stories! The girls are counting on it.

Olivia, the man has his duties. Colonel Harding stood up. I’ll have Jackson bring my walking boots, and we’ll stroll down to the meadow, Edmond, if you like.

Jessa bit her lip in dismay but her mother could hardly argue.

While Colonel Harding went out to change, and with the gathering ready to adjourn, Jessa led the captain to the bow window overlooking the garden.

Tori and her mother were left with the remnants of tea. Mrs. Harding would not stand yet, for fear Tori would abandon her demure pose on the wing-backed chair and go clomping about the room.

A shame we are not to hear Bharata stories, her mother murmured.

I don’t doubt he has an excess of them, Tori murmured back.

And we should be most grateful if he stayed to share them. Mrs. Harding lowered her voice even further. Tori dear, try to be agreeable.

She allowed herself to be schooled. This was Jessa’s chance. And she supposed Muir-Smith could not be blamed for his airy confidence in Anglica’s open mind. Restless, she stood up and made for the bookcase, ignoring Mrs. Harding’s irritated glance. She would have thought that by now her mother would be reconciled to having a daughter who made noise when she walked.

She reached for an early favorite of hers, Frogs, Newts and Salamanders of Halifax County. Turning the pages, she looked at the pen and ink illustrations.

Sketched by the author, do you think? Muir-Smith stood at her side, looking at the drawing of a salamander.

His return had taken her by surprise. Oh no, Mabry hired an artist. This illustration is lovely, is it not?

I never thought a salamander lovely.

But pray look closer, Captain. See how close the legs are to resembling flippers. Mr. Darwin says that the species transmutate, and here one can well imagine it. She glanced up at him. You are familiar with the theory?

Somewhat. It is far to go. Do you hold with Mr. Darwin, Miss Harding?

Grandpapa and I do, indeed. How else account for the varieties, unless you believe God took the time to work out flippers and feet.

Deus crevait, he said.

Yes, God created, but He must have created things to transmutate! She looked at him with a slightly higher regard. You know your Latin, sir.

A few phrases, no more. Your father says you have the language.

Sir Charles insisted that I learn the language of science. Is it not singular, Captain, that such a great civilization that could have spoken Latin passed from our continent as though it had never been?

Indeed, I have often thought the same. I’ve joined expeditions to dig for artifacts. He shrugged. A hobby of mine, along with natural science. I see that the latter is yours as well.

Oh, sir, no one trained by Sir Charles could possibly think it a hobby! A glance to the divan, and she found both her mother and Jessa staring at her and no doubt hoping she would not resume her argument. You may borrow the portfolio if you like, Captain.

She lurched away from the bookcase, leaving Muir-Smith with the dilemma of whether he must prove his interest by borrowing the book or not. He put it down. So much for natural history.

Colonel Harding appeared at the hall door. Ready, then, Edmond? The barking of the dogs echoed through the hall where Jackson kept them from charging through the front door.

Muir-Smith bowed to the three Harding women, and followed Colonel Harding out of the room, perhaps relieved to be free, if Tori read him aright.

When they heard the front door close, a flushed Jessa exclaimed, Oh my.

Indeed, Mrs. Harding said, beaming.

Chapter 3

In the end, Colonel Harding persuaded Edmond Muir-Smith to spend the night, offering his personal carriage for an early morning departure. That settled, the evening had progressed from pudding to port wine and thence to backgammon. Jessa was holding up well, conversing without fawning and Captain Muir-Smith showing himself quite charming to Jessa.

Of course this stasis could not last with Mrs. Harding in the room. We must make things happen, after all. Thus it was that her mother maneuvered herself to the piano and the singing began.

Tori was beginning to enjoy the evening, producing a harmony under Jessa’s soprano. Splendid, Miss Harding, Muir-Smith exclaimed.

It was startling how much the compliment meant, this merely polite expression from a guest--unless he had meant it for the other Miss Harding. But a few more songs and Tori’s voice had quite warmed up, until she felt she could sing all night.

And now a dance!