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They all headed for their rooms. I closed my door. but Howard stood there gaping at me until I did. Then I went to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. There was a thick line of soot down my cheek where I had pressed my face against the ladder, waiting for Laura Fairchild to retreat and close the window.

Howard is too smart, I thought. We'd have to come up with something.

Cinnamon returned just after I had washed my face and hands.

She knocked softly and then slipped into the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

"You all right?"

"Yes, but I think Howard's onto us," I said.

"I know. I'm going to confide in him," she said.

"Is that smart?" I asked. She smiled.

"No, What I'm going to tell him is you were out secretly to meet your boyfriend."

"But he knows Chandler returned to Boston."

"Who says it has to be Chandler?"

"What?"

"Just play along with it. He'll buy into it and we won't have him spying on us or asking us a whole lot of tricky questions."

"I can't do that."

"Sure you can. Think of it as a play, a role you've taken." she advised.

"I'm not an actress. Cinnamon. You're the actress. You should be the one pretending to have a boyfriend you secretly meet, not me

."

She smiled.

"You had the smudge on your face, not me. Besides, have you forgotten Madame Senetsky's words? We are always performing. We are always on one stage or another. Don't worry about the cover story. I was always good at this." she said proudly. "I raised fabrication to an art form. Believe me. when I'm finished with him. Howard will believe it."

"That's what I'm afraid of," I said,

As quickly as she slipped in, she slipped out. My heart began to beat drums of warning. Lies weren't the same as assuming an artistic persona. I thought. Cinnamon was playing with fire and she was doing it with my love life. I'd be the one who got burnt, not her.

Suddenly Mommy's concerns about my being safe here were not as foolish as Daddy had thought when we all first arrived. It was a fortress, yes. It had security, but all that was to keep danger out.

What about the dangers that were already living in this Grand house?

And what about those living in us?

"He bought it all." Cinnamon told me the following day. "Especially when I begged him not to tell Steven, who might just slip up and get you in trouble."

However, instead of getting him to lose interest in me and stop him from asking questions. it seemed to have had the completely opposite effect. Suddenly, in his eyes. I became the most interesting of the four. I began to wonder just what sort of things Cinnamon had told him about me. What were the details she left out?

Late the next afternoon, after all our sessions had ended. I heard a knock on my door. I had just sat down to write Uncle Simon a letter.

"Yes?" I called. and Howard appeared. "Hi," he said. "What are you doing?"

"Just writing my uncle a letter. Why?"

"Why don't you just phone him?"