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Georgie frowned. Phipps. Was he even a guest at this point? He was just… here . For better or worse. “Two in addition to Lord Phillip.”

Bagshaw inclined his head. The door shut behind him.

“I am four and twenty years old,” Georgie told the empty room, experimentally. The clock ticked back at them. They ate their eggs and went up to the bluff.

“Will you come to dinner?” they asked Elf when she’d decided it was time to break for the day, both of them more tired from repeatedly chasing the twins out of the trench they’d been digging than by the digging itself. “You and Agnes?”

She had dirt on her forehead, from swiping at her hair, and they wanted to grab her with their dirty hands, and make her filthier, everywhere. But: twins.

Georgie behaved.

“Depends,” said Elf. “Is lapdog still on the menu?”

She was twinkling at them. The fact that they weren’t naked with her this very moment in a fern brake seemed a crime.

“Seven o’clock,” they said. “You’ll see.”

When they arrived home, they discovered that letters had too.

Letters wishing them joy on their birthday from Rosalie and Anne, and Harry as well.

His letter was the shortest, but it wasn’t short on affection, and ended with him sending his best love .

Georgie rubbed a finger over the inked phrase, sudden tears pricking their eyes.

Harry’s last few letters had struck a colder note.

But to be fair, he’d been answering Georgie’s aggressively petulant missives, a mix of pleas and insults, which, all at once, seemed shameful.

They’d made a cake of themself before the entire ton, it was true, and they’d infuriated, and possibly, yes, as Elf had suggested, terrified , their brother.

When they’d woken up from the crash, head throbbing, Harry had been sitting at their bedside, white to the lips, his chair surrounded by a mess of threads, because men didn’t have knitting or needlepoint to absorb their nervous energy.

Henry had spent the long hours of his vigil picking apart his handkerchiefs.

He’d yelled. The moment Georgie’s eyes focused, he’d yelled.

And Georgie had latched onto the yelling, instead of the fretting, which, in retrospect, was just as obvious.

This banishment had struck them as vindictive, controlling, harsh. But maybe Harry was as fearful as he was furious. Maybe he hadn’t been able to think of any other way to force Georgie to slow down. Reflect on their stupidity.

Spiting Harry by learning nothing from this experience was childish. It was spiting themself.

They weren’t a child. They were four and twenty.

They dressed in a black tailcoat and breeches for dinner. Maturity didn’t mean conformity, after all.

Elf and Agnes had both dressed out of the trunks in the tower—that is to say, like Gainsboroughs—Elf in blue striped silk, Agnes in the pale purple. Georgie tried to ignore just how much of Elf’s bosom her gown left un dressed.

Agnes gaped when they bowed in greeting.

“Are breeches fashionable for women to wear in London?” she asked.

“Assuredly not.” They winked at her. “But at least they’re legal. You can get arrested in Paris.”

At the table, Agnes did a very creditable job of adoring the soup. It was excellent soup. Everything was excellent. The wine, the fish, the golden pies, the roast. The company. Even Phipps. Hartcliffe—and marriage—aside, they liked having Phipps knocking about.

Life is here.

It ran through their head, as it had that golden day on the river. Life wasn’t something happening somewhere else, at some bigger, better party. It was here, now, wherever and whenever they allowed themself to feel it, to feel this beautifully, joyfully alive.

“Is it the fifth?” asked Phipps during a lull in conversation. He slashed with his fork. “Georgie, it’s your birthday.”

“Oh,” said Georgie, and took a sip of wine. “So it is.”

“You didn’t mention it.” Elf was staring.

“Joy!” Agnes clapped her hands.

“You do seem gay,” observed Phipps, leaning back in his chair.

“For all your moaning, the country agrees with you. You realize we missed the Epsom Derby? My God, I didn’t think of it until just now.

I was meant to go with Cecy. She couldn’t wait to show me her hat.

From Milan.” He leaned forward abruptly and emptied his wineglass.

“I won’t have a birthday until 1820,” said Agnes. “I’m glad there’s a leap day in 1820 because I’ll be sixteen, and that’s the most important birthday.”

“I wish you’d told me.” Elf was still staring, rotating her glass. “I’d have tied ribbons on your shovel.” She blushed and set her glass down. “Or you could have done something else, something more celebratory.”

They loved the idea of her tying ribbons on their shovel.

“I wanted to dig,” they said.

“Usually Georgie wants to see fireworks,” said Phipps, wagging his brows.

“Vauxhall.” He gave Georgie a speculative look.

“The country doesn’t deliver by way of fireworks.

Or rope dancers. That is regrettable.” He turned to Agnes and Elf.

“Last year on Georgie’s birthday, a large party of us went to Vauxhall and saw Madame Saqui dance on a rope strung high above our heads.

She danced, plumed and spangled, at the very stroke of midnight, rockets exploding in the air. Hard to beat that .”

Elf had lowered her eyes to her plate.

Agnes’s were wide as saucers. “Beatrice hasn’t written a word about rope dancing.”

“It’s not the be-all and end-all.” Georgie shrugged.

But memories crowded their mind, shimmering with different-colored lamps strung from the trees of Vauxhall.

With cut-glass lusters surrounded by gilt theater boxes.

And when Elf glanced up, she seemed aware that distant lights had summoned them away.

After dinner, everyone repaired to the drawing room to drape on the softest furniture and drink champagne.

Agnes draped adjacent to Phipps.

“Let’s play rhymes!” she said to him.

Elf draped adjacent to Georgie. “Why didn’t you tell me it was your birthday?”

“I forgot it myself, until this morning. I spent the day getting used to it. Four and twenty.”

“Antique,” she murmured. “I could almost collect you.”

They grinned. Her humor still surprised them.

And so did her presence beside them. Elfreda Marsden.

Eternally aloof, infinitely scornful, with those sharp eyes and that sad mouth.

They’d wanted her, and wanted not to want her, and wanted her regardless for so very long.

The idea they’d first formed of her was a stark sketch, a few strokes, black and white.

The reality was messier, contradictory, complex, not otherworldly at all, but human, and that much more irresistible.

“I need something that rhymes with Beatrice .” Phipps spoke loudly and skeptically.

Georgie glanced over.

Agnes was giggling with anticipation. She drained her champagne and poured herself more.

Georgie’s glance slid past, around the room, still decorated to their mother’s taste. It fell back on Elf.

“These past three years, I’ve wondered,” they said, in a low voice, “if she forgets. On this day, of all days, she probably can’t help but remember.”

That meant somewhere, at some time today, their mother had been thinking of them.

Elf’s eyes were soft. She pressed closer.

“I forfeit,” said Phipps.

“You can’t forfeit,” cried Agnes. “Think harder.”

“Georgie, help.”

Georgie glanced over again. Phipps was scratching his brow.

“Forfeit,” said Georgie.

“ So many things rhyme with Beatrice .” Agnes gulped her champagne. “Flea circus! Tea service!”

Georgie raised their brows.

“Ah.” Phipps nodded agreeably. “I am humbled.”

“Have you ever had fleas?” asked Agnes.

“I fear Agnes has had too much wine.” Elf whispered it in their ear. They examined Agnes more closely. She was sliding down the sofa, like a spill of syrup, slowly heading for the floor.

A quarter hour later, Georgie and Elf had climbed into the gig, and Phipps was lifting Agnes onto Elf’s lap. She wrapped an arm around Elf’s neck, waving goodbye to Phipps with the other.

“Adieu, my lord!” she cried. “Adieu!”

As the gig rolled down the drive, she kept swinging that arm, pointing out imaginary sights, and twice knocking the reins from Georgie’s hands. At least she was a happy drunk.

“Behold the shapely knolls!” she exclaimed. And then: “At last, Lake Windermere!”

Georgie could hardly drive for laughing.

“Will you wait?” asked Elf, when all three had stumbled into the entrance hall. She was holding Agnes around the waist. “I’ll see her to her room, and then…” She bit her lip, and her gaze seemed unaccountably shy. “Will you wait?”

They waited. They waited in the dark entrance hall a surprisingly long time.

“Everything all right?” they asked, as Elf finally approached, holding a lantern, its glow sliding through her hair.

She’d taken it down, her hair, all of it, long locks flowing over her shoulders, framing the milky skin above her gown’s low neckline, which they’d done their best to ignore all evening and absolutely couldn’t now.

She stopped in front of them, and when they moved in to kiss her, she stepped back, a smile tilting her lips. It wasn’t no. It was not yet .

Excitement laced through their veins as she led them along black corridors, up the winding tower stair. When she reached the top, she crossed the room to a door Georgie hadn’t noticed on their prior visit. A narrow door, between tapestries.

At Elf’s touch, it swung open.