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Mrs. Alderwalsey did not let Elfreda take her carriage, not exactly. She insisted on accompanying her.

“Treasure!” She cackled gleefully. “This news will certainly overshadow Mrs. Roberts’s theatrical evening. I have never been so eager to send my excuses.”

The carriage rolled up into the Peak, through steep-sided dales, and finally, just beyond a pretty village of limestone cottages, it rolled to a stop in front of Incledon Hall. The hour was half past four. Teatime. And Papa was, in fact, sipping tea in the drawing room.

“Elfreda!” He choked at the sight of her, and then he choked again. “Mrs. Alderwalsey!”

“Harold,” replied Mrs. Alderwalsey. “There is only one thing I will permit you to say to me.”

“What are you doing here?” asked Papa.

Mrs. Alderwalsey sniffed. “That is not the thing.”

“Madam.” Frederic Incledon nodded, with severe courtesy.

“Miss Marsden.” He was a severe man, whose published papers focused on trial by ordeal, particularly the medieval Frankish practice of trial by cauldron.

He was once among Papa’s most regular correspondents and most frequent visitors.

Then he became the Albion Society secretary, under Mr. Clutterbuck, and the letters and visits fell off.

“What of the little ones?” Nicholas Fluff spoke much more warmly. “Have they come too?”

“Egad.” Papa’s face was turning red. “They had better not have come. What is the meaning of this? I trust no one is ill.”

“No one is ill,” said Mrs. Alderwalsey, gleefully. “But you might require my smelling salts.” She fixed her sharp eyes on Elfreda. “Well? We rushed all this way. Will you make them wait?”

“Wait for what ?” Papa’s face was completely red.

The moisture wicked from Elfreda’s mouth. Her stomach roiled.

“ What? ” repeated Papa.

The drawing room was filled with antiquities, and also antiquaries. In fact, the antiquaries had doubled in number. Ten men sat in bishop’s chairs arranged loosely around the tea table. The tea things were shoved to one end, and trays of grave goods occupied the majority of its surface.

Elfreda’s gaze moved from Papa to Sir Graham.

Then to Nicholas Fluff. Simon Sykes. Mr. Incledon.

Hudson Roach was there. Hudson Roach, the Albion Society treasurer.

He always wore around his neck the Albion Society money-horn, a stag’s horn mounted with silver, from the reign of Emperor Louis I.

She looked at the horn, and then briefly at Craven Braybrooke, author of Observations on the Body-Armour Anciently Worn in England .

He sat beside Stephen Pettigrew, the engraver who made the plates for the Society’s annual publication, Antique Monuments .

Finally, she looked at the Barrow Prince. His chair was angled away from the table. He’d been sketching a bronze casket set on a flower stand, but now he closed his notebook. His eyes bored into her. Everyone’s eyes bored into her.

“Miss Marsden?” The Barrow Prince’s low, rough voice scraped upward at the end, interrogatively.

“A little suspense is well and good,” observed Mrs. Alderwalsey, smirking around at the assembled men, before fixing again on Elfreda. “But you should get on with it.”

Ants were marching down Elfreda’s spine. Her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. Her head filled with noise.

“While I still have my teeth,” said Papa.

She tried to press the hum down into her throat. Sound buzzed behind her lips.

“For God’s sake.” Papa slammed down his teacup.

A word flew out. It wasn’t a suitable word, alas.

“Romeo!” she cried. The room went completely silent.

She wished desperately that the floor would open.

Could she have said anything more foolish?

Georgie. It was Georgie’s fault. Georgie, who’d teased and kissed and laughed and listened their way into her life.

And out of it. They were the reason she’d managed to speak at all, and the reason she’d spoken like a woman about to swoon, not from nerves, from love.

She couldn’t think of Georgie without a million feelings flooding through her, making her less rational, and maybe…

more herself. Not because women couldn’t be rational.

Because rationality without the emotions, without the senses—it was cold and incomplete.

Her back straightened. She met Papa’s eyes.

“Did you say Romeo ?” He looked flabbergasted.

“Of course she didn’t,” Sir Graham assured him. “She said Rome . I believe she found a Roman antiquity.”

“Did you find a Roman antiquity?” Papa was obviously relieved by Sir Graham’s suggestion. He looked better disposed already, face expressive of a readiness to welcome her back into his good graces. He glanced at the reticule she was holding and held out his hand.

She swallowed. “I found antiquities verifying the location of the Great Heathen Army’s winter camp.” She could barely hear herself over the nervous hum in her skull, the wild roar of blood in her ears, but she was saying words, suitable words.

“I found their hoard,” she was saying. “I haven’t yet counted the objects, but there are easily two hundred, including coins. I brought a few of the coins.” Her fingers fumbled at the drawstring of her reticule. She shook the gold and silver into her palm.

A collective intake of breath greeted the sight.

“By Caesar’s ghost!” exclaimed Sir Graham.

“Where? Where did you find it?” Many voices went up in unison. “Where is the camp?”

“Show me the coins.” Papa had rounded the table and was nearly upon her. She remembered, suddenly, the lighter weight of the buttons in her palm that day in Thornton. How she’d gone, for a moment, hollow like a bell, ringing with panic in the afternoon light.

She shouldn’t feel panicked now. Papa was smiling broadly, beaming with the fondness of a father who wouldn’t dream of putting his unaccompanied daughters on a public coach, all but penniless.

“You’ve done well, youngling,” he murmured. But even that—the approval she craved—didn’t make her stomach unclench.

She could tell he was about to embrace her and stiffened. Only she’d mistaken his movement. His arm swung out, but it was so he could sweep the coins from her hand into his. He strode back to his seat at the table.

“Gentlemen,” he said, sitting. “I shall not withhold a moment longer.” He paused, for two moments, posture regal, while the antiquaries leaned toward him. “The Great Heathen Army overwintered on the bluff at the edge of my park.”

“You old slyboots.” Sir Graham scowled. “You never said.”

“I began digging months ago.” Papa’s smile was sly indeed. “Guided by a Mercian annal. And assisted by my brilliant daughter, who has carried me the first fruits of my endeavor.” He beckoned to Elfreda. She walked to him on legs that did not feel like her own.

Nicholas Fluff had ceded his own chair to Mrs. Alderwalsey, and now he carried over another, for her. There wasn’t space at the table to accommodate it. Or rather, no one made any space.

Elfreda gave him a grateful glance but remained standing.

“As for the fruits themselves,” said Papa, and laid the coins down one by one on the table. “Frankish. Islamic. Frankish. Byzantine. Islamic. Anglo-Saxon.” He held up the last coin. “This is a penny of Ceolwulf the Second.”

“It’s not,” Elfreda responded instantly. “It’s a penny of his father, Burgred. The annal says the Great Heathen Army encamped in Twynham in 868, and the penny supports that chronology. Ceolwulf the Second ruled later.”

There was a sound like gravel crunching under carriage wheels.

The Barrow Prince was laughing.

“Let me see.” Hudson Roach stretched across the table and snatched the penny from Papa’s hand. “Burgred Rex,” he confirmed. “There are a few perforations on the obverse, but you can still read the letters.”

“I thought it was Burgred,” said Papa. “But the B looked like a C , because I am not wearing my spectacles.”

“Oh, pish,” said Mrs. Alderwalsey. “Spectacles aren’t the problem. Harold, you have always been blinded by your own conceit.”

Papa’s head whipped around. “How dare you!”

“How dare I?” Mrs. Alderwalsey had taken over Mr. Fluff’s tea as well as his seat. She sipped delicately. “I was at your breeching ceremony. I dare anything.”

“Miss Marsden,” rasped the Barrow Prince, “was the hoard on the bluff?” Her gaze skittered away from his almost at once. She studied her interlaced fingers where they pressed into her belly.

“No,” she said, drawing a breath, then lifting her eyes, looking at him directly. “The army encamped on the bluff, but the hoard was in a well. It’s fascinating how it ended up there. My grandmother was a scholar—”

Papa emitted a rude noise.

Mrs. Alderwalsey pointed a spoon at him, and remarkably, he quailed.

“My grandmother was a scholar,” continued Elfreda. “She prepared a translation of a nun’s chronicle, a nun from Twynham Abbey. That’s what led me to the hoard. The chronicle recounted—”

Mr. Incledon interrupted.

“Your well is from the Dark Ages?” He addressed the question to Papa.

Papa gave an uncomfortable shrug. “It is much older than the hall, yes.”

It was not, but Elfreda avoided correcting the factual error.

“I didn’t find it in our well,” she said, “but in a well beneath Holywell Rock.”

“Holywell Rock!” Papa couldn’t hide his surprise. “How the devil did you move Holywell Rock?”

“Fire setting,” suggested the Barrow Prince. “Heat the rock, then add cold water, so it cracks. That’s what I’d have done.”

“That’s what the Romans did.” Sir Graham nodded.

“A farmer moved it,” said Elfreda. “He’s very strong and used a lever.”

She hadn’t thought of fire setting, but even if she had, she would have dismissed the technique. Too slow. She’d been in such a rush to tell Papa, to tell the Barrow Prince, to make her discovery real . But it had already been real. By rushing to Incledon Hall, she’d made her discovery Papa’s.

She wadded the empty reticule in her hand.

“The hoard isn’t still in the well?” he asked.

“It’s in the library,” she said. Mr. Peach had helped with that too.

“Good.” Papa exchanged a look with Sir Graham. “We’ll return directly.”

“Not without the rest of us,” protested Craven Braybrooke. “It’s the object of the Society to investigate all the remains of antiquity, and this is our very first chance to explore a heathen camp.” His pale eyes burned. “Think of the armor.”

“As secretary, I must record the excavation,” said Mr. Incledon.

“You’ll need illustrations and engravings,” said Stephen Pettigrew.

“We should convene a special meeting of the council at Marsden Hall,” said Hudson Roach. “With your permission, Marsden, of course.”

“You forget I am not on the council.” Papa’s voice was waspish.

“Easily remedied.” Hudson Roach smiled, unperturbed. “We’ll take a ballot. Who would say nay ? My God, a Danish camp!”

Elfreda cleared her throat. Her heart thudded in her ears. “And myself?”

“You wish to attend the meeting?” Now Roach was less certain.

“It’s unprecedented, but…” He blinked rapidly, tapping his money-horn in time, then nodded.

“Just this once, given that it’s a special meeting, convened under special circumstances, in which you played a special role… I don’t foresee any objections.”

He hadn’t even understood what she’d been asking. It was inconceivable— her name on a ballot.

“I will not attend.” The Barrow Prince shrugged his broad shoulders. “As I told you all this morning, I’ve been called away.”

“Deuced mysterious,” grumbled Simon Sykes. “You could tell us the reason.”

The Barrow Prince ignored him. “If you have ever an interest in joining one of my excursions,” he said, turning his hard gaze on Elfreda, “know that I am honored to receive you.”

“My thanks.” Papa tipped his head with amused condescension, intercepting both gaze and invitation. “But I will be some time occupied with my own findings. Speaking of which—” He glanced at the coins on the table, and then up at Elfreda.

“Child,” he said, “bring me my spectacles. I must have left them in my other coat. A maid will show you to my chamber.” He put his finger on a coin and slid it toward Mr. Incledon. “What do you make of this one?”

Elfreda walked out of the drawing room. She walked out of the house. She walked across the lawn to the nearest tree and put her hand on it.

Was she going to cry? Laugh? Something was building in her chest. And she did laugh because the something felt very much like a howl.

All her life, she’d wanted to belong to the Albion Society, badly, for the practical benefits. As a Fellow, she could attend meetings, see exhibitions, hear lectures, participate in excavations, send her own papers to be printed in Antique Monuments .

She’d wanted membership, too, for what it signified. As a Fellow, she would exist, finally, as an archaeologist, on paper, and in the eyes of the world.

That dream had died back there in the drawing room.

She wasn’t a Fellow. She wasn’t ever going to be a Fellow.

Oddly, she didn’t feel devastated. She felt…unfettered. Her new dream would have nothing to do with those men. None of them got to define her, not even Papa.

Georgie had said as much that day at St. Alcmund’s.

Georgie believed in her.

Her sisters believed in her.

Her grandmother believed in her.

She believed in her.

She was laughing, and she was crying. She pushed off the tree and went farther from the house, into the sun. The fresh air filled her lungs, more and more of it. Laughing, crying—it wasn’t enough. She was going to howl. There was nothing else for it. The ground seemed to shake beneath her feet.

It took her a moment to realize.

Hoofbeats.

Hoofbeats were drumming the earth. A rider was galloping toward her up the drive, a rider astride a black hunter, skirts hiked up, slim legs gripping the horse’s sides.

Scandalous. Impossible.

Instead of a howl, their name tore from her throat.