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I t felt odd to wake up to a scene that belonged to a life she had once worked so hard to leave behind.

In a small miracle, Mr. Perritt had been gracious enough to let her slip away directly to her room last night.

She didn’t know if the surly butler had informed his mistress sooner or later of Amelia’s return, but he had to have waited at least past Mother’s bedtime, for no summons of any kind had appeared until this morning.

Now, Amelia rose as she’d always done, endured a new maid’s fumbling morning assistance as she’d often been consigned to, and marched down the corridor with a knot of dread in her stomach, fingers clutching Mother’s simple note.

It barely counted as a note, truly. A note required far more finesse than the ominous words “See me. Front parlor.” But it all rather felt like royal summons from the Tower of London to the palace, a journey that invariably ended with one’s head under the executioner’s blade .

The Amelia of a mere few weeks ago would either have tried to avoid such a confrontation or run towards it in the very heights of indignation.

Now, she felt older, wiser, and a little too tired from her adventures to do either.

Mother would have her tirade. Amelia would bear it.

And then she could roll her eyes and ponder her fate in solitude later.

She doubted anyone would want to talk to her much after recent events.

One flight of stairs and nearly a dozen steps on the intricate, well-worn carpet later, Amelia stood at the open parlor door.

Mother, Sarah, and Jane sat scattered around the room, each preoccupied with a fashion plate or two.

The two boys could be seen running outside just past the window.

It was not a particularly warm domestic scene, but it was a domestic scene, however dull.

And Amelia felt her place as an outsider more than ever.

She cleared her throat quietly and stepped forward. “Mother.”

Eyes snapped up, looking initially surprised, then judgmental. Amelia swallowed.

“Well, well, the prodigal daughter returns, does she?” Mother scoffed. She laid aside her fashion plates, no doubt ready to deliver a harsh scolding. “And here I thought we’d managed to be rid of you without having to pay a dowry.”

Knowing that Mother knew full well there was no dowry to be had only made the insult sting worse.

Amelia drew a deep breath and expelled it slowly. She could manage a half-sincere apology if she had to. “It was not my intention to?— ”

“Amy!” Papa’s voice, and then his entire self, materialized behind her in the corridor. And Amelia turned around just in time to feel her only living parent’s anxious arms close in tightly around her. “Thank God you’ve returned! I have worried so—and I thought that I?—”

Whatever else Papa meant to say was swallowed away by his sobs, and Amelia felt her own tears falling at the realization of the grief she had to have caused her father. If her heart already ached at Jacob’s absence a mere day later—how much more must her disappearance have distressed Papa?

“I’m sorry.” Amelia sniffed. She pulled back slightly. Papa ran his eyes all over her face before embracing her once more. “I—I was so anxious to escape—that is, I thought that if I found my mother’s?—”

“Hush, enough.” Papa pulled away a few inches and turned to his wife. “Amy and I will talk in my study.” His face hardened when Mother moved as if to disagree. “And we shall not be disturbed.”

Amelia barely had time to thank her father before he whisked her away to the room across the hall.

Immediately, the smell of Papa’s books and innumerable trinkets enveloped her.

Papa did not have half the organization of Sir George, and his collection lay strewn in disarray all over the study.

But the very room itself, chaos and all, reminded her so much of the refuge that Papa had represented all her life that Amelia had to try very hard not to cry.

Papa shut the door behind them.

“My dearest child,” he huffed, his voice thick with emotion, before hugging her once more.

And Amelia let herself be hugged. With her father’s tears, and some of her own, she let the sorrows and uncertainties of the past weeks wash away. Whatever happened, whoever she was, whatever she lost—she would never doubt again her place in her father’s affections.

It was perhaps a good five minutes before he released her. Amelia waited as Papa looked fondly once more at her face before he walked around his table to his usual spot. Amelia sank into a chair.

She steeled herself. “I’m—I’m sorry, Papa.”

Her father looked ready to cry again before he curbed the impulse. Instead, he sat back like a tired man and nodded. “As you should be.”

Amelia sniffed. “I was afraid that if I stayed, that I would be?—”

“Let’s not talk of that any longer.” Papa sighed. Had they called off her betrothal? Amelia’s heart nearly soared with hope. If they had broken the agreement, then there was a chance that she might have a say in her future after all. Then perhaps if she could get a note to Jacob, she?—

“You are back, safe. That is all that matters,” Papa said conclusively, pulling Amelia’s thoughts back to the reason she’d fled her home in the first place.

“We have tried making every excuse for your absence. Most people did not think much of it—although your cousins’ inquiries were harder to ignore.

Thank goodness they’ve been distracted.” Amelia frowned slightly, but Papa went on.

“The solicitors have been harder to put off, insisting as they have been to have me sign all the papers.”

“Papers regarding—me?”

“Yes, what else? Marriage settlements and all that stuff. ”

“You—you haven’t signed anything then?” Amelia leaned forward, her heart erratic. “Am I still free?”

“Are you—” Papa looked up. A pained look passed over his face, followed by an understanding one. “Darling, you were never a prisoner.”

Amelia bit her lip. “I suppose not.”

“Was that why you ran away?” Papa’s voice was quieter now, less hurried. The initial impact of her return had begun to ease. “Sir George mentioned something about wishing to know your roots.”

Sir George—of course he’d talked to Papa. Just because the baronet had been too distracted and tired yesterday didn’t mean he ignored Papa altogether.

Amelia sat back with a sigh. “What did he tell you?”

“Too little.” A compassionate note in Papa’s words had her looking up.

“He sent me a note, nothing more, mentioning your safe return. Then he said that he was glad he didn’t have to be in the business of regularly enlightening young ladies as they search for their roots, for it was a rather tiring affair. ”

Amelia had to agree about the tiring part.

She sighed once more. “Sir George told me about my mother.”

Papa stilled. Then a small, slight frown marred his brow. “You always knew you were part Chinese.”

“But not part servant, part thief—and in no part a princess.”

The pained look on Papa’s face told her everything she needed to know.

Amelia sniffed, barely managing to keep her tears in check, before she threw herself fully back against the worn, embroidered chair. “Why did you ever allow me to believe it?”

“In my heart, she was always a princess.”

“It’s a nice sentiment.”

“A sincere one.”

“But not much good by way of rendering your child eligible—or even legitimate.”

She sneaked a glance at Papa at the end of her sentence. He remained where he sat, unmoved, but there was a trifle more edge to his frown.

Amelia breathed deep. “Were you ever married?”

Unlike the hasty, breathless revelations that came from Sir George’s ramblings, Papa’s answer came slow and deliberate. “In the Chinese way of things.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There was a ceremony.” Papa’s eyes glazed over as his voice drifted. “We would bow to each other, and to our parents, if they were present. We would drink tea, in a particular way.”

“And that made you married?” It sounded incredibly simple—too simple.

“It only mattered to us that we considered ourselves so.”

“But in the eyes of the law?”

This time, it was Papa who couldn’t meet her eye.

Amelia groaned. It was no wonder Papa agreed to pawn her off to the first person who seriously offered. Only a tradesman’s family desperate for a remote tie to nobility would overlook her dubious legitimacy.

“Oh, Papa.” Amelia sighed. “Why did you never tell me?”

This time, his eyes looked tender. “I only hoped that you would always be able to see yourself the way I saw you. ”

Amelia’s heart tugged. “And what’s that?”

Papa smiled. “As nothing less than a princess.”

Having experienced the upheavals of adventure, Amelia found the resumption of normal activities an odd mix of comfort and disquiet.

Her arrival on a Friday, and her subsequent conversation with her father on Saturday, left the day after to attending church, sitting soberly in the parlor at home, and watching the family mount a valiant attempt not to breathe a word about Amelia’s recent defection.

It had to be Papa’s doing, for Amelia doubted Mother could have stayed her tongue otherwise. As blessings went, it was a relatively small one—but Amelia appreciated her father’s intervention, nonetheless.

Perhaps, there was some hope from escaping an unwanted future, if Papa could stand his ground.

“Are we going to the Grand Jubilee tomorrow?” Sarah, the older of Amelia’s stepsisters, asked with a wistful look out the window.

“If your father would but spare the time, we would,” Mother barked, her eyes never straying from her sampler.

Amelia sighed. Her cousins would no doubt be involved in the centennial celebration at all the royal parks tomorrow, being ladies and daughters of earls and all.

But while Amelia had started sifting through her correspondence from her weeks away, she found herself still somewhat reluctant to respond.

It was almost as if penning a reply to Jem or Thea would truly acknowledge that her adventures had all concluded—with no dowry, no lineage, and no husband in sight.

Her mind turned, as it had often turned since her homecoming, to a particular set of knowing blue eyes and a particularly roguish smile. Amelia sighed.

Jacob had acted with so much confidence about their eventual reunion that, for a moment, she had allowed herself to be persuaded.

As far as Amelia’s private hopes were concerned, he would come for her.

He would find her. He might even court her or propose an elopement far away from dubious family ties and pitiful arranged marriages.

It was a pity he’d never actually asked.

“I do not think it an entirely outlandish idea,” Papa responded from the corner.

He lowered his spectacles, along with the Chinese cup he had been inspecting.

It was rare to have Papa choose to sit with everyone on a Sunday afternoon, so much so that Amelia supposed his preoccupation had to be pardoned.

“There are a few remarkable sights to be seen, I understand.”

“We may go then, Papa?” Sarah sounded as hopeful as all her other siblings looked—all except Amelia.

“I believe a new bridge and pagoda, fashioned after the Chinese style, are to be found at St. James’s Park.”

A collective groan rose from the party present, the entire family united in exasperation over Papa’s obsessions.

Once upon a time, Amelia might have disdained them for spiting her heritage.

Yet having witnessed the heights of Sir George Staunton’s attachment to the Orient had rendered her more forgiving instead.

She would always care about the mysteries of China. Servant or princess, her mother’s blood would flow in her always.

But she supposed it was unfair to expect everyone else to share her passion.

No one would willingly take upon the burden of caring so much for something so unrelated to them—no one, perhaps, except one Jacob Hawthorne.

Amelia stifled another sigh that threatened to escape her.

As if being arranged in marriage to a stranger was not horrible enough, now she was mooning over another man whom she might likely never see again.

“Amy will join us, won’t she?” Papa’s voice cut through Amelia’s personal ruminations.

“Join you—where?” Amelia looked up, puzzled.

“For the unveiling of Papa’s precious pagoda,” Sarah spat out, no little sarcasm in her young voice. “Of course he wants you to go—foreign princess and all.”

Amelia swallowed. Given her former delusions of grandeur, she supposed she deserved Sarah’s insults.

“I do not think I am quite ready to venture out yet,” Amelia answered quietly. She tried to smile, truly tried. “Although the rest of you can surely go enjoy it.”

“And enjoy it we shall!” cried Sarah.

“You do not wish to go?” Papa sounded concerned. “There will be fireworks, I think—and plenty of familiar faces. Staunton shall no doubt be present.”

Amelia nearly shuddered at the mention. She had nothing against the baronet, but she had had more than enough of his company for a good while. Besides, she could not risk distracting him from his Asiatic preoccupations, lest he suddenly remember and mention Amelia’s supposed betrothed to Papa.

She attempted another smile. “I think I would much rather rest.”

Papa nodded without responding this time, although the worried creases around his eyes remained.

Mother prattled on about all the fun and faces they would encounter tomorrow, her sons and daughters caught up in her fancies. And by herself, as always, Amelia sighed. Reality would come for her soon enough. She had no plans to invite it to strike sooner than it must.