“How many knives do you have on you?” Clayton said. He was not looking so serious anymore. In fact, he was smiling.

I had to count in my head. “Four,” I said.

“I really like you,” he said. “You’re one of a kind.”

I’d give Clayton a dance, if I weren’t married. But I was. Both those ideas were surprises.

“I better check in with my better half,” I said. “I’ll see you around, I expect.”

“I believe you’ll see me tomorrow at the teahouse close to Balboa Park.” Clayton smiled back and wandered off.

I watched Felicia—still talking to Hans—for a minute, and when I turned, Eli was standing beside me.

“What did Mr. Rich Guy want?” he said, and he sounded more serious than I liked.

“Wanted to know why the grigoris met today,” I said.

Eli stared at me. “Really.”

“Really. He’s worried Britannia will have to go to war because England will. He wants to know why.”

“He’s scared of the fight?” There was contempt in my husband’s voice.

“Eli, anyone with a lick of sense is scared of war.” I had to stop myself from throwing up my hands.

Instead, I took a deep breath and said, “I want to hear about that meeting and why it’s got you so spooked.

And we better do something about Hans and Felicia, because Clayton was wondering if she was already spoken for. ”

Eli looked at the couple, still talking, still very wrapped up in each other.

“You’re right.” I couldn’t tell exactly how he felt about Felicia having this thing for Hans.

And it really, really bothered me that I didn’t know why Hans, a German Jew, had been in Texoma at such a critical moment last summer.

Eli kind of shook himself, and his face got stern.

“Don’t march over there in a straight line and try to shake your finger at her,” I said.

He smiled at me for a brief, happy moment.

“I know she’d put her back to the wall,” he said.

“I can live with us doing all this for nothing, if her mind is made up, but they don’t really know each other.

What if he hadn’t come to the Ball Week?

What if he’d been detained, as he might well have been?

Would she have set her sights on someone else? ”

“Good questions. I don’t know the answers. She’s sixteen.”

Eli worked his way through the crowd, trying to be indirect. He said something polite to Hans, with that “I’m not really feeling this” look. Then Eli and Felicia moved away from the German. Felicia was doing her best not to scowl. I only hoped not too many people were watching.

The band started playing a new tune, and Mateo Medina popped up in front of Felicia like a jack-in-the-box to claim a dance. She accepted with at least a decent show of enthusiasm.

And the evening wore on. I didn’t see much of Eli for a couple of hours. He was renewing his acquaintance with some of his former pals and colleagues.

We let ourselves into the Savarov house about one o’clock in the morning, and we weren’t the last to leave the Del Coronado by any means.

Felicia almost ran up to her room as if she couldn’t wait to be alone.

Eli was parking the car in the former stable behind the house because he was sure it was going to rain.

I had a few precious minutes to myself. I didn’t think I’d ever had an evening where I wore evening clothes, helped dispose of a body, and went to a dance. And listened to so many voices, none saying anything I wanted to hear. My body was tired, and so was my head.

Though I wanted to collapse on the bed, I hung up my dress and took a bath—as if I could wash the evening off me.

Eli still wasn’t upstairs when I was ready to go to sleep.

I wondered why, but I was too tired to go looking for him.

Finally in my nightgown, I pulled the covers over me.

I stared up at the ceiling, and I could not see my way forward.

If someone had suddenly appeared in the bedroom and handed me a dime to go home, I would have gotten up and gone to the railway station.

Instead, I fell asleep. I woke during the night and knew Eli was next to me. In the faint light coming through the window, I looked at his face. He was in deep sleep, his face relaxed and young.

My heart clenched. I did not think this would end well. And I could do nothing to stop it.

I’d never been more unhappy in my life, even when Eli had been in prison here in San Diego. At least then, I’d known I could do my damnedest to get him out. And I had.

I’d done bad things then, too. But I’d known what I was fighting for, and against. I struggled in my head, in that moment, looking at my sleeping husband.

I’d volunteered for this. No one was making me. Without my vigilance, my sister might not live to make the decision that would change the course of her life.

It was not the first time I’d gone through all these thoughts, and it wouldn’t be the last.

Nothing for it but to keep the bit between my teeth.

After this week, I could go home to Segundo Mexia. I would see my new half brother. I would go hunting, I would cook my own food in my own kitchen. Eli would come back with me. He’d resume taking the small jobs the local people paid him for, and we’d be pretty happy.

Maybe.

Maybe he wouldn’t come back. If Eli decided to stay in San Diego permanently, if the tsar said he could come back to court, I thought Eli would be delighted to resume the life he’d had before his father’s decisions had almost ruined it. And if he assumed I’d stay here with him?

I couldn’t live here.

I put my hand, so lightly, on Eli’s bare shoulder. My heart ached. Had I ever been sure we’d stay together?

I lay there in silence until I smelled coffee. Then I pulled on my normal clothes and went downstairs. I wanted coffee, and I needed food. And I had to look at our schedule for the day.