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J oy was still catching her breath when the great door of Westwood House shut behind her.

The sound echoed through the front hall like a sentence passed, but she paid it no heed.

Her cheeks remained flushed from the wind, her gloves smelled faintly of leather and spring air, and her heart beat with the proud thrum of victory.

She had, after all, outrun Freddy—and not by a little.

It would not last. Of that, she was certain. There would be reproaches, raised eyebrows, perhaps even a letter sent to her guardian, Westwood, who had retreated to the country with Faith. But in this bright, reckless moment, she would not surrender her triumph.

She slipped out of view before the butler could announce her return, her slippers whispering along the carpeted stairs.

No one stopped her ascent, and soon she had reached her bedroom, flinging open the door as though storming a castle.

The kittens—Freddy the cat and her four remaining offspring—lifted their small heads, blinking sleepily from their nap on the window seat.

“Well, at least someone welcomes me home,” Joy declared, dropping to her knees to bury her face into the warm fur. Frederica, the mama cat, rewarded her with a lofty purr as if she had known all along Joy would triumph over that cheeky Freddy Cunningham.

“Tell me, my loves,” she murmured, scratching Cecilia beneath the chin, “what is so very wrong with me that I should prefer speed to slippers, wind to waltzes, and freedom to flirtation?”

Cecilia answered with a mewl that sounded suspiciously like concurrence.

Joy kicked off her boots and collapsed onto the window seat, curling her legs beneath her like an overgrown child and tucking Cecilia under her chin. The others arranged themselves along her limbs and lap with a decided air of possession.

She spotted the slim volume of Keats she had purchased but not read, and beside it—those confounded spectacles. They looked innocuous enough now, sitting quietly on her little table, but how she had resisted them! As though a bit of clear glass might proclaim her unfit for Society.

“No one shall see me here,” she muttered, slipping them on.

The room came into focus so suddenly it was almost alarming.

Even the lettering on the page was sharp, no longer prone to wandering into watery confusion.

She stared out of the window and across the garden, surprised by how crisp the hedges were, how defined the crocuses peeking out along the walk.

Keats, when she opened the book, made perfect sense. Line after line tumbled out, unmarred by squinting or floating words.

She stood and turned towards the looking glass.

The girl staring back was not ugly, but she was certainly not the delicate ideal her sisters had mastered so effortlessly. Her nose turned up, her mouth never seemed still, and her hair refused to lie obediently under pins. The spectacles made her eyes appear a touch too large.

Still, she tilted her head, studying her reflection this way and that. It was not beauty, perhaps, but it was something.

It was hers. She traced a finger over the scar that was a daily reminder of her grand mistake.

Apparently she would never learn, even though racing a curricle was hardly the same as attempting tricks on the back of a horse.

No, now was not the time to don spectacles in public. Her reputation was in shatters as it was, and the good Lord only knew what would be said of her were she suddenly to wear them. How would she bear the stares and the pity?

That tentative self-assessment was interrupted by the unceremonious entry of Maeve, who swept into the room like a breeze carrying judgement.

“Joy!” she cried, the name stretched out like a reprimand. “Tell me—my eyes must have deceived me—was that truly you racing Mr. Cunningham through the park?”

Joy winced and snatched the spectacles off her face, thrusting them into the pocket of her gown before she turned.

“I cannot deny it,” she said, attempting an air of insouciance.

Maeve sank onto the chaise longue with the air of one overcome. “Great heavens, I was afraid it was you. Thornhill and I were out walking—he had just shown me the primroses blooming by the Serpentine—and there you were, flying past in a curricle like a highwayman on the run!”

Joy rubbed at her temple. The dull ache had returned, no doubt from the shrieking she’d done during the race.

“It is all anyone is speaking of!” Maeve continued, in a voice tinged with both horror and fascination. “Two matrons nearly swooned. Lady Bexley called you that girl with a curl of the lip I have only ever seen used for actresses and Americans.”

“I do not think before I do things,” Joy said simply.

Maeve fixed her with a knowing look. “Even I know it is not done, Joy.”

Joy dropped onto the edge of the bed. “What do you think will happen, besides Westwood returning with a thundercloud stitched between his brows?”

Maeve hesitated, folding her hands in her lap. “They say you are becoming unmanageable.”

That caught Joy’s attention. “ They say that?”

“One dowager in particular,” Maeve admitted, her tone dropping. “She said, ’If she were mine, I would marry her off as quickly as possible—let her husband take her in hand before she kicks over the traces completely.’ ”

Joy gave a snort of laughter that startled the kittens. “And here I thought marriage was meant to be a romantic union of souls. Not the acquisition of a scolded filly.”

Maeve did not laugh.

Joy’s smile slipped. “You agree with her?”

“No. But I do worry for you. You make it so easy for people to misunderstand you. I daresay there are men who would find your high spirits refreshing—but they are few, and none of them are dukes.”

“I do not want a duke,” Joy retorted. “I want a fast horse and a well-sharpened wit and perhaps a man who does not find either alarming.”

“Then you must wait a long while,” Maeve murmured, “or else resign yourself to being talked about forever.”

Joy turned her face away, blinking at the bookshelf. The Keats lay open, abandoned. “Do you know,” she said softly, “when I was younger, I used to wish I were Hope.”

Maeve looked surprised. “Hope?”

“She’s gentle. Lovely. Everyone always esteemed her.

She never frightened the vicar’s wife with questions about sea battles or asked to shoot the pistol at the fête.

I was forever getting smudges on my gloves and knots in my hair, and Lady Halbury would say, ‘Oh, Joy, why can you not be more like your sisters?’”

Maeve gave a small smile. “I never had a sister.”

Joy sighed, sinking deeper into the mattress. “But I do not wish it now. I should be so bored . And besides, someone has to keep Freddy Cunningham on his toes.”

Maeve arched a brow. “Is that what this is?”

Joy did not answer immediately. The room was quiet but for the kittens’ steady purring.

“Not in the marrying sort of way. Just…he has never tried to change me. He grumbles, certainly, but he never says I ought to be more demure or less daring. He is maddening at times, but he lets me be myself .”

“And supposing he does not always?” Maeve asked. “Just suppose, one day, he begins to think like the dowagers?”

“Then I shall race him again,” Joy said, “and put him back in his place.”

Maeve chuckled. “Good heavens, I do not doubt it. What of the dashing Colonel St. John?”

“He did not seem concerned by my antics.” Could she have finally found someone to accept her as she was?

“Perhaps he is worth more consideration,” Maeve agreed.

“If he ever comes near again after today.”

They sat together a while longer, not speaking, just listening to the rustle of the garden through the window and the occasional bump of a paw on the floorboards.

“I shall go and change before dinner,” Maeve said at last, rising with a sigh.

“I suppose I must attempt something with my hair,” Joy said. “Though I doubt it shall obey me.”

“Try a ribbon,” Maeve offered, pausing at the door. “It makes you look less like a governess and more like a wild heroine in a Gothic novel.”

Joy laughed. “That is the strangest advice I have ever received.”

When Maeve had gone, she drew the spectacles from her pocket and placed them gently on her nose once more. “If Maeve only knew. Governess indeed.”

Outside, the garden was sharply green, the sky turning to violet. In the glass, her reflection was unchanged—bold, a little strange, wholly herself.

She rather thought she could live with that.

Westwood did indeed come back to Town, but it was not Joy who was first scolded, but Freddy.

“How could you tempt her to race, Cunningham?” Lord Westwood demanded, stalking across the breakfast room as though he meant to challenge Freddy to pistols at dawn.

Freddy, who had been attempting to butter a crumpet, paused with knife in mid-air and the distinct sensation of being a fox cornered on the hunt.

“I hardly tempted her,” he said mildly. “She very nearly ordered me to race her. I daresay you could not have stopped her with a regiment of dragoons.” Though perhaps it had been he who had sped upon her, after all.

“Don’t be flippant,” Westwood snapped. “You are the gentleman in this business.”

Freddy abandoned the crumpet with a loud sigh. “If you have ever tried to dissuade Miss Joy Whitford from a madcap idea, you would know it requires divine intervention. Or a sedative.”

“She is my ward!”

“And a grown woman,” Freddy retorted. “Not a porcelain doll.”

“No, porcelain dolls do not scandalize the entire park by racing through it in a curricle, laughing like a lunatic! I have had three letters already, each more insufferable than the last. Lady Bexley says Joy has ‘the constitution of a stable boy and the manners of one as well.’”

Freddy did his utmost not to smile. “Her manners can be quite good.”

Westwood’s nostrils flared. “You find this amusing ?”

“Not at all,” Freddy lied. “I am properly ashamed. Mortified, even. Deeply repentant.”

“You are smirking.”