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“We’ve only heard the stories, like everyone else in Glass Toho mourns the loss of her htest hesitation, in a voice like cool water She even lifted the Duke’s hand frohtfully familiar

“Oh,” sighed the Duke and Duchess They sagged together, their fine clothes wrinkling “We can’t thank you enough for your kind words Carry on, sally forthwhatever the young folk say nowadays”

Emily stared She’d only ever seen Charlotte lie to Tabitha about stars falling to earth and spilled salt and the occasional tear in her stockings But now Charlotte’s lies spooled out like perfect, silken thread, and whatever they touched stuck together fast

The Sergeant swept the his eyes once the royals couldn’t see hi his head “Does what it says on the tin Just thepeople! I don’t care what rank they’ve pasted on You’d think it irl? Nope! Goes with the Duchy and the ring and the rest They can’t do a bloody thing Well, I can’t i to order supper Now! This here is Dr Home, physician to the Crown and damnably fine vivisectionist You knohat that meanifies?”

“An anato the dead,” Charlotte said eagerly

“And a s chemist, and naturalist, and cricketer As well as a personal friend to yours trulyself See? You wouldn’t think a lowly Sergeant in the lowly old army would know such fine people, but I do So what else don’t you know, hm?”

Charlotte and Ehed a little and admitted that their old toy soldier could be the Sultan of the Moon and they wouldn’t have the foggiest idea Only wouldn’t we know? thought Ehtn’t be one Then again, we never played Wildfell Ball, either

A tall, thin man folded out of the sort of black leather that doctor’s satchels are htened up and looked the lady whose skin was patterned over with a thousand bronze coins A fountain of penny-curls crowned her head and tumbled down her slender back

“I hope you’re both very well?” the doctor said in a voice like stitches sliding neatly through a needle But somehohen he said it, Dr Hoht happen if they were not well, rather than anxious that they should be in good health

“And here we have Miss Mary Percy” Crashey kissed the penny-girl’s hand “Heiress of Angria and paramour of the Marquis of Douro”

“That’s not a very nice word,” Emily said, embarrassed for the beautiful Mary “You shouldn’t call people things in French without their permission” Her heart beat faster Ginevra Bud was lady’scopper woowns She felt terribly exposed Mary Percy raked her gaze up and down the pair of the, but ended on another

“Oh, don’t be silly, dearheart, I don’t loved hand When the heiress touched her, Eht of real metal on her painted silver ar! I prefer everyone to know everything That way, no one has to suffer any nasty whispers in the powder rooree?”

Crashey shrugged and took Mary at her word He plowed on within earshot of everyone “They say Douro explained it all patientsweet to his wife Marian How he loved Miss Mary and couldn’t live without her, how if she held hirow to hate her, that sort of rubbishnrot And after he’d

said his piece, being the obliging sort Marian alas, the Marchioness up and killed herself dead so as not to be a bother”

“Marian alas such a la she said sounded careless and free, yet taut as a violin string, all at once “A true Lady always knohen to h I prefer to focus on the entrance” She turned her pretty bronze head to one side like a bird She lifted one coppery eyebrow half an inch “What utterly charive irl”