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Julia raised her eyes to the ornate ceiling. “Because no one has ever had one of those before.”

“Never mind,” said Kate, turning to go, but her knees felt like rubber and she had to grab the edge of the settee to steady herself.

“No. Wait.” Julia wiggled herself up straight, her voice changing, becoming almost serious. “Emmie is the nearest thing I have to family. As opposed to her usual air of sickening cheer, she currently exudes misery. I want to know why.”

As Julia sat up, Kate caught a strong whiff of spirits. “Did you get into Alice’s sherry?”

“That rubbish?” Julia raised a silver flask. Even in the gloom, Kate could see that it had a coat of arms on it, old and elaborate. “This is brandy, my child. Want a slug?”

“I’ll pass,” said Kate drily. No need for Julia to know that she already felt dizzy and that a sip of brandy might put her under entirely.

“Suit yourself.” Julia waited a moment and then asked, “What happened?”

It was too much trouble keeping it to herself. And it was dark and the thump of feet and tinny din of music echoed from the next room, adding to the general feeling of unreality.

Kate lowered herself onto the other end of the settee, folding her hands carefully in her lap. Her fingers felt as though they didn’t belong to her. “Emmie’s been paying my board without telling me.”

“Is that all?”

Kate’s head felt very heavy. She lifted it just enough to glower in Julia’s general direction. “What do you mean, is that all? She had no right—”

Julia shrugged. “She likes to do things for people.”

Kate shifted against the surprisingly lumpy cushion. “What if people don’t want them done? I know you think I’m Emmie’s charity case, but—”

Julia lowered her flask. “Emmie’s what?”

“Charity case,” said Kate tightly. “Those were your own words. That’s what you said. To Nick Penniston. In Newport. You called me Emmie’s latest charity.”

“Oh, yes,” said Julia after a long moment. “I’d forgotten that.”

“I hadn’t,” said Kate bitterly. It felt very real, just then, that long-ago moment, coming down the stairs to find those two golden heads together. “Why did you hate me so much? Was it because you thought I was sponging off Emmie? I wasn’t, you know. I never took a penny from her, not then, anyway. Or”—it was something she had always wondered, deep down—“was it because of Nick?”

Next door, they were playing “Blue Danube.” The sickeningly romantic strains floated through the room as Julia spluttered on her brandy. “Nick? You thought I was jealous because of Nick?”

“Why not? Or was I not important enough to be a threat?” Just another Bridget: Irish and poor.

“Good Lord, Nick,” said Julia reminiscently. “He was a decent enough specimen of his kind, as male creatures go. Utterly spineless. Pleasant, but spineless. No, I didn’t hate you because of Nick,” said Julia in a detached, cool tone. “I hated you because I was jealous of you.”

She said it so matter-of-factly, as if it ought to have been blindingly obvious. “What on earth could I possibly have that you don’t?”

Julia sat up straighter. “The right to earn your own living. A scholarship, a proper scholarship, free and clear.”

“That’s just because my family didn’t have the money to send me.” Kate had been so grateful for that scholarship and worked so hard to justify it. Free and clear were never words she would have used to describe it.

“Did you think mine had?” demanded Julia. “Do you know what I had to do to go to Smith? Beg. You want to talk about charity cases? You’re looking at one.”

Kate blinked at Julia, trying to make the world stand still again. “But you—your family—”

“Doesn’t have two beans to rub together,” said Julia with a certain grim satisfaction. “My father lost it all on the stock market in ’93, poor sap. Then he killed himself. They put it about that it was a hunting accident, but it wasn’t really. He just didn’t have the nerve to face my mother. I don’t blame him. Well, I do, really. But I can understand why he’d rather face a bullet than my esteemed mater.”

“But wasn’t your mother married to a French count?” It had been mentioned a time or two. Or ten.

“Oh, yes. This was his—pretty, isn’t it?” Julia waved her flask, the silver glinting in the sparse moonlight. “He thought he was getting a rich American. My mother thought she was going to be Marie Antoinette without the whole guillotine bit. Both of them utterly washed-up. He was a wonderful old wastrel. He didn’t have a sou, but that didn’t stop him from buying me rafts of toys—and then tearing up the bills,” she finished cynically. “He had a theory that aristocrats shouldn’t have to pay. Unfortunately for him, that was a little too ancien régime for these democratic times. His creditors caught up with him eventually.”

“I don’t think we ever bought anything we couldn’t pay for,” said Kate wonderingly. Even when they were terribly, terribly poor. Her mother had a horror of credit, and of the pawnshop. “We went without when we couldn’t afford it.”

“That, my dear, is because you are poor but honest,” said Julia mockingly, but Kate knew, somehow, in this strange half-dream state, that the mockery wasn’t for her. “Not a washed-up aristocrat with delusions of grandeur. I refer, as you may have gathered, to my stepfather. My mother hasn’t delusions. She’s just a venal witch.”