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“How wonderful!” Lady St. Quinton patted the empty chair beside her. “Please, sit. May we expect many suitors calling tomorrow?”

“I-I’ve already eaten. The Miltons hosted a breakfast.”

“My, what a night you must’ve had.” Mama laughed in the same manner she did with guests, a high, calculated chirp. “Did anyone show you special attention? Any gentlemen familiar with your father and Belmaine?”

Lord St. Quinton’s head lifted slightly.

Sophie thought all her energy had been spent, but her nerves prickled, quickening her pulse. “Oh, yes. Lord Eastwood, he’s grandson to the Marquess of Westhampton, and Lord Walmsley …”

Reciting the men’s names made her feel like a fraud, opened a hollow in her gut that hadn’t anything to do with hunger—unless her appetite was for pleasing her parents. She had been introduced to these men, danced with as many of them as she could to avoid the blue-coated one Lady Milton had wanted to foist upon her, but not one had garnered a persistent interest. They smiled at her, conversed politely with her, and turned their backs at the earliest opportunity. It was as though she wore her cold intentions round her neck, emblazoned on a sign: Marry me for my family’s sake, for your own gain, for I will never love you. I cannot.

Only one man had locked eyes with her throughout the night. No doubt the glaring would have continued well into the morning, had he not left before dawn.

Time felt warped when Sophie’s eyes opened to the wash of moonlight on tangled bed linens. The hip bath sat abandoned by the cold hearth. There was not a live coal or spluttering candle to illuminate the mantel clock, but she could sense the lateness. She had missed daylight, dinner, all of it. Her feet landed softly on the carpet. Late was perfect for her purposes.

She slipped on her night rail, the draft a refreshing feel against her skin, and her bare feet made near-soundless progress down the stairs. Sleep had been the remedy she needed: her mind was sharp, her senses heightened, the helpless feelings of this morning tucked away in some quieter corner of her thoughts. She hesitated on the landing of the first floor, but found no porter stationed in the entry hall below.

She smiled, her gait loosening as she found nothing but silence and the unlocked doors of Papa’s study. She had been wrong to worry about this venture; no one in this household was paranoid or crafty enough to prevent her sneaking about.

Lighting a single candle was enough. It flashed an orange glow over the length of her fingers and the brass drawer pulls of the desk. She raked through the contents of the largest drawer first, finding unanswered correspondence, scribbles from parliamentary sessions, promissory notes from the modiste, and from the cordwainer. She moved downward, repeating the process again and again, until at last, she found the newspaper from this morning.

The London Star. Its pages were disordered, still folded along the asymmetrical lines her father had made, but the headline drew her eye immediately: Naval Intelligence.

Suddenly, Sophie wasn’t sure she wanted to possess the knowledge that heading contained. If her parents had taken pains to hide the paper’s contents from her, she should abide their wishes. If they thought it would upset her, well, they were likely correct.

Unfortunately, she had never been one for abiding orders.

Greenwich, 24 March

Four of His Majesty’s frigates were taken by Napoleon at the Isle de la Passe in August 1810, following the naval disaster at Grand Port during which many lives were lost. The only remaining frigate, HMS Iphigenia, has been recaptured following months of use by Napoleon’s navy. Officers and crews of the four frigates are to return home with Iphigenia, with Captains Curtis, Lambert, and Willoughby to bring prizes.

Iphigenia is to arrive at Deptford Dockyard for repairs in a sennight.

Sophie scarcely heard the newspaper crinkling as she folded it, following the set of creases made by her father. Her pulse was thick in her ears.

Iphigenia.

Naval disaster.

Words she had seen printed alongside each other before, after news had already reached Sussex that Lt. Edmund St. Quinton of the HMS Iphigenia, aged twenty-one, was killed at the Battle of Grand Port. ‘Disaster’ seemed a filthy understatement.

Napoleon’s men had captured the frigate, callously resorted to watery graves for the dead—for her brother—and taken the living for prisoners. Sophie had thought of Iphigenia often. Did Edmund’s service fulfill him as much as he’d hoped? Did he live proudly, die painlessly? What did he see, think, feel, pray, when the French closed in, when Iphigenia’s guns ceased to fire?

Answers she would never have, secrets held by another time, in a place she would never visit. But now …

Edmund’s ship was coming home. In many ways, it was a more fitting memorial to his life than his gravestone, which presided over vacant earth in Sussex.

The townhome’s draftiness was no longer welcoming, the single candle’s brightness not sufficient for the yawning breadth of her father’s study. Sophie left the newspaper just as she had found it and closed the drawer.

Some moments stayed with a person forever. Her childhood was dotted with happy examples of the phenomenon, most of them involving bare feet and the humble cottage they had lived in while Belmaine Hall underwent years of renovation. Then there was a whole cluster of them, branded upon her soul—if such a thing as souls could be believed in. Moments she longed to un-forever:

Edmund’s leaving. The messenger. The funeral. Moments that would live with her to her last lucid hour.

Since then, there had been nothing memorable, just an uninterrupted slate of barrenness. The return of this ship would not be added to their number, she did not think, but it had the effect of grasping at that deepest place, where the sum of her lived, and pulling hard. She knew, as she left the study with gooseflesh-covered skin, she would be fruitless to resist.

Tonight would not bring rest. Tomorrow would not bring her parents’ granted permission—because she would not expose her shameful snooping and hamper her intended course by asking for it.

She would go to Greenwich. But she would have to find another means of doing so entirely.