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Spirited. I had grown up hearing words like that. Willful, difficult, contrary, too much. An entire vocabulary engineered to make a child’s brightness sound like a flaw.

“Why?” Adrien asked.

The nanny’s mouth went into a flat line. “You may take your quarter-hour, Master Emrys,” the woman said, rising. “I must speak with Miss Ravenwood in any case.”

Emrys grinned and made his way up the stairs to where Adrien was. They shared a few whispered words, then Adrien removed a brass telescope from his jacket. Within a minute they were crouched at the window arguing about whether you could see Belle Isle from this side of the castle, and whether the lizards there truly grew as long as a man’s arm.

The nanny drifted to me. “I am Madame Odile. I have the honor of serving Master Emrys.” A card appeared between her fingers, cream stock, faintly perfumed. “My lady Christine requests the pleasure of your company at tea. Tomorrow, on the east terrace, at the eleventh hour.”

I took the card out of curiosity more than anything. “I’m honored. Though I can’t think of why Lady Christine would want my company.”

“Can’t you?” said Madame Odile pleasantly. She glanced at the boys by the window, at Adrien mid-lecture. “I had heard this position is… demanding. If you’d ever like guidance, I have managed high-spirited children before. There are methods. Firmness, routine, and a great deal of sitting practice. With time, they can be made quite presentable.”

Della landed heavily on my shoulder and snapped her beak. Madame Odile let out a horrified gasp. I didn’t have to look at my familiar to know that Della’s throat feathers were all fluffed out, and that she was staring at Madame Odile with her milky eyes.

I closed my fingers around her beak before she started squawking. “Not in the library,” I muttered. Then turned back to Odile. “That’s very kind,” I said. “But I don’t think there’s anything about Master Adrien that needs to be unmade.”

She smiled tightly at me, then returned to her table. I held Christine’s card, shaking with anger.

Della fluttered to the gallery railing and sidestepped over to where the boys were huddled together. At the window, Emrys’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“You must come to The Pearl after my brother’s nameday. Papa says after the ball, everything will be different. And that no one will ever dare to call us bastards again.”

We found the botany section, and I sent Adrien down the ladder with three herbals and instructions to find the plates on yarrow, comfrey, and feverfew. While he was sprawled on the gallery floor between two slats of light, studying on his own, I looked for a book to peruse.

I wished I had access to my old family grimoires and histories back home where I could read more about Honora Kemp, if to satisfy my curiosity about who she was—or rather who she’d been before she’d cast that spell for The Devouring.

I didn’t think this library contained obscure Kemp family history.

I started on the poetry shelf and flipped through a few pages with disinterest when I found a small book with a plain green spine—The Misadventures of Captain Cortez by Gerard Corbeau. I liked adventure stories. I tipped it out, opened to a random page, and landed on a passage in which a corsair captain was removing a lady’s stays with his teeth.

My eyebrows climbed. I turned the page. They climbed higher. I glanced at Adrien, who was engrossed in his reading, lying on his back with his feet on the wall. I checked on Madame Odile, who was at her table, making her charge into a perfect little student.

I read on.

The tips of my ears heated. I leaned back against the wall, finding that I couldn’t tear my eyes off the words. The captain spread the lady’s legs, having found something else to plunder. Now I was imagining I was the duchess and someone else was the captain.

My back would arch as his head went between my thighs. My fingers twined in his thick hair. Pulling hard when he found the exact spot…

“Miss Ravenwood, are you alright?” came Adrien’s curious voice.

I looked up to find him staring at me from over the top of his book, and I quickly tucked the green book under my arm. “Perfectly fine,” I said breathily. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

His brows pushed together. “Your heart is beating much faster than usual. Like you just ran up a flight of stairs.”

The embarrassment and guilt nearly hollowed me out.

“Are you ready to make something?” I said.

He popped to his feet. “Yes!”

I nearly set the green book back on the shelf before following Adrien, but at the last second I tucked it back under my arm. If I were going to endure a year sleeping down the corridor from a man who looked at me the way Yves did, then I would need something to read. Something engaging. Something that kept my mind thoroughly occupied on nights when it wandered where it shouldn’t.

Mr. Duval had mentioned consorts. While the idea of visiting someone purely to satisfy my needs was appealing, I didn’t want to pursue that option.

This was all I needed.

Adrien led me to the stillroom, which was just off the kitchen garden. It had a workbench, a mortar, a charcoal brazier, which was more than enough to get started.