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Octavia put her cup down and picked up a ginger cake, breaking off a small piece. “But he doesn’t know me at all, you see. He thinks I am still...as much a child as I was when he left home. He treats me as the merest schoolroom miss, and he thinks that because he protected me as a babe when the soldiers came, now nearly twenty years later I can’t stand up for myself.”

“Soldiers came where?” Harriet prompted. Wynford Hall seemed the least likely place to encounter soldiery, unless in those years of fear of a French invasion some militia had been quartered nearby.

Octavia looked abashed. “We do not usually tell the tale.”

“Of course,” said Harriet, quelling her impatience. A story was best told freely when the teller was ready. “I did not mean to pry.”

“Never mind all that old history.” Octavia waved a small hand in the air. “You must see how difficult Charles is being when all I mean to do is to take myself off his hands by finding a husband, which I can do very well on my own with no interference from him. I have my book, after all.” Octavia reached for her reticule and pulled forth the little blue book with the gold lettering and held it in her lap.

“Does Charles want you off his hands?” Harriet asked.

“Oh, you may be sure he does,” Octavia said. “Perry told me as much when I first arrived. Charles wants to live the single gentleman’s life wearing his outrageous waistcoats and pursuing women like our cousin the marchioness. He wants no ties, no burdens.”

Harriet looked at the girl’s bleak expression and wondered how she had so misinterpreted her brother’s behavior toward her. “I don’t suppose your book has any advice on dealing with brothers?”

Octavia shook her head and tucked the book away. “But the book does advise a woman to know her own mind. Charles thinks I can’t possibly know my own mind. He thinks I am still that infant who needed protecting.”

Harriet sipped her chocolate, letting Octavia withdraw into her own thoughts. The pile of ginger cake crumbs grew.

“Just because I could not defend myself as an infant, he thinks I cannot defend myself now. He thinks I will be taken in by everyone I meet, by Captain Fanshaw, whom I have never met, or even by the marchioness, who is our cousin. But I am done with being anyone’s dupe. I know exactly what it is to be taken in, and I won’t let anyone deceive me again.” She seized her cup of chocolate and took a hearty swallow.

“An excellent resolution,” Harriet said. She was no nearer to understanding what had precipitated the rift between brother and sister, but she was beginning to understand Octavia’s determination to rely on herself. She sipped her chocolate, trying to think what Charles might have said over breakfast in that blue room to set Octavia off. Before she could ask, Octavia began again.

“You know what’s worse?” she asked, setting her cup down.

Harriet shook her head. She was inclined to agree with Octavia that Wynford was protective to a fault, but she had detected no other brotherly offenses in his behavior.

“Charles thinks I have no sense of propriety, which is the gravest injustice, as if I do not know exactly with whom I may correspond when he is nothing but a despicable...spy.”

“A spy?”

“Yes, he’s looked at my post. Oh, he denies it, but he accused me of writing to...” For a moment Octavia stared blankly at the cup and the pile of ginger crumbs. Then with a sigh she continued. “To a young man in the most indiscreet way, when I have only written very proper notes to you and to the dear marchioness.”

“I see,” said Harriet. She felt the violation of it, the injury and hurt of a beloved brother’s lack of trust when Octavia felt herself blameless. She, too, had accused Wynford of spying when he followed them to the Burlington Arcade, but the word, with its implication of secret intentions, was wrong. She tried to turn Octavia’s thoughts in a happier direction. “I’m sorry to hear that things are in such a sad way between you, just when he is to take you to Lady Hardwicke’s ball.”

“Well, I should forgive him, I know, but how can I when he has not an ounce of respect for my understanding or my ability to manage my own life?”

“How did he come to misjudge you so?” Harriet asked. There must be another side to the story. She guessed that a shift had taken place in Octavia’s feelings, a shift that the girl was just beginning to understand. She had come to London suffering from the hurt inflicted by the unnamed young man, but now it was Wynford who wounded her.

Octavia remained silent, looking down at the crumbled ginger cake. “I suppose he can’t help it, you know. He can’t forget saving me as a babe under those stupid fishing nets.”

“The old history? Do you want to tell me about it?” Harriet invited.

Octavia’s eyes took on a faraway look. Then she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “Yes.”

“When Charles was eleven, I think, and I one, our mother took us with her to France to her grandfather’s vineyards near the town of Saumur. I don’t know why she did it. It was not a good time to be English and traveling in France, but our mother could always pass for French. Charles has told me that she passed for the wife of a country merchant. We were to stay for the summer, but we had not been long in the country when something happened in Paris, and we had to leave at once, traveling fast, only in the early hours and at dusk.

“We were to cross the Channel in a fishing boat from a beach near Dieppe, but there was a storm, and the boat didn’t come. We waited a day or so more—I don’t know how long, but Mama took us to the beach to play late one afternoon with the clouds clearing, and that’s when the soldiers found us. Mama had a glass to look for the fishing boat. She saw the soldiers first and made Charles take me away. He was supposed to leave the beach, but he could not move quickly carrying me, so he burrowed in the sand under some fishing nets left there to dry.”

Octavia paused. Harriet held her breath, suspended in the story. It was like the moment of being tossed from a horse. One hung briefly in the air, powerless to undo one’s error, as the ground rushed up.

Octavia drew a shaky breath, and plunged on.

“Charles pressed his thumb to my lips to keep me from crying out. I bit him, and he still bears the scar, but they did not find us. The soldiers killed our mother while we hid. Charles did not hear her cry out. He waited a long time, hoping, I think, that she would call to us. Once it grew dark, he got us to the meeting place. He had some crumbly cheese in his pocket, which he gave me to eat. In the night the Englishmen came, and Charles told them what he feared. They found our mother’s body farther down the beach and took us all back to England. My brother had to tell the story over and over again to someone in the government, but it was years before he told me what had happened.”

Harriet held herself steady, her hands around the fragile cup. For all of Octavia’s composure in the telling, it was a tale at odds with a room full of comforts. Warring impulses coursed through her. She wanted to embrace the girl. She wanted to apologize to Wynford for thinking him excessive in his concern for his sister’s safety. And she wanted to know the truth. Certain particulars of the story struck her as having great significance—the clandestine nature of the visit, the mysterious event in Paris, the delayed fishing boat, the telling of the tale to someone in government. Above all, she thought, a boy who had seen and felt what Wynford had seen and felt might become a most fierce protector of his sister.

“You must wonder at my story, Miss Swanley,” Octavia said. “Papa told me long ago that I must be very careful with such a history. He did not want anyone to pity me, you see, or to think badly of Mama for taking us to France. It all happened so long ago.”