Eugenia was dressing for the evening meal when the footman delivered a note.

It wasn’t the note of a lover.

She chose a raspberry-striped evening gown with a revealing bodice; no matter how unmoved Ward pretended to be, she knew he still wanted her, even if she wasn’t sure he loved her. With that dismaying thought, she added ruby earrings and lip rouge as well.

In the drawing room, Lizzie was dancing up and down, chattering to Ward, and Otis was sitting on the floor with Jarvis.

Ward was wearing a coat the color of smoke that accentuated his shoulders and made him look so handsome Eugenia felt a painful throb of need. A somewhat humiliating throb, inasmuch as she was about to be summarily evicted from the house.

She nodded to Ward, and crouched to greet Otis, using one finger to stroke his rat between the ears. “Master Jarvis is wearing a very fine cloak tonight.” It was dark green, with gold trim.

“It’s his favorite,” Otis told her.

As whiskery, intelligent-looking animals went, she was forced to admit that Jarvis had charm. Of a sort.

“He must go into his bag during the meal,” she said to Otis. She could hardly ignore Ward, so she straightened and turned. Lizzie was talking a mile a minute, words bubbling out of her as if she were a river.

As she watched, Ward’s brows drew together and he said something sharp. Lizzie scowled right back.

Eugenia smiled reluctantly. Lizzie would drive Ward mad when she came of age. She was too independent and original to blindly obey the intricate codes that governed polite society.

Ward met her eyes, and with a shock she saw that he wasn’t displeased at his sister; he was angry at her. “I gather that you took my sister to a tent-talk, Mrs. Snowe,” he said. “I would that you had sought my permission first.”

Eugenia went over to them, and bent to kiss Lizzie’s cheek before responding. “Permission? To attend a lecture about the composition of water? One doesn’t usually ask for permission to be bored into a stupor.”

“I wasn’t bored!” Lizzie cried. “The talk was funny, even if it was by Mr. Gumwater! I learned—”

“There’s no need to repeat what you learned,” Ward said, cutting her off.

“You are being protective to a fault,” Eugenia observed. “The subject of the lecture was chemistry. Some people may not believe young ladies capable of comprehending scientific concepts, but I hope you are not among them.”

“In fact, Lizzie is showing all too much comprehension,” Ward said grimly. He turned away, as if he couldn’t look at her any longer. “Otis, I think it would be best if you and Lizzie made your farewells to Mrs. Snowe now, and returned to the nursery. You can take your supper there.”

“I don’t want to!” Lizzie protested.

Ward’s jaw tightened.

“It is Mrs. Snowe’s last meal with us,” Lizzie added, jutting out her stubborn little chin.

Apparently, the “tent-talk”—whatever that was—had been the last straw. Eugenia felt a burst of pure rage at the idea that her sins were so egregious that she was no longer invited to dine with the children, but she choked it back.

“You and I have not seen the last of each other,” she promised Lizzie. “I shall ask Mr. Reeve to allow you to pay me a visit in London. Would you like that?”

“Yes, I would!” Lizzie exclaimed. “Do you truly have to leave, Mrs. Snowe?” Her mouth wobbled.

“Indeed I must,” Eugenia smiled, although her cheeks felt stiff. “My father is waiting for me.”

She saw the pain that streaked through Lizzie’s eyes, and pulled her into an embrace. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m truly sorry about your father, Lizzie.”

“Miss Midge said that all things have their season. She said my father is in heaven.”

Hopefully Miss Midge, for all her failures when it came to evening prayers, had provided some comfort. Eugenia gave Lizzie another squeeze, then went to Otis, hugged him, and gave Jarvis a little pat.

“I thought we were to take supper with you,” Otis complained.

“Ruby will bring you supper in the nursery,” Ward said. His eyes were flinty.

The butler held the door open for the children and was turning to go when Ward stopped him.

“Gumwater,” he said, “would you be so kind as to summarize the content of your tent-talk? Mrs. Snowe somehow did not catch the essence.”

“I regret I was unaware that any women were present,” Gumwater said, his tone plummy with ill-disguised disdain. “Until afterwards, of course. There were those who felt only women of a certain class would attend a tent-talk, but I gave them your name, Mrs. Snowe, and assured them you were a widow of good standing.”

“You cannot imagine how distressed the unfavorable judgment of your acquaintances makes me feel,” Eugenia remarked.

“The talk wasn’t intended for ladies,” Gumwater said, flashing her a look of potent dislike. “No tent-talk is.”

Eugenia skewered him with a gaze that she had learned at her father’s knee, a stare that spoke to generations of aristocrats as ancestors. It made it clear that she was capable of summoning a servant to have a commoner’s head cut off.

Or at least, she would have been three hundred years before.

“What, exactly, is a ‘tent-talk’? I understood from the placard outside that you were offering a lecture on ‘chemistry in proof of the scientific sublime.’ Furthermore, no one barred me and Miss Darcy from entering.”

Gumwater cleared his throat. “I was expounding on the benefits of chemistry. Teaching the local men about the composition of water.”

“You were billed as ‘diffuser of useful knowledge’; what, pray tell, has that to do with the composition of water?”

“I have a gift for humor,” the butler said, his bushy eyebrows twitching madly. “It was my free afternoon.”

“Give us a précis of the content,” Ward said.

“It’s the way I teach it. So that it sticks in men’s brains, as most are simple-minded.”

“I fully understand that most men have simple minds,” Eugenia agreed.

“I put it in terms of relationships. Hydrogen is like nitrogen, a dependent friend of oxygen, continually forsaken for new favorites.”

Eugenia had the strange feeling that she was performing in a Punch and Judy show, but without lines. What on earth could be offensive about hydrogen?

“Come to the point, Gumwater,” Ward said, folding his arms over his chest.

Suddenly Eugenia remembered a phrase from the tent that was followed by a roar of male laughter and Lizzie’s body shaking with giggles. At the time, it had seemed innocuous, but . . .

“I suppose that you explained chemical relations by drawing an analogy to intimate matters,” she stated.

Gumwater nodded. “The connection between oxygen and hydrogen is much more friendly in the state of water.” He coughed. “It takes two hydrogen atoms to satisfy an oxygen atom.”

Her father would say Gumwater was a prick, Eugenia thought. A woman-hating prick, who probably thought she shouldn’t know that word, and never mind it went back to the time of Shakespeare. “In other words, you turned the chemical composition of water into a jest about the difficulty of satisfying a woman?”

“The men always laugh when I explain what it would take to see water split up,” Gumwater elaborated. “It wasn’t meant for a young lady. I’ve never had a woman enter the tent before and certainly no governess would bring her charge to something meant only for men, as is a tent-talk.”

Ward had stood silently through this entire exchange. Now he indicated the door with a jerk of his head.

He said nothing until Gumwater left, at which point he turned to her. “Why in God’s name did you enter that tent? Even if you didn’t understand the aim of a ‘tent-talk,’ surely you noticed that the audience was entirely male?”

“If scientific information were not viewed as the sole province of men,” Eugenia snapped, “you might well find more women inadvertently wandering into what was actually a ribald harangue.”

“Educational principles aside, I would like to know why you exposed my little sister to a vulgar, if not lewd, performance.”

“I had no such intention,” Eugenia said, drawing composure around her like a suit of armor. “I am truly sorry that I didn’t recognize the true nature of your butler’s so-called lecture. Lizzie has a thirst for knowledge that should be nurtured, but obviously I chose the wrong venue.”

“As I have repeatedly told you, Lizzie is a young lady,” Ward stated, his arms locked over his chest.

Anger swept through her with the same burning ferocity with which she had experienced desire the night before. “I am fully aware of Lizzie’s place in society,” she said, fighting to keep her voice from rising. “I see no reason why her status should preclude scientific knowledge. When I was a girl, I especially enjoyed learning mathematics.”

“If you’ll excuse my bluntness, Eugenia, that is irrelevant. Lizzie will be raised in a house without strumpets, or the other lamentable aspects of your upbringing, which is precisely why I came to Snowe’s Registry in the first place.”

Eugenia flinched. She hadn’t expected to have her confidences thrown back at her; she’d never told anyone but Andrew about the courtesans in her father’s house. “We are in agreement on that point,” she said, striving for composure.

“Then why did you bring my sister into a tent full of men enjoying a string of lewd jests? You, who train governesses, you took my sister to see a debauched tent-talk.” Ward was furious—and rightly so.

She had made a mistake, and she’d learned long ago to acknowledge her mistakes. She would apologize again.

“There are instinctual rules that govern polite society.” He raked a hand through his hair, frustrated. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

How could he possibly think she was ignorant of the rules of polite society? Her power to grant a family a governess was linked to the children’s success in marriage. It was as if he still thought she was a former governess—but she’d clarified her rank, she was sure of it.

“A lady would never have dreamed of entering that tent, and if under some misapprehension she were to enter and see the audience, she would remove herself immediately,” he went on. “Yet you sat unmoved while my little sister absorbed jests alluding to three people in one bed. Not to mention an illuminating disquisition on watery froth, Mrs. Snowe. In short, my sister is now curious about the composition of semen, as well as unusual erotic combinations!”

Eugenia forgot her resolution to apologize. “Your sister, Mr. Reeve, was already in possession of far more knowledge of adult life than are most children her age,” she pointed out. “Need I remind you of your mother’s friendship with the charmingly named Mr. Burger—which friendship her children had been instructed never to mention?”

“My intent is to help them forget their unfortunate childhood, not deepen their knowledge of dissolute behavior.”

“I had no intention of teaching your sister immorality!”

“Let me repeat: what were you doing in the goddamned tent while she was learning it?”

“I have apologized for that, and I will apologize again,” Eugenia said, pulling herself together. “I was very wrong to enter that tent. I was not paying attention to your butler’s sordid lecture, and I freely acknowledge that I should have been.”

“What in the bloody hell were you doing?” This was a shout.

Eugenia shouted right back. “Thinking about you, about us!”

His face went utterly expressionless, stony. “Us?”

“Yes, us!” she cried. “I was wondering why you had taken yourself off with Otis, why you were acting so strangely, why you had said—” She stopped.

“Had said what?”

Her breath was rasping in her chest. “Nothing,” she said, her voice quieting. “Why you had said nothing. About us.”