“Given that we’re charting the blooming of the tree and keeping an eye on the newly built nest in that limb, yes. Yes, I do.” Ivy grinned and picked up a slate pencil that must have rolled from someone’s desk when she was moving it. “Only for a week or two, though, or I daresay there will be a lot more of this required.”

Lily followed the motion of Ivy’s hand to the blackboard, where a student had written I will not chatter in class twenty or so times. She chuckled. Chattering had never been her particular problem, but there had been a time or two over the years when she’d had to write I will not daydream during lessons or I will not draw in my copybook on the board. “Diana Oglesby again?”

“Who else?” Ivy shook her head, but amusement lit her eyes.

“Perhaps she needs a ruler to her knuckles.” Lily said it solely because she knew well her little sister could never bring herself to resort to the typical punishments. She’d instead devised a merit and demerit system that seemed to keep the girls in remarkably good order, what with the promise of rewards for those who had accumulated a surplus of merits and some rather interesting punishments for anyone with a deficit, like picking slugs off the school garden’s plants in the mornings before class.

Ivy rolled her eyes. And then they flashed bright, and she motioned Lily to join her at the window. “Come here. They ought to be coming by again any moment.”

“Who? Diana Oglesby?”

“No, Silly Lily.” The window was open to let in the spring air, and Ivy poked her head out, bracing her palms against the sill. “There. I can just see them emerging from that copse of trees.”

Curious now, Lily slid into place beside her sister, her hand reaching by habit for the camera in her pocket. She didn’t know who had caught Ivy’s attention, but if it was so notable, perhaps it called for a snapshot. She squinted into the distance, her brows drawing tight together when she saw Ivy was pointing at two figures far too tall to belong to her eleven-year-old pupils. No, they were clearly men. Men moving at quite a quick pace along the path inside the park.

One of whom had a stride so smooth and graceful that she had a feeling she knew exactly who it was long before she could make out any features. “Is that . . . ?”

“Clarke and the Russian.” Ivy leaned her elbows into the sill and rested her chin in her hands, looking more the schoolgirl than the teacher. “This will be their fourth lap of the mile circuit, if you can believe it. And their pace doesn’t seem to have lagged.”