“With you and James?” Alastair raised an eyebrow, glancing out the window. Cordelia could see James standing by the snowy curb, stroking Xanthos’s nose. “I was worried that he would never move on from Miss Blackthorn. But from all appearances, he seems not to be moping.”

It was a relief to be able to talk about it out loud. “I don’t know—when he saw her at Rosamund’s party, he looked as if he were going to be ill.”

“That doesn’t signify. Whenever I see Charles, I feel like I’m going to be ill. But that doesn’t mean I still… Contrary to what your beloved poets say, unrequited love doesn’t last forever. And being treated badly by someone doesn’t make you love them more.”

“Alastair,” she said softly. “I don’t regret my marriage, but there is a part of me that feels terrible for leaving you alone just as Father came back. Is every night as awkward as this one?”

Alastair shook his head. “Never feel that way, Layla. One of the things that makes all this”—he gestured, as if to encompass the whole living situation at Cornwall Gardens—“livable for me is knowing that you aren’t here, having to endure his moods and his demands and his very selective amnesia.” He smiled. “And maybe it’s selfish of me, but now that you know the truth, and I can speak of it to someone, it is an easier burden to bear than I would have imagined.”

It was late when Lucie left Anna’s party. She had spent a restless evening there, unable to lose herself in the champagne or the conversation. She kept looking toward the windows, watching the fat white flakes of snow come down and wondering how cold it had grown tonight in a roofless shed in Chiswick.

She knew that Jesse didn’t care. Couldn’t feel the cold. She worried, nonetheless.

Finally she had given up and headed home among cries for her to stay and join another round of games and chatter. Despite her vow to conquer the Enclave, Filomena had spent most of the night in animated conversation with a vampire who shared her admiration for the art nouveau movement sweeping through Europe. After Filomena promised she would find someone to see her safely home, Lucie had maneuvered her way through the room—someone had turned a table over, and people were using it as an impromptu dance floor—toward Matthew, meaning to ask him to take her home in his carriage.