The youngest son of a German duke gave her the necklace, a family heirloom, off his own neck; the third younger brother of the Austro-Hungarian emperor sent her home one night in a carriage and four horses that were hers to keep.

Despite the attention, Grace felt staggeringly alone without Jesse. She began to feel the poison of loneliness cutting into her, as it had hollowed out her mother. These boys would do anything for her, but none of them knew who she truly was. Only Jesse knew that. Grace went to bed every night feeling desperately lonesome, without Jesse to sit with her until she fell asleep.

And so her requests grew stranger. She asked the nephew of a Czech viscount for one of the two horses attached to his carriage, and he gallantly untethered it for her before awkwardly riding off with only his left horse. She took to eccentric dietary habits that changed at every event: a tall glass of cold milk for her meal, or fifty of one kind of canape. And this way she learned more than her own power. She learned how power worked within the halls of the upper classes. It was not enough to be able to cloud men’s minds—she had to understand which of those men had the power to produce what she desired.

For once, Grace had a way of earning her mother’s approval, however unethical the method. During their time in Paris, Tatiana was often in great spirits, finally pleased with Grace. She would smile at Grace in the carriage as they returned home from a particularly successful night. “You are your mother’s blade,” she would say, “cutting these arrogant boys down to size.”

And Grace would smile back, agreeing. “I am my mother’s blade indeed.”

11 CROWNS AND POUNDS AND GUINEAS

When I was one-and-twenty

I heard a wise man say,

“Give crowns and pounds and guineas

But not your heart away;

Give pearls away and rubies

But keep your fancy free.”

But I was one-and-twenty,

No use to talk to me.

—A. E. Housman

Cordelia rose the next day to find that it had snowed during the night, wiping the world clean. The streets of London sparkled, not yet turned to churning mud by carriage wheels. Roofs and chimneys were wreathed in white, and snow sifted gently down from the boughs of the bare trees along Curzon Street.