Eden didn’t answer. Yes. Her father thought she was moody. Everyone in her family had thought she was moody because she had more than one mood. Cheerfulness, fake or otherwise, was the only acceptable emotion in the Cartwright house.

“Lass?” Doctor Williams’ voice was edged with impatience. God, this motherfucker could act.

“I suppose I am moody,” she offered.

“Do you cry often?”

Eden hadn’t cried for years, but that probably wasn’t in keeping with her character. “Almost every night.”

He nodded curtly. “Your father is also concerned that you aren’t expressing any interest in young men who are coming to visit you.”

He said it straight-faced, without so much as a gleam in his eyes, but Eden’s cheeks burned with the understanding she and Willow were really, actually playing doctor.

“I-I don’t know how I’m supposed to be around men,” she told him.

“A lot of women just enjoy being looked at.”

Eden gazed out of the nearby window, ignoring the modern buildings, the airplane she could see passing over the city.

“Do you enjoy being looked at, Miss Cartwright?”

Eden shrugged, then realised that wasn’t very Victorian. She glanced at Willow. “I don’t know. It’s difficult. Everyone has so many ideas about who I should be. Sometimes I just want to be left alone.”

Willow slid off his desk and walked toward her. “Miss Cartwright, you don’t need to worry about what you should be. You’ll soon have a husband to make happy and children to care for.”

Eden clenched her jaw. That was her worst nightmare—a future out of her hands, paths she’d never be allowed to take.

“Miss Cartwright, what is your relationship with your parents like?”

Ugly. Manipulative. Mean. Other kids got pocket money, but Eden never saw a red cent. If she needed clothes or shoes, her mother took her shopping. Not to bond, but to make sure everything was pre-approved. When she was twelve, she’d sold her riding boots to buy a synthesiser. A month later, she’d come home from school to find the instrument missing. No conversation, it was just gone. Of course ‘Hysteria’, had appealed to her. Most novels set in Victorian and Regency times did because aside from her iPhone, her life had been straight out of Old World London. Until she met—

Do not think about him.

“Miss Cartwright?”

She blinked, her head spinning. Was it the rum? Embarrassed, she smiled at the doctor. Hoping that at least this might make her look loopier. “Sorry, Doctor. You were asking me about my family?”

“I was.”