“Thank you,” she made a point of saying as she climbed from the car. All the street-level lights were on in the four-story house, and before Kit could put a hand to the door, it was opened by a blueskin servant. There was no hour of the night or day when there was not some footman on duty to attend to any emergencies or sudden whims of the residents. At first, Kit had found this a little disconcerting, but she had grown to like the idea that, no matter how wakeful and isolated she might feel, even in the middle of the night, somewhere in the mansion was another soul alert and ready to spring to her aid.

“Good evening, Patrin,” she said to the young man at the door.

“Good evening, hela,” he replied.

“I assume my grandmother is asleep?”

“Not quite yet,” he said, a shade of regret in his well-trained voice. “She indicated that she wished to wait up for you.”

Kit grimaced. “Oh, joy. All right. I’ll go right up.”

So she climbed up two flights of stairs to the suites where her grandmother lived. Some of the more modern city homes had been built with elevators, but Granmama, a hard-core traditionalist, would have no such contemporary devices in her home. Instead, a lovingly maintained wooden staircase curved up all four flights of the house, even into the servants’ quarters on the upper level. Granmama never asked for anyone’s help climbing those two flights, either, and she probably made the trip five times a day. The exercise must be what kept her in such fearsomely good health, Kit thought. She herself was just a little winded by the time she made the landing on the third floor.

The door to her grandmother’s suite was closed, but a spray of light spilled out over the threshold. Kit waited till she had caught her breath, then knocked lightly on the door. “Granmama? Patrin said you wanted to see me when I came home.”

“Yes, yes, come in,” was the impatient invitation from inside the room. Kit opened the door and stepped in.

Her grandmother’s sitting room was the most beautiful room in a truly elegant home. Each of the five high windows was draped with pale green linen; the ivory wallpaper was patterned with ivied trellises. The furniture was upholstered in emerald-colored damask and carefully arranged over a luminous hardwood floor. Potted plants and cut flowers were set on tiers of wrought-iron stands, so that the room was filled with the scent and color of living beauty. Everywhere were reminders that this was a woman tied to the land, who derived her wealth, her strength, and her sense of time from the regulated seasons of nature.