He turned to look back at the main building and began to pick his way there, through the cold darkness. It was time he got some answers.

He pushed in through the doors, bringing the chill winter air with him, and the receptionist, Mrs. Lucas, looked up at him in surprise. She’d been playing solitaire on her computer, a half-eaten microwaveable lasagna pushed to the side. She hurriedly shut down her game and stood. “Lord Northcliffe! Are you all right? How can I help you?”

The alarm in her voice made Grey wonder what he looked like, but only for a moment. Leaning forward on her desk, he said, “I need to know why Jaya Rao is in all my classes.”

She looked at him, confused. “Princess Jaya Rao?”

“Yes.” Grey was trying to keep a lid on his temper, but it felt like a volcano, urgent, seething, simmering. “Please,” he said carefully, biting each word up. “Please look at her records and tell me why she’s registered in my classes. Was it arranged?”

The receptionist put her reading glasses on and sat back down, opening an application on her computer. “Well,” she said, still sounding discombobulated, but apparently deciding it wasn’t worth it to ask questions of Grey in the mood he was in, “if there was any kind of special intention behind it, we’d have recorded it here.…” She clicked around for a few moments, and Grey tried to get his breathing under control. Everything felt like it hinged on what Mrs. Lucas had to say.

“Ah, here it is.”

Grey held very still. “Who arranged it?”

“It appears that your father’s secretary made a phone call the day before classes began to request that Jaya be put in your classes.” She glanced at him. “Due to the fact that your families are old friends and Princess Jaya was new.”

Grey felt like he was witnessing every single moment a thousand times because time had slowed to a standstill. “My father’s secretary,” he repeated slowly, in a voice as heavy and colorless as lead.

Mrs. Lucas turned back to her computer and tapped at a few keys. “Would you like me to connect you, Lord Northcliffe?”

Grey nodded numbly.

She dialed the number on her desk phone and handed the receiver to him, striding off to an interior office to give him privacy.

Grey put the phone to his ear, his hand in an iron vise around it.

It rang once.

Twice.

Three times.

“Hello?”

Jaya

She sat next to Caterina, frowning. “Hello?” she said again. No one answered. “How odd,” she said to Caterina as she began to pull the phone away from her ear.

Then he spoke.

“Jaya,” Grey said, in a voice that didn’t sound much like his at all. “Could you meet me outside the ballroom in five minutes?”

“Outside? Well, yes, but… why? What’s going on?” She paused, but no answer came. “Hello?”