I had the strangest feeling that I was being watched, and I glanced over my shoulder to see Lord Henry standing in the doorway, a folded newspaper under his arm. He caught my eye, gave me a grim nod, then put on a smile and strode into the room, saying cheerfully, “I think it’s time for a break. You may go upstairs and do whatever you like for an hour.”

“But I don’t need a break!” Olive protested.

“I suspect Miss Newton does. If you want, you may continue your practice in the schoolroom.”

When the children had gone, he said, “I hope I wasn’t being presumptuous, but you appeared to be somewhat frazzled. This is more than is usually expected of you.”

“It’s been no trouble at all,” I lied.

“And I wanted to show these to you,” he said, heading to a table where he unfolded his newspaper. “They published extra editions for the afternoon to report on the riots.” He leaned over to read the headlines, then grunted in disgust. “As I expected, the Herald has little to say on the matter, other than reporting the extent of the damage—and probably inflating the estimates.” He pulled a second newspaper out from under the first, then glanced at me. “Don’t tell anyone you saw me read this.” It was the World.

He leaned over to scan the headlines, and then all the color drained from his face. “Oh, dear Lord,” he whispered. “They couldn’t!”

Even though I was fairly certain I already knew, I asked, “What is it?”

Still ashen, he shook his head in disbelief and said, “British troops fired on some slum children who were playing in the Battery park. It doesn’t appear that they were following orders, but it still says a lot about the way the British regard the colonists.”

As he spoke, he jabbed his finger repeatedly at the article, as though it was the article’s fault. I leaned over and saw that the author was “Liberty Jones.” “That’s—that’s awful,” I stammered, shaken by the thought that he was reading my words.

He moved on to the next article. “Apparently, the people of the slums were so outraged that they rioted uptown in magister districts. The authorities are baffled about the riots. No one knows how the rioters got past the barriers set up after the shootings and came this far without being noticed. When the police finally arrived to break it up, they found no rioters at all. They simply vanished. How can an entire mob appear out of nowhere, and then vanish?”

“That is odd,” I murmured as I leaned over to read my article. I wanted to be certain they’d printed only what I wrote, with no lies added to it.

“It is the World,” he said. “They can be inflammatory, but I can’t imagine them making up something about the rioters coming and going mysteriously.”