That was welcome news to me. If aristocratic magisters seldom used magic, then I might not suffer too terribly. But Lord Henry’s eyes hardened and his jaw firmed, so that he lost his usual vague look. “Anyone can use a magical device—a servant can drive a magical carriage—but you have power. You’ve been given an incredible gift, and you will learn how to use it,” he said, spitting the words out so crisply that little Olive shied away from him. “The rest of the aristocracy has become lazy, resting on their ancestors’ achievements and willing to pay for magical power provided by magisters beneath us, but we will use our gifts.” I wished I could ask him more about that. I’d assumed that all magisters were upper-crust, but it sounded as though some of them worked to provide the magic that powered their devices, which put them below the nobility but still above the nonmagical.

“I like using magic!” Olive piped up. “I’ll be better at magic than you are, Flora. Look, can you do this?” She closed her eyes and concentrated very intently, then moved her hand like she was lifting something invisible. Her spoon rose a few inches off the table. It wasn’t powerful magic, but it was performed so close to me that I felt the power surge through me in a violent wave. I couldn’t suppress my reaction, so I grabbed my water glass, took a sip, and then began coughing as though the water had gone down the wrong way. That gave me an excuse to convulse and have tears in my eyes.

Flora unwittingly deflected attention from me by continuing the argument. “A high-born lady doesn’t need magic,” she insisted.

“Without it, there’s no difference between you and the daughter of some nonmagister military hero or wealthy capitalist who couldn’t marry into nobility,” Rollo countered.

“But it’s my birth that matters, not my magic. My father was a marquis and my grandfather is a duke, so I can marry a nobleman.”

With a wicked grin at his sister, Rollo said, “Someday, some high-born lord will ask you to prove you can at least light a candle so he’ll know you’re not a commoner in disguise, and when you can’t, he won’t marry you. No one will.”

“Men will want to marry me because of my position,” Flora said.

Before the argument could escalate, Lord Henry said, “Did anyone read anything interesting today?”

“One of my friends at school had a newspaper that told all about the steam engine racing a magical carriage,” Rollo said. “But it wasn’t in the Herald. They missed the story entirely.”

“And what about you, Flora?”

She gave a deep sigh and asked, “Must I?”

“If you don’t want to participate in the conversation, you don’t have to. I’m sure Miss Newton has something interesting to say.”