He didn’t question how I had friends so soon after coming to the city. He merely said, “Have a good time, then.” He sounded even more preoccupied than usual. After nodding farewell at the foot of the front steps, he crossed the street to the park. I watched him go, wondering why he was going out with a butterfly net at this hour, but then I forgot about him when I saw Lizzie waving at me from the corner.

When I reached her, she took my arm. “I was worried you’d change your mind.”

“I’ve been looking forward to this,” I assured her as we headed down the street. I felt very free and independent, going out for the evening with no parent or any other chaperone, like a proper career girl in the city.

At Third Avenue, we caught a horse-drawn omnibus heading downtown. I had to remind myself not to gape as I stared out the window while the bus trundled slowly down the street. The streets ran like canyons between towering storefronts and tenement buildings, and the lower we went in the city, the more crowded it became.

When the bus stopped in a particularly busy area, Lizzie said, “This is us.” We stepped down to the curb and were immediately swallowed by chaos. Lizzie steered me through the crowds to a restaurant where a small group of young men and women were gathered around two tables pushed together. As a professor’s daughter, I instantly recognized university students, though these were somewhat more down-at-the-heel than I was accustomed to seeing at Yale. A few of them wore the eccentric attire of the Mechanics. As I’d feared, I was dressed far more formally than any of them. I looked like a girl attending a tea dance, not a young woman out on the town with her friends.

This wasn’t what I’d expected when Lizzie invited me to a party. A couple of them had drinks in front of them, but there was no food, and there wasn’t room for dancing in the small restaurant. I tried to hide my disappointment as I took the seat Colin held for me. “Ah, the beautiful Miss Verity, gracing our humble gathering with her presence,” he said, and I couldn’t help but smile. A quick scan of the faces gathered around the tables made my smile fade because Alec wasn’t there.

“Are we all here?” Lizzie asked.

“No, Higgins is on his way with a spark,” said a boy about my age wearing a brightly striped waistcoat.

“He does have a way of finding them,” one of the girls said with a giggle.

“Everyone, I’d like you to meet my friend Verity,” Lizzie said. “She just came to the city this week, and she’s working as a governess in the Lyndon house.” They greeted me, but none gave their names in return, which I found very odd and rather rude.