“Yes—eat,” I said, feeling like I’d snapped out of a daydream. Never had I been spoken to so openly about the war, but that was only part of it. It was no hardship to look at him, I was realizing. Asa Lane was handsomer than any boy I’d ever seen—by leagues and fathoms, really—and sitting across the table from him, I hadn’t a prayer of ignoring it. I couldn’t tell whether his eyes were blue or brown. Brown, I thought, ’cause his hair was dark and wavy. But they were beautiful-shaped eyes, whatever their color. Set a little wide and canted at the edges, like under the weight of his lashes. It gave him a solemn look—or a determined one. I couldn’t decide.

He picked up his spoon and waited.

“Oh.” I picked up mine.

Our dinner was fish and mashed turnips—smash, as we called it in West End. It was overcooked and runny, but I wasn’t complaining. In West End, I worked sunup to sundown hoping I’d end up with enough peas and rice to cure my hunger. I had no problem at all with baskets of food showing up at my door.

As we ate, it occurred to me that Lane had kept his word so far, answering my questions and not asking any back. That began to put me at ease.

I could do this. All I had to do was keep on asking questions without overthinking my motives or worrying about looking greedy or covetous. I swallowed a bite. “What would I need to learn if I wanted to become more refined? More ladylike, I mean?”

“Movement,” he replied right away, like he’d been waiting for the question. “Your manner is too sharp. You’d need to modify the way you walk, the way you sit, the way you use that spoon.”

I sat up straighter. Relaxed my grip on my spoon, holding it more like he held his. “How should I do those things?”

“With elegance and reserve, but also naturally. Gracefully.” He glanced toward the stern window. “That music you hear—that is how you ought to move.”

The jigging had ended and now the fiddle played a slow, wistful tune. It made me think of seaweed swaying with the tide. I nodded. “I can learn that. What else?”

“Your nose is peeling from the sun. Wear a hat. Keep to the shade. And try to appear a little less hardy. Feign seasickness or heat exhaustion, for instance. Pretend offense when the hands speak coarsely near you. That sort of thing.”

They were the same sorts of things Mama had been telling me for years. As Sewel had turned me into una niña salvaje, she’d tried to keep me feminine. “What else?”

“There are rules of propriety.” He tipped his head toward the cuddy. “A lady would never, in all her life, have opened that door for me. Her virtue would be her top concern. There’s etiquette to consider as well, such as proper table manners.”