Then a serving girl arrives. She may be eighteen or nineteen; casts a glance at them from large, thick-lashed eyes before kneeling in front of the fireplace and setting to lighting it. She strikes a match, holds it to a scrap of newspaper already crumpled amongst the coals, repeats the action; cowers down, still on her knees, her chin now almost touching the floor, to blow into the hearth. The boys — dazed, blurry-eyed, travel-weary — feel they have no choice but to stare at her. At her bottom, to be precise. In this position, stuck in the air with most of the skirt’s fabric trapped under her knees, it is most awfully round. When a stomach growls (Thomas’s? Charlie’s again?), it sounds pleading, forlorn. And still the girl kneels, blowing at coals.

“I believe the fire is quite lit.”

They did not hear her enter. Thomas and Charlie move as one: reflections in a mirror. Both heads swivel; both faces fill with blood. Charlie’s blush is the darker. A redhead, he is, copper-skinned. To those of his complexion, nature is not kind. It’s like a different type of Smoke, marking a different type of sin. There is no chance at all that the lady does not notice.

For she is a lady, though she is no older than they. Not tall, but holding herself as to appear it, her long, plain dress cut almost like a habit. A small face: pale, rigid, self-possessed, cold.

And pretty.

Her lips are naturally very red.

“Come here, please,” she says, not to them but past them, at the cowering form of the servant.

The girl obeys with haste but no enthusiasm, her large eyes on Thomas, then the floor. Her blouse is tight over her chest, the skirt rides up a little where it has caught at the swell of her hips.

“It appears your clothes have shrunk in the wash.”

The young lady’s voice is neither cruel, nor loud, nor yet commanding. Notes of patient sadness underlie it; humility forced into action against its will. Next to the serving girl’s large, florid frame, she appears dainty, almost fragile.

An elf, Charlie thinks.

Thomas thinks: a nun.

“It would be better if you returned to scullery duties for the moment. Until you learn to be a little less obtrusive.”

“But Lady Naylor promised me—”

“Until the New Year.”

“But she said I could—”

“Spring, then. You are excused now.”

There is a sequence to what follows. The Smoke comes first, a sudden little plume that rises from the servant girl’s chest and leaves a smudge in the starched cotton. Then tears start running, clear and silent, from dark eyes to chin. A sob follows, starts in the depth of her and shakes her frame. Next she flees, all grace forgotten, the sound of her flat shoes travelling through the closing door.