Normally kids didn’t take chemistry until they were well into high school. She had had a chemistry set once. She had rubberized an egg by soaking it in vinegar, and dissolved the shell. She had made a crystal from the kit and also made slime with a small vial of sodium tetraborate and a bottle of glue. With baking soda and vinegar she’d created a small volcano. Vinegar was a key ingredient. And she had certainly been very liberal with the vinegar in the Spotless! mixture.

“So I won’t be punished?” Rose asked.

“No. But you shan’t say ever say ‘shame on you’ to me again. I am royal. Don’t forget it.” She lightly tapped the pendant.

Tap that pendant all you want! thought Rose. I’m going to find the man who made it—the goldsmith, a goldsmith for the court. But as this thought streamed through her mind, Rose cast her withering gaze to the floor and muttered beneath her breath, “Whatever!”

“What? What did you say?”

“I said thank you.”

Now there was a rap on the door.

“Enter,” the princess called out.

It was the lady with the snail hairdo.

“Ah, Lady Margaret,” the princess said.

Snail Head! Rose thought. She oozed the slime of treachery.

“Your brother, Prince Edward, awaits your presence and hers at quoits.”

“Hers?” Elizabeth replied, hiking one minnow-like red eyebrow into her very high forehead.

“That girl who serves.”

“Her name is Rose, Rose Ashley. That is her Christian name. I suggest you address her as such.” Lady Margaret looked somewhat confused, but no more so than Rose. Mercurial. The word popped into Rose’s head. It was another word her mom often used. A few of her clients were always changing their minds as to what actually was their dream house. They were mercurial. One minute they wanted a colonial-style home with pillars and all, and the next something log cabin–y, and then they might go from log cabin to super-modern all-glass house. A lot of her mom’s clients were constantly changing their minds.

Rose followed the princess out to the quoits court. Snail Head came too, much to her regret. It became immediately clear to Rose that quoits was just another name for tossing horseshoes. There were pegs set in the ground at the end of a closely clipped strip of grass.

“I think I should go first,” Prince Edward announced.

“But you went first last time, Edward,” Elizabeth protested.

“But it doesn’t matter. I’m first in line for the throne.”

“But I’m first in order of birth.”

“Well, actually, Princess Mary is,” Edward said slyly. Princess Mary had just joined them and could hardly conceal the smirk that began to squirm behind her lips. The prince then turned abruptly to Rose. “What do you think, Rose?”

“Me?” Rose squeaked.

“Why ask her?” Snail Head huffed.