Later Evangeline would replay this moment in her head a dozen ways—what she might have said or done to throw Agnes off the trail. It probably wouldn’t have mattered. Agnes had never liked her. Only a few years older than Evangeline, she’d been in service to the Whitstones for nearly a decade and lorded her institutional knowledge over Evangeline with supercilious condescension. She was always chiding her for not knowing the rules or grasping how things worked. When Evangeline confided in the assistant butler, her one ally in the household, that she didn’t understand Agnes’s palpable contempt, he shook his head. “Come now. Don’t be naive. Until you arrived, she was the only eligible lass in the place. Now you’re the one drawing all the attention—including from the young master himself. Who used to flirt with Agnes, or so she believed. And on top of that, your job is soft.”

“It isn’t!”

“It’s not like hers, though, is it? Scrubbing linens with lye and emptying chamber pots from dawn till dusk. You’re paid for your brains, not your back. No surprise she’s tetchy.”

Evangeline rose from her bed, and, carefully stepping around the puddle, went to the chest of drawers. Picking up the ruby ring, she held it to the window, noting with dismay how it caught and refracted the light. She glanced around the room. Where could she hide it? Under the mattress? Inside her pillowcase? Opening the bottom drawer, she slipped the ring into the pocket of an old dress tucked beneath some newer ones.

At least Agnes hadn’t noticed the white handkerchief under the ring, with Cecil’s cursive initials—C. F. W. for Cecil Frederic Whitstone—and the distinctive family crest embroidered onto a corner. Evangeline tucked the handkerchief in the waistband of her undergarments and went about cleaning up the mess.

Mrs. Whitstone materialized in the library while the children were taking turns reading aloud from a primer. They looked up in surprise. It wasn’t like their mother to show up unannounced during their lessons.

“Miss Stokes,” she said in an unusually high-handed tone, “please conclude the lesson as expediently as you can and meet me in the drawing room. Ned, Beatrice—Mrs. Grimsby has prepared a special pudding. As soon as you are done you may make your way to the kitchen.”

The children exchanged curious glances.

“But Miss Stokes always takes us downstairs for tea,” Ned said.

His mother gave him a thin smile. “I am quite sure you can find the way on your own.”

“Are we being punished?” Ned asked.

“Certainly not.”

“Is Miss Stokes?” Beatrice asked.

“What a ridiculous question.”

Evangeline felt a tingle of dread.

“Did Mrs. Grimsby make a sponge cake?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

Mrs. Whitstone left the library. Evangeline took a deep breath. “Let’s finish this section, shall we?” she said, but her heart wasn’t in it, and anyway the children were distracted, thinking about the cake. When Ned reached the end of his singsongy recitation of a paragraph about boating, she smiled and said, “All right, children, that’s enough. You may run along to your tea.”