“One hears the strangest stories, dear.” Miriam froze and glanced across the table: Margit was smiling at her sympathetically. “You were lost for so long, it must have been terrible!”

“Probably.” Miriam nodded absentmindedly and put her fork down. “And then again, maybe not.” She thought for a moment. “What have you heard?”

“Lots,” Olga began breathlessly. “You were orphaned by savages and raised in a workhouse as a scrub, isn’t that so, nana? Forced to sleep in the fireplace ashes at night! Then Cousin Roland found you and—”

“That’s enough, dear,” Margit said indulgently, raising a gloved hand. “It’s her story, to tell in her own way.” She raised an eyebrow at Miriam. Miriam blinked in return, more in startlement at the girl’s artlessness than her chaperone’s bluntness.

“I would not mind hearing for myself how your upbringing proceeded,” Angbard rumbled.

“Oh. Indeed.” Miriam glanced down, realizing that her appetizer had been replaced by a bowl of soup—some kind of broth, anyway—while they spoke. “Well. I wouldn’t want to disappoint you—” she smiled at Olga—“but I had a perfectly normal upbringing. You know my birth-mother disappeared? When she was found in, uh, the other side, I was taken to a hospital and subsequently adopted by a young childless couple.” Of stone-throwing student radicals who grew up to be academics, she didn’t say. Olga was hanging on her every word, as if she was describing some kind of adventure with pirates and exploits in far-off lands. Either the girl was an idiot or she was so sheltered that all of this sounded exotic to her. Probably the latter.

“A university professor and his wife, a critic and reviewer. I think there was some issue with my—with Patricia’s murder, so the adoption agency gave my adoptive parents her personal effects to pass on, but blocked inquiries about me from anywhere else, it being a matter for the police: unsolved murder, unidentified victim, and so on.”

“There’s only so much you can do to prevent a suicide bomber,” Angbard said with deceptive mildness. “But we’re not at immediate risk here,” he added, smiling at Miriam, an expression clearly intended to reassure her. “I’ve taken special measures to ensure our safety.”

“Your schooling,” Olga said. “Did you have a personal tutor?”

Miriam frowned, wondering just what she meant. “No, I went to college, like everybody else,” she said. “Premed and history of economics, then med school. Then, well, instead of continuing with med school, I went back to college again to study something else. Medicine didn’t get on with me.”

“You double-majored?” Roland interrupted.