“It’s a valid complaint!” One she could fall back on easily now, rather than lapsing into a silent contemplation of how much she missed Maman. How empty her flat was every single day. How tired she was growing of sandwiches and toast, and the fact that there was no one to share anything more interesting with. “Our number of years is completely irrelevant when it comes to our life experiences and our mental age. An eight-year-old who has lived on the street for years already, for instance, is hardly the same age as a pampered child of a lord on a manor in the country.”

The point she had made to Willa, who had found herself on the streets when she was six.

“True enough.” Drake rested his arm on the table in a way that would have made Maman scold her had Margot done it. But then, she had a feeling Drake did it to try to alleviate the discomfort in his side. Maman likely would have let that one pass. “But your early life was not the sort to demand you grow up quickly, was it?”

She arched a brow. “Perhaps not in terms of loss and hardship. But I was attending my father’s university when I was twelve. I could out-think and out-reason adults old enough to be my parents and grandparents. Yet they dismissed me solely because I was still in short dresses. It was infuriating.”

No one else at the table was paying her a bit of attention—they were all helping to clear the dishes away, laughing about something else.

Drake didn’t seem inclined to move yet though. He studied her. Not like he’d been doing before, but for an actual purpose this time. Or so it seemed to her. “I imagine it would have been.”

She leaned back in her chair. “I spent my last years in Belgium wishing I were older simply so that people would stop treating me like a child—I didn’t feel like a child.” Other than a few rather childish reactions to the Germans, of course. But plenty of adults fell prey to those as well. She summoned up another fraction of a smile. “And then my first years here needing to pretend to be older so that I could work in Room 40. So age really doesn’t mean much to me. I feel as though I’ve been eighteen for years already.”

“Eighteen, is it?” His grin smacked of victory. And the teasing light returned to his eyes. “I would have guessed older. Not a thing I’d usually dare say to a female, but in light of our current conversation . . .”

Margot grinned back. “You can say you thought me forty, and I’d only thank you.”