“Lying is easy.” Miss De Wilde leaned back in her chair too and folded her hands in her lap. “Especially when one doesn’t actually mean to be believed.”

Blast, those eyes. They exuded challenge and questions with every second. And here he was fighting just to stay upright. It wasn’t fair. And he knew well it wouldn’t be long before exhaustion and pain won out.

But in the meantime . . . “And when one does mean to be believed?”

Her gaze met his, bold and unflinching. “Then it’s a simple matter of mathematics.”

He let his brows ask the obvious question.

She acknowledged it with a tilt of her head. “The correct ratio of truth to falsehood, combined with the proper rate of respiration, blinking, and the angle of one’s spine. Ratios, rates, and angles—mathematics.”

He could see why Blinker Hall called her my dear. She was clearly a girl cut from the same cloth as their director. He looked back to Dot. “Perhaps you’d better tell me how your new position is going before I begin to wonder if we ought to believe a thing this young lady has ever told you.”

Dot sent him a look. “I’d rather hoped you would tell me what happened.” She motioned to his stomach.

Blast. He’d not had time to come up with a proper cover story. But hopefully his wince would suffice for now. “Perhaps when the pain and medicine have allowed me to sort through it all myself?”

His sister sighed. But she relented and began to tell him about how she’d finally begun to settle in and feel a proper part of “Blinker’s Beauty Chorus,” as the secretaries were apparently called. “And Margot and I have such fun on our daily walks and meals!”

Fun didn’t seem like a word Margot would use very often—at least, not one she would have defined in the way most people did. But then, Dot was a bit of an odd duck herself, so perhaps their definitions matched.

He wished he could have enjoyed the telling more, could have done more than smile when the tale called for laughter. But the longer she talked, the more aware he became of the pain shooting from his midsection down his legs and up into his neck. He had to move, to lie back down. Even a slight shift might help. But when he tried it, his attempt ended in a wince he couldn’t hide.

Dot’s fingers landed on his again. “Oh, look at me. Rambling on and tiring you out. We’ve already been warned we mustn’t stay more than a quarter hour, and no doubt we’ve been here that long. Sit still, Drake.” She pressed harder on his hand. “Don’t injure yourself. Let me fetch a nurse to help you.”