“Garrit smells like lard-fried onions,” I mumbled under my breath. What I wanted to know was whether Eduard’s heart was truly mine. If the ring predicted children, they would be his. I held out my open palm to Mama. “All right. Please, show me.”

Her smile had never been more approving. The golden ring spun on its red ribbon, scattering light around the kitchen. I didn’t know which one of us was holding her breath the hardest.

“A boy first.” She was no less thrilled for me than she’d been for Mien. “Now let’s see about the rest of them.”

Eduard loves me. He will marry me.

I waited, hypnotized, for the golden circle to turn again.

That was the moment when the doorbell rang.

The sound cut through me like the night train’s lights through the dark, its sharp whistle jostling people from their dreams. My mouth, which had fallen open with wonder, snapped shut with irritation.

Mama palmed her ring. “I wonder who that is.”

Someone with terrible timing. But what if… I shoved back my chair and cut in front of Anke. “I’ll see to the visitor.”

I patted down my hair and straightened my dress. I opened the door floating on wings of hope, then crashed to the ground of hard disappointment. “Oh, hello.” I must smile. “What a lovely surprise. Please, come in.” I called back to Mama, “Theo is here. Dries’s friend from France.”

He brought the not unpleasant scent of pipe tobacco with him, his tan suit wrinkled from the long trip. My heart leapt with a new possibility.

“Where is my brother?” I glanced past Theo. Maybe Dries was paying the carriage driver.

“Mevrouw Bonger.” Theo snapped off his hat. “I come alone.” He was as breathless as I had been just a moment before, his blue eyes wild, his fingers twitching on the handle of his carpetbag, the man clearly in the grip of turmoil.

“Have you come from visiting your mother? Does she fare well?”

The first time my brother brought Theo to our home had been shortly after his father’s death. Maybe he was back in the Netherlands because some ill had now befallen his last remaining parent.

“Her letters suggest her mood is improved.” Theo’s gaze jumped from our ebony hat rack to the vase of sunflowers, then to the picture of King William III next to the mirror—everywhere but me. “I haven’t seen her in some months. I traveled straight here from Paris.”

Worry wrapped around me between one breath and the next. “Is anything amiss with my brother?”

Theo’s eyes briefly met mine at last. “Dries is quite well and sends his love.”

Thank God.

Anke silently whisked away Theo’s hat and bag, and then I showed him to the sofa, where he collapsed as if from nervous exhaustion, then jumped up again when he realized I had not yet sat.