“Here now,” Liza said, obviously working something out. “You’re that inventor, aren’t you? Samuel Moore? The famous one?”

“Mmm,” Sam agreed, picking the tray up and examining it. “And this has to be quite heavy, too, with all the bits and bobs on top of it. And only one maid carrying it—”

“We heard you were in town,” Liza continued, her face loosening and a new look dawning in her eye. “Sally May Reardon, the girl who does for you, she reckons you’re mad as a hatter from the way you sleep at all hours and talk to yourself and burned a hole in her brand-new dress, but Cook, she says Sally May’s a flibbertigibbet who wouldn’t know a genius if he knocked her right on the nose, and that the dress was ugly anyway. It’s because of the new gas stove you invented; see, Cook wants one desperately. She cut out the magazine story she saw it in and hung it right in the kitchen, so she can look at it every day.”

Oh lord, Alva realized, feeling as though everything in the world had suddenly turned upside down. The girl was starstruck.

“Mmm,” Sam said, nodding vaguely. “Now tell me about this tray.”

“Well, sir, I use it to carry the tea and coffee service, and sometimes meals—and oh, ma’am, I’m so sorry I dropped it everywhere, I was just so surprised, not knowing that the gentleman was Professor Moore here—and it is heavy, sir; you’re right about that. And I have to carry it so flat, because if I don’t everything will just go skidding off the edge.”

And they were off, engaged in a thorough and far-reaching discussion about the usage of the common tea tray and how it could be improved. Alva watched them from bed, bemused. Apparently finding a naked man in the bedchamber of an unmarried woman was perfectly fine, so long as the naked man in question was Professor Samuel Moore. He wasn’t even clothed! He was just standing there, listening to Liza talk, with a blanket wrapped around him! And the girl didn’t seem to be flustered at all by it.

He had a magic about him, an utterly frustrating and impossible magic. No one who spent more than thirty seconds with him could fail to be lulled into calm, drawn into his ridiculous schemes.

It was because he thought they mattered, Alva realized. That was his magic. He thought every single person he met mattered, and because he thought so, the people he spoke to began to think so, too.

“No, sir,” Liza said with a burst of explosive laughter. “Bless you, it was the goose the whole time!”