“Ignore him,” Maggie said to Alva, drawing her towards a small sofa. “He’s horrible, and he never says anything interesting. I love your dress; it’s terribly elegant. Did you get it in France? I’ve never been to France, but I want to go just enormously, on account of all the beautiful fashions, and also obviously because it’s where Lavoisier was from, although I suppose since it’s also what killed him perhaps it’s a mark against rather than for it, but even that aside, it is the birthplace of modern chemistry. Did you ever visit the Academy of Sciences? They don’t allow women members, of course, but just to see?”

“I don’t know where it’s housed, I’m afraid,” Alva said, feeling lost.

“Don’t know that I’d say France is the birthplace of modern chemistry,” John said, his slow words rumbling over Maggie’s quicksilver ones.

“But how could you disagree, Daddy? When one thinks about the Baron de Morveau, or Berthollet—”

“But then there’s Boyle, Mags; he was Irish,” Sam said from behind the sofa. Alva suddenly steadied, like she’d been tossing about on the high seas and someone had dragged her onto dry land. “Or Cavendish—”

“Oh, what do you know, you tinkerer—”

“Surely the country that executed the father of modern chemistry should lose the honor of being its birthplace—” Benedict interjected.

“And Priestley too, he was English, and Scheele, who was Swedish—”

“And then there’s the Comte de Fourcroy—”

“Children, let us all agree that many countries contributed to the foundations of modern chemistry,” Winn said, smoothly talking over the argument. “And let us eat, because dinner is served in the dining room.”

The family moved en masse to the dining room, Benedict and Maggie still arguing under their breath.

“Obviously it was us who should have worried about making a good impression,” Sam said quietly, his face alight with affection. “Rabble.”

Alva smiled and shook her head, not sure what to say. She wondered whether she’d ever seen a family as happy with one another as this one, wondered if before she’d met them she would have believed such a family existed. Her nerves had faded during the argument, replaced entirely by the good humor and laughter that seemed to surround the Moores. They liked one another, she thought, and wondered whether anyone in her family had ever liked anybody at all.

They settled around the table, already set with dishes brought up from the hotel’s kitchens. Two waiters stood at the ready, the wary looks on their faces testifying to the Moores’ habitual chaos.

“Now tell us all about the ghost,” Winn said after they had all been served.

Sam nodded at Alva. “You tell; I’m starved.”

“Err—” Alva looked around the table at the waiting Moores. “Um. Well, it seems … It seems there is one. Just one, we think.”