“Hello there,” came a woman’s voice, and they all looked over to see Anne Brown emerge from behind a hedge, rearranging her skirts as she did so. “I’ve just been going to see my aunt,” she explained, and everyone lowered their gaze politely in the face of this bald euphemism.

“Are you walking alone?” Olivia asked.

“Oply ran on ahead with Tom Eames, mad keen to experience the village graveyard ‘for literary reasons’—something about Mary Shelley, who is a lady author, they tell me. It sounded like a wholesome enough activity, so I allowed them to go unchaperoned. Perhaps you’d like to join them there, Cecilia?”

Cecilia, guessing how Mary Shelley’s example might inspire a boy and girl to visit a graveyard without adult supervision, but not wishing to enlighten the girl’s grandmother, quietly demurred. The group continued toward the village.

“How is Mrs. Eames going with repairs to her house after that dreadful Lightbourne shot it down?” Miss Darlington asked.

“Steadily,” Miss Brown replied. “The roof has been patched, and the house managed to float about four feet off the ground this morning, traveling half a mile closer to us until it was stopped by a recalcitrant cow. The biggest problem remains in Thomasina having lost her voice due to all the smoke, for the house responds only to her.”

“Pleasance has a honey and ginger remedy for throat damage, don’t you, dear?” Miss Darlington said.

“Actually it’s a skin cream to thwart vampires from the necks of innocent maidens,” Pleasance said, “but Mrs. Eames is welcome to try it if she wants.”

An uncomfortable silence followed, broken by Olivia saying to Miss Brown, “It’s very Christian of you to accommodate Thomasina’s son at this time.”

“One does like to do one’s duty whenever possible. And Tom’s a good boy. He and Oply get on like—well, like a house on fire, ha ha.”

“Ha ha.”

“Yesterday he offered to help with her math lessons. They spent all afternoon shut up in the library, toiling over multiplication. And last night I thought I heard Oply cry out, and so went to her room, only to find Tom in his nightshirt at the door. He’d also heard the noise, he said, and rushed to see if she was safe. He must have run dreadfully fast to get there before I did, considering his room is upstairs. Indeed, the effort was apparent in his flushed face. Such a fine, upstanding young man.”

“Good heavens, Cecilia, are you all right?” Miss Darlington asked with alarm as Cecilia began coughing.

“Yes, thank you, Aunty,” Cecilia managed to say through her coughs. “I must have swallowed a speck of dust.”

Miss Darlington frowned. “I knew it was a bad idea for you to walk so far.”

“I’m fine, truly,” Cecilia said, but Miss Darlington was having none of it.

“Cecilia is very delicate,” she explained.

The Fairweathers, Olivia, and Miss Brown assessed this with their own eyes. Cecilia stood impassively as they looked her up and down. Growing up with a dozen honorary aunties inures a girl to such inspections.