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quite as scary as the other new refugee maid. Whoo-ee, but she could eat a man alive! You’re a much handier morsel. Now, where are your things?”
    â€œI don’t have any. They were . . . lost.” She was ashamed to admit she was foolish enough to have let them be stolen. No, the truth must be faced squarely. “When I was getting off the boat someone in an official-looking cap took my bags and said to follow him to the cab. He wove through the crowd and I never saw him or my bags again.”
    â€œCheeky. But not so cheeky as me. I would have asked for a tip. I’m Hardy, by the way. That’s your cue to play Nelson and say
Kiss me, Hardy
. I tell you in case you don’t know, being a foreigner. Though you hardly speak like one. I will, you know.”
    â€œWill what?”
    â€œKiss you, of course.”
    â€œNo, thank you,” she said amiably.
    â€œSuit yourself. Hop in.” He tipped the barrow.
    She glanced up at distant Starkers. What would they think? Suddenly, she didn’t care. She was herself, Hannah Morgenstern. Let others take her as they may.
    She slid her tush into the wheelbarrow, crossed her ankles neatly, and began to sing, catching the words easily.
    A few minutes later, Lord Liripip, nursing his gout and scribbling away at his memoirs in an upstairs library, heard the melodious uproar and heaved himself to the window, ready to yell or chuck a volume of Trollope at the offender. He froze as soon as he drew a preparatory breath, for below him was nothing less than a memory made flesh, a delicious and painful spirit coursing down his throat, warming and intoxicating and befuddling him. There, cavorting on the green, was his youth. There, raising her voice in unselfconscious song, was the love of his life, many years gone, made fresh and new again. The resemblance was only superficial, he realized a moment later—a small, lissome, vibrant form, dark hair parted virginally dead center over quizzical black brows. What really caught him was her animalistic joy. Like another girl, many years before, she seemed to have a sense that no one else’s opinion mattered in the slightest, yet combined with that, a total lack of selfishness.
I will make myself happy
, her free voice and body seemed to say,
and through that, may you be made happy too. If not . . 
. a shrug, a gay laugh, and on with the Maenad frenzy of sheer living.
    It hurled Lord Liripip into his past, to a time when he still had hope of happiness. Now, all he had were the things that made other people assume he was happy: vast amounts of money, a secure estate, and a son to carry it all on after he was gone.
    Leaning out the window to see her better, he twisted his big toe at a painful angle and staggered back, crystalline needles stabbing his swollen joint. “Damned hooligans,” he swore. But he did not hurl the Trollope.
    Hannah and Hardy reached the front steps. “Is that an actual portcullis?” she asked in awe.
    â€œThat gate thing? No, this castle isn’t real, you know.”
    Hannah cocked her head up at the massive edifice. It looked real enough.
    â€œIt’s neo-romantic,” Hardy said, pronouncing the term carefully, as if it might get stuck on his tongue if he wasn’t careful. “Built not more than a hundred years ago, after they knocked down something
really
old, and made to look like five hundred. ’Cept the heating’s better, a bit. That’s what Umbel, the head gardener, says, anyway, when the ladies from the gardening clubs come on tour days. That’s only once or twice a year, though. Lord Liripip hates outsiders.”
    â€œWhat will he think of me, then?”
    â€œFancy him thinking of you at all!” Hardy said, laughing. “Hey, where do you think you’re going?” For she’d mounted the smooth-edged marble stairs and grabbed the velvet bell-pull. “Stop!”
    She turned back to him, wondering