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the carriage, Kitty grew more and more snappish about the length of the journey, and George grew more and more foxed as the miles past. The carriage had become a miasma of unpleasant smells and spite.
    Mira reached up to twine a lock of her hair about one finger. In addition to revitalizing her sorry wardrobe, the dressmaker—Madame Dupree—had insisted on taking her scissors to Mira’s hair. Without the excess weight, the natural curl was released, and now her locks—though still the same shameless color—formed a cloud of loose curls about her head.
    The sun had already dipped below the horizon as they drew closer to Upper Bidwell. The last traces of daylight limned the rosy clouds in the western sky with delicate ribbons of gold. With luck, the Fitzhenrys would descend upon Blackwell shortly after dark—only one miserable day late.
    God help them all if the Ellerbys wished to entertain tonight. Mira longed for a bath and a bed so badly she thought she might cry. The family had spent the night before at an inn, but there had been no tub in which to bathe and the beds were so lumpy and bug-infested that Mira had settled for setting a ladder-back chair in the corner and sitting there, cheek pressed to the cool plaster wall. She had hardly slept at all, and she was giddy from fatigue.
    At long last, the sleepy village of Upper Bidwell emerged from the gloom, an array of tiny cottages and brick shop fronts clustered about the roadway.
    The coach driver rapped on the side of the carriage and called out, “We turn a bit here, heading due north toward the coast. Only another two miles or so to Blackwell Hall.”
    “Thank heavens!” Kitty huffed. “It is hard to fathom that such a refined man as Blackwell comes from this hideous little corner of nowhere. Cornwall, indeed.”
    “There!” she cried. “It is Blackwell, I am certain of it.”
    At the top of a rise, between the road and the sea, sprawled an imposing and rather ancient-looking castle. It was an unusual hodgepodge of structures. What appeared to be an old stone keep dominated the crest of the hill, but a smaller, more elegant Palladian manse sprouted from the front of the hulking structure, as though the owners sought to hide the true nature of their home. Rather like draping a doily over an elephant, Mira thought.
    From the south side of the stone castle, an enormous crenellated wall followed what must be the line of the cliff, and then extended out onto a rather treacherous-looking promontory. Out upon this spit of inhospitable rock there arose a forbidding tower, a stark and ominous edifice right out of the pages of a gothic novel. Nicholas’s tower.
    As the rest of Mira’s family fell over one another in their efforts to get a glimpse of Blackwell, the carriage took an abrupt turn and began the ascent from the main road to the manor house. Mira bit back an unladylike oath when Aunt Kitty, struggling to keep her balance in the wildly swaying coach, planted a boot firmly on Mira’s toe.
    The Fitzhenrys had only just righted themselves when the carriage rocked to a halt. They looked at one another in silence for a moment. Mira realized that, in that instant, she felt more of a familial bond with George, Kitty, and Bella than she ever had before. As much as they might dislike, even despise, one another, at that precise moment they were united by the tacit realization that they were wholly out-classed by the Ellerbys. George might play cards at White’s, Kitty and Bella might be accepted at Almack’s, and Mira might be welcome to tea in the home of a few titled bluestockings, but at heart they all knew they were frauds—interlopers in a Society that only just tolerated them. But the Ellerbys, murderers or not, were the genuine article, full-fledged aristocracy that could trace its lineage to the Domesday Book. If they chose to, the Ellerbys could eat the Fitzhenrys alive.
    Collectively, the weary travelers took a fortifying breath and began to pile out of