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crowning touch. I hate, hate, hate flowers in my hair. They invariably fall off at the most awkward of moments. Like into my soup bowl at a social parlor or crushed to a perfumed death on the ballroom floor.
    And the fragrance of lilies makes me sneeze.
    Nevertheless, as the sky darkened and afternoon tea came and went with nothing but a few delicate cakes to sate my growing hunger, I watched as if from a distance as my maid and housekeeper dressed me like a paper doll.
    I enjoyed listening to them chatter, but I was nervous. Worse, I was annoyed that I’d be trapped in a stifling ballroom, enduring gossip and speculation and study like some kind of caged animal, while my bounty remained below. Unclaimed. Unspent.
    “And we are done!” announced Mrs. Booth, but I wasn’t given much time to inspect my appearance before I was hurried from the room, all but stuffed into my cloak and elbow-length gloves, and guided out into the night.
    London gleamed prettily in the dark. Lights shone from the Chelsea square, especially with the gas lamps flickering merrily. The city above the drift glimmered and danced; a glittering dowager festooned with diamonds.
    Below, she was pocked and diseased, her skirts hanging torn and stained around her roughened knees, but only the faintest roil of fog wafted over the edges of the elegantly decorated canals to remind the peerage of the impure dregs beneath them.
    The time of the horse and carriage as emblems of status was long gone, passed now to rustic country estates or idle pleasures at Hyde Park. Our carriages were gondolas, as they have in Venice, and our footmen gondoliers. Slimmer than the ferries that only moved up and down, these vessels could float like a ship on air.
    The night was filled with the soft hum of the aether engines installed at the bottom of each. They sucked in air and steam, filtered it through a process developed by the late Dr. Angelicus Finch, and extracted—so the science periodicals explained—the aether found in the very atmosphere.
    Because of this, the discharge expelled through the array of finlike pipes inset into the tail was colored blue, and you could mark the business of an evening’s road by the flares and shades of azure lighting the night. Chelsea was often lit by a subdued blue glow.
    The St. Croix carriage was not one of the more spectacular, lacking in gilt and trim and boasting only one pan-flute array of pipes at the tail, but it offered a private box with curtains. More important, it was also outfitted with a clean-air machine. Useful for those occasional days when the fog shifted up.
    As I gathered my skirts around me and took Booth’s steadying hand, the houseboy at the front of the gondola caught my eye. He grinned a gap-toothed smile and winked.
    “Face forward, Leviticus,” Booth directed solemnly.
    I couldn’t help my smile as I settled into the box. I knew little enough of the brat affectionately called Levi, but he’d earned an extra coin or two from me over the few months Booth had taken him under his tutelage. I asked him his age, once. He’d claimed sixteen.
    I’d called him a bald-faced liar and sent him to the kitchen.
    We have reached a sort of truce. I no longer force him to scrub the pots, and he refuses to go lower than twelve.
    Booth handed Fanny into the padded box seats beside me. The widow was lovely in a silk mauve gown and matching lined cloak. Her gray hair had been swept into a clean chignon, with only a few thick curls draped beside it. A spray of feathers bobbed delicately by her subtly powdered cheek.
    I arranged the folds of my yellow skirts and tried not to think about what was coming as the gondola lurched into motion.
    I knew I looked fetching enough. Betsy and Mrs. Booth had simply outdone themselves, choosing the vivid yellow gown to contrast with the fire buried in my hair. Ivory lace frothed from the gown like a spill of cream, drawing attention to its low waist, small bustle and length of the hem. I