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said a deep voice.
    She startled and found that Lord Alan was looking at her with what seemed to be a mixture of uneasiness and concern.
    â€œAre you all right?”
    She had to appear calm and composed and logical, Ariel thought. She had to keep this situation under control. Love was the last thing to be thinking of; she couldn’t imagine why it had entered her mind. “We should search for the servants,” she began.
    â€œSome member of your family must be summoned,” he interrupted. “You cannot stay here alone.”
    Ariel sat straighter in her chair, relieved at this response to her solitude.
    â€œWe must send word at once,” he added.
    He said it so easily, as if it were so simple and obvious that an idiot would have thought of it. He was so very large, and secure, and confident in his position and wealth of family connections. “I will be perfectly all right,” she said. “I will hire servants.”
    â€œYou need someone other than servants,” he declared. “In these circumstances…” He looked around the room as if he now found the place uncanny. “I would be happy to send for anyone you name,” he finished.
    â€œI have no family,” she informed him stiffly.
    He looked as if he found the idea incredible. “There must be someone.”
    â€œThere isn’t,” she told him in a tone that she hoped would close the subject.
    â€œThat’s impossible.”
    He sounded maddeningly certain. “Do you claim to know more about my family than I do?” she demanded. “Bess had no family, and I had only… Bess.” Her voice wavered on the last word, and Ariel bit her lip to stop its trembling. This was intolerable, she thought. He had no right to look at her that way, with some sort of irritated kindness.
    â€œYour father?” he suggested.
    Ariel’s fingers curled into fists in her lap. This conversation was going exactly where she did not wish it to go. “He is… not available,” she said.
    Lord Alan’s face grew hard. “He could be made to be.”
    â€œNo, he couldn’t,” she answered curtly. She wasn’t going to tell him about the many, many times she had asked Bess about her father. Or about the stories Bess had made up, changing them each time, so that it became a kind of game between them, though terribly serious to Ariel. She wasn’t going to mention the agate ring, the only thing in the house that she knew had come from her unknown parent, and which she had been frantically searching for since her return. She refused to expose herself to this aristocrat and risk the kind of ridicule and contempt she had learned to endure at school.
    â€œHe might be important to the investigation,” Lord Alan urged.
    If he was, she couldn’t do anything about it, Ariel thought, since she had no clue to his identity. She caught her breath on a sob and immediately suppressed it.
    A silence fell. Ariel waited for Lord Alan to probe further, to force her to admit that she was the bastard child of a common actress and then he’d reject any further contact with her. Let him, she thought. She had hoped for help, but she would go on without it if necessary. She was accustomed to isolation, and to relying on her own resources.
    â€œAunts and uncles?” he said finally, sounding not at all censorious. “Cousins? There has to be someone.”
    Ariel shook her head.
    â€œAre you sure? We could consult records, ask neighbors. Where did your mother come from?”
    He seemed genuinely engaged with the subject. There was none of the mock solicitude and sly entrapment she had endured over the last ten years. “Nowhere,” Ariel blurted out. “She came from nowhere.”
    Lord Alan raised his auburn brows in inquiry.
    Something in his eyes, or the silent house, or the situation made Ariel, uncharacteristically, rush on. “Once when I was small, we were driving