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until Michaelmas term. I wonder how much Mr. Kettering paid her for the trouble of babysitting me for three months.”
    Mr. Kettering. Worth. Her brother .
    “Uncle has pots of money.” Avery grinned as if Uncle had chocolates in his pockets. “Spending some on Miss Snyder won’t hurt him. She looks sad to me, or angry.”
    “She’s nervous,” Yolanda said, switching to English. “She’s one of those mousy little women who toils away in thankless anonymity in the classroom, and dithers over which new sampler to start as if it’s a significant decision.”
    “Uncle thanks Mrs. Hartwick, but I don’t know those other words you used—anom de something and blither,” Avery said, peering out the window. “They’re coming now.”
    “With food, thank the gods.”
    “Uncle says that. Thank the gods.”
    Uncle this and Uncle that. The little magpie worshipped the ground the man strutted around on. Yolanda had heard in great, dramatic detail in at least two and a half languages why Avery had reason to appreciate him. Avery had been orphaned in Paris for almost a year after her mother, Moria, had died, but had memorized Worth’s direction, and eventually, thanks to the kindly intercession of her mother’s friends, had been sent to her uncle.
    A tale worthy of one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels, right down to the way Worth doted on his niece.
    Had he asked darling Avery for proof she was related to him?
    To them?
    Yolanda tucked into a hot, savory cottage pie, silently admitting that her brother may not have believed her, but he’d taken her in, bribed Miss Snyder to chaperone, and now they were off to the country.
    He’d apparently bribed the coaching inns along the way, too, because the food was excellent, and the relief teams in harness in mere minutes.
    Miss Snyder gave Yolanda a hesitant smile from the other bench. “It’s good to see you eating, my dear. Soon we’ll be at your brother’s estate, and you and Avery can have a nice stroll.”
    She patted Yolanda’s knee and took a careful bite of her meat pastry. Miss Snyder slowly, thoroughly chewed her bite, patted her lips with a serviette, then took another slow, small bite.
    Another hour, the coachman had said. One more hour, a mere ten miles, and they’d be free to leave the coach.
    Had it been more than that, Yolanda doubted anything in the world could have stopped her from running screaming down the road. Miss Snyder, mousy, anonymous, and whatever else could be said about her, had at least chosen her path in life. She could have been a governess, a laundress, a paid companion, or some lusty yeoman’s wife—she was by no means ugly—while Yolanda was reduced to begging a berth from a brother nigh twice her age.
    An earl’s daughter with a small fortune in trust—though not a lady by title—and she’d had nowhere to go.
    She chewed mechanically, lest the lump in her throat rise up and humiliate her before the brat and the mouse. A young lady with nowhere else to go could not indulge in dramatics, not in the middle of the king’s highway, and not in her brother’s handsome traveling coach.

    * * *
     

    “Yolanda had nowhere else to go, you see,” Mr. Kettering said. “May I top off your tea?”
    “Was your upbringing so backward you believe an employer should wait on his staff?” Jacaranda’s tone was meant to be prim, condescending even, but what came through was sheer puzzlement. She’d been given to understand a title hung not too distant on Mr. Kettering’s family tree, and here he was, dragooning her into breakfast tête-à-tête and pouring her tea.
    “You’ll take sugar with that, to sweeten your disposition,” he said, pushing the sugar bowl toward her. “My upbringing was the best that good coin and better tutors could pound into me, but my mother died when I was quite young, and her civilizing influence soon became a distant memory. Have another raspberry crepe.” He portioned one off his own plate and onto hers.