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forthrightly, but in a gentle voice. “I believe he did. Does your father like you?”
    â€œPapa is very busy making lumber,” Millie said with resolve, sitting up straight and smoothing her small skirts. “And I don't imagine he finds me especially interesting. Not like that woman he visits in Seattle sometimes.”
    Lydia felt mild heat touch her cheeks from the inside. She reached out and took Millie's hand lightly in her own. “I think you're very interesting indeed,” she said. Millie Quade was by all accounts one of the brightest children she had ever encountered. “Perhaps you and I can be friends.”
    â€œPerhaps,” Millie agreed philosophically. “I have my sister Charlotte, of course, but she can't precisely be called a friend because there are times when she hates me. And Aunt Persephone's bones hurt when it rains, so she spends a lot of time in her room.”
    A tiny muscle deep in Lydia's heart twisted. It wasn't difficult to imagine how lonely the vast, gracious house could be, set square in the center of this wild and unsettled country the way it was. “Aren't there other children in Quade's Harbor?” she asked, stricken.
    Millie shrugged one small shoulder. “Only Indians, and Aunt Persephone won't let us socialize with them because they have lice.” She leaned closer to add in a confidential whisper, “And they don't use chamber pots.”
    Lydia held back another smile. “Mercy,” she remarked, because the daring information Millie had imparted called for some comment. “What about the lumbermen? Don't any of them have families?” She recalled the row of sturdy saltbox houses she'd seen from the mail boat when she and Polly and Devon had arrived in Quade's Harbor earlier that day. She'd been struck by how much the town resembled long-settled villages in the East.
    Millie shook her head. “Most of them don't have kinfolks to speak of, and if they do, they don't want to come here.”
    Lydia was about to offer a reply when there was a rustle of sateen at the open doorway of her room. She looked up to see a tiny white-haired woman standing there, gazing at her with energetic, speculative eyes. This had to be Aunt Persephone, she thought Despite Millie's earlier statement that the woman often suffered from painful bones, she didn't look as though she'd ever spent so much as an hour reclining on a sickbed.
    Lydia rose, straightened her skirts, and extended a hand. “Hello,” she said. “I am Miss Lydia McQuire—the governess.”
    The gracious lady in the dark blue dress inclined her head slightly. “Yes,” she agreed, in a thoughtful tone. “The governess. My name is Mrs. Persephone Chilcote. Brigham and Devon are my nephews.” The sweetly imperious gaze swept to the child sitting on the bed. “Millicent, get down from there at once. One does not invade another person's chambers and muss their coverlet with one's feet.”
    Millie obeyed readily and fled the room in a sudden and quite staggering burst of energy, shouting, “Charlotte! There's a ship in the harbor and it's going to take you all the way to China because Papa's sold you to a tribe of bandits with long mustaches!”
    Mrs. Chilcote rolled her eyes, but her expression was gentle. “I do what I can,” she sighed, “but I'm afraid my grandnieces have become too unruly for an old woman to handle.”
    Lydia privately thought that a whole brigade of whooping Confederate raiders probably wouldn't prove “too unruly” for Mrs. Chilcote, but of course she didn't voice this conclusion. Devon and Polly were newlyweds, concerned wholly with each other, and the master of the house was hardly civil, let alone companionable. Lydia needed an adult friend.
    She indicated the two straight-backed chairs near the window, and Mrs. Chilcote took one.
    â€œThis town, this house,” Lydia marveled softly, sitting