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have to pay.”
    Mrs. Beam’s face lit up as with a sunrise. “You are engaged then, miss? God be praised!”
    For a moment, Catherine feared the old retainer would weep with joy. She took her hand back. “Not yet, Mrs. Beam. But I will be. I promise you that.”
    The housekeeper schooled her face into a soft smile, but Catherine saw the fear and worry in her eyes as clearly as she felt it in her own heart. “Of course you will, Miss Catherine. A beautiful girl like you—who would not want to marry you?”
    Catherine smiled grimly. “Indeed, who would not? Meanwhile, I will write to our solicitor first thing in the morning asking for an advance on next quarter’s allowance. He knows I am in the midst of my first Season. I am sure he will comply.”
    She did not mention, though she and Mrs. Beam both knew it, that this could be her only Season. She had only this one chance. Tonight had taught her once again that she must make the most of it.
    Mrs. Beam stepped closer, lowering her voice in case someone else might be nearby to hear. “You’d best write to Mr. Philips this night, miss. Then, I can send Jim with it first thing in the morning.”
    Catherine’s fear spiked, and she took a deep breath to tamp it down. “Yes, Mrs. Beam. I am sure you’re right.”
    She headed upstairs to the dining room then, to eat a bit of her mother’s expensive beef.

Eight
    Catherine did not sleep well. When she finally did doze a few hours before dawn, her rest was troubled. She did not see the beautiful Mr. Waters in her dreams even once. She dreamed only of a parade of ledgers and figures that did not add up, and once of a ship going down into a black ocean with all her hopes inside it.
    She woke feeling bleak, but when she checked her appearance in the mirror, her looks seemed unaffected, save for a little tiredness around her eyes. She applied a cold compress while Marie, the upstairs maid, drew her blonde hair into the one design they knew how to affect, a pile of dainty curls on the top of her head, with a few tendrils left around her forehead and ears to soften the look. She wore pink that day instead of light blue, and made certain that she looked well in it, though she wasn’t going out again until the next night, when she and her mother would be attending Lady Jersey’s ball.
    In spite of her success at Almack’s, she had received no invitations save to take tea with the Waterses, which, while enjoyable, had mostly been a disaster. Her arm had already healed almost completely, as if Alexander’s touch and his honey compress had worked some kind of strange magic. She had Marie tie a light dressing over it, in case it broke open and started bleeding again, but covered by her long, light muslin sleeve, the wound was not visible at all.
    When she took the compress off her eyes, her sleepless worry had been concealed as well.
    Her letter to Mr. Philips, their solicitor, had been written the night before and no doubt sent to Lincoln’s Inn before the sun was up. Catherine was not sure what she was going to do with her day while she waited for his reply. She would do her best to avoid the Waters family, both for her own sake and for the sake of Mr. Robert Waters’s musical sensibilities.
    She took breakfast with her mother and sister as she always did, and saw that Cook had furnished the breakfast table with more beef from the roast the night before. Though it stuck in her throat, she ate it, for she could not bear the idea of it going to waste.
    The morning passed in relative silence for their household, with her mother writing letters to friends and Margaret working diligently on her French verbs. Catherine sat in the window of the family sitting room at the back of the house, overlooking her flower garden. She might go down and weed it later, though Charlie seemed to keep up with their little patch of green well enough.
    There was something