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was happening to him happened to someone quite separate.
    The panic vanished, the world came back into balance, and he could think.
    He rose onto his elbows. “I’m so sorry,” he said.
    â€œYou ought to be,” Bernard said. “And I hope it’s a lesson—”
    â€œI should have read it as ‘in an agony to redeem himself,’ rather than ‘anxious to save himself.’”
    Bernard looked blank, not an unusual expression for him.
    â€œOdysseus,” Oliver said patiently. He rose, picked up the book, and brushed away the dirt. “ ‘He strove in vain for his fellows, whose own witlessness destroyed them. The witless destroy what they don’t understand.’”
    Bernard’s face got very red. “Witless? I’ll teach you witless, you insolent little turd.”
    He leapt on Oliver, knocked him down, and started punching.
    The fight ended for Oliver with a black eye, bloody nose, and ringing ears.
    This wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t the last. But more of that anon.
    Royal Gardens, Vauxhall
    July 1822
    O liver’s experience with women was limited. Mothers didn’t count. His stepsisters were somebody else’s mothers already.
    The Honorable Harry Fairfax’s sister Lady Clara was, she had announced, eight andeleven-twelfths years old.
    At present, Oliver was baffled, an unusual condition for him.
    Though nursemaids abounded to look after the dizzying numbers of young Fairfax cousins, Clara, according to Harry, was usually left to tag after the boys. Her brothers treated her like a pet, perhaps because she was the first girl after three boys, and something of a curiosity. Then, too, the young Duke of Clevedon, whose guardian Harry’s father was, doted on her.
    But tonight’s planned activity was not for girls. Clevedon was moving away, gesturing to Harry to follow. Harry gave him a nod and told his little sister, “You’re not allowed to go in the boat with us.”
    She kicked him in the ankle. This only made Harry chuckle, but she must have hurt her toe, because her lower lip trembled.
    Then, for some reason, Oliver heard himself saying, “Lady Clara, have you ever seen the Heptaplasiesoptron?”
    He was aware of Harry throwing him a puzzled glance but more aware of the sister, who turned a sulky blue gaze upward to meet his. “What is it?”
    â€œIt’s a sort of kaleidoscope room,” Oliver said. “It’s filled with looking glasses, and these reflect twining serpents and a fountain and palm trees and lamps of different colors and other things. It’s over there.” He pointed to the building containing the Rotunda and the Pillared Saloon. “Shall I take you to see it?”
    While Oliver was talking, Harry slipped away.
    â€œI want to go in the boat,” she said.
    â€œI don’t,” Oliver said.
    She looked about and noticed Harry’s back retreating from view as he hurried to catch upwith Clevedon. Her gaze came back to Oliver, eyes narrowed accusingly now.
    â€œYour brother doesn’t want you along,” he said. “He doesn’t want to worry about your being sick or falling out of the boat and drowning.”
    â€œI won’t,” she said. “I’m never sick.”
    â€œYou will be if Harry’s rowing,” he said. “Why do you think I’m not going?”
    She said, “That rhymes.”
    â€œSo it does,” he said. “Shall I show you the Heptaplasiesoptron? I’ll wager anything you can’t say it. You’re only a girl and girls aren’t very clever.”
    Her blue eyes flashed. “I can too say it!”
    â€œGo ahead, then.”
    She screwed up her eyes and mouth, concentrating, and the expression was so comical that he had all he could do not to laugh.
    Harry Fairfax and Clevedon had come to Eton the year after Oliver arrived. Very much to his surprise, they made a friend of him. This