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compassion, as you’ll be sharing my condition yourself soon enough.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Clarisse rolled her eyes. “Why do you think all your little magical experiments at Tremain House were so successful?”
    Caught off guard, Agatha answered with involuntary honesty: “Because I had nothing and no one to distract me from my studies. They’re the only thing I’ve ever been good at.” Then she felt herself flush, as she realized the truth of it . . . and exactly who she’d said it to, as Miss Blenheim let out a soft snort of contempt.
    Still, it was true, wasn’t it? And it had been all she’d wanted . . . or all that she’d allowed herself to want, at least. She frowned.
    She had believed all that Miss Blenheim had told her about herself. She’d sworn never to be humiliated again by trying for anything she couldn’t have.
    Agatha remembered again Isobel’s warm voice; the soft breath whispering across her mouth.
    I can have more
, she thought suddenly.
I can believe what I want about myself. I don’t have to settle for less
.
    But her aunt regarded her with a jaundiced eye. “It is all that makes you valuable, I agree,” said Clarisse. “But then, you are a Tremain female, and that means you have an affinity for magic, just as I have, and my aunt and my grandmother before me. How do you think your great-grandfather acquired Tremain House and all his fortune in the first place? That is why you have a duty to the family to marry, for the sake of your older female relatives. It is why a particular sort of gentleman will pay so well for the privilege of having you to wife, and it is why you
will
marry, dear girl, whether you like it or not, and you will marry with some speed, too. It is your turn now to step into the breach, and I have waited quite long enough for a younger Tremain female to finally pay me back what I am owed.”
    “For what?” Agatha gaped at her. “What have you ever done for me?”
    “It is the sacrifice every female in our family has to pay,” said Clarisse. “Magic ripples through our veins, you see. If you were a man, you could make use of it. As a woman, you were born to be a source of power, just as I was for far too many years to contemplate. But just think . . .” She gave Agatha a look of mock sympathy. “Your husband may make marvelous advances for the British Empire using the power he draws from you. In return, he will give me what I need with the first magic he extracts. And then . . .” She sighed, leaning closer to the fire. “I shall never be cold again.”
    Agatha’s head spun with more than the heat of the room now. She held still, refusing to retreat. “Why can’t you take for yourself what you need? Why do you need my future husband to do it?”
    “Because those spells are never taught to women,” said Clarisse wearily. “You’ve never come across them in your father’s library, have you? No, Jasper may be the most useless and impractical creature ever born, but even he is not so careless as to allow any of those texts to be kept in public view on his shelves.
    “But none of that matters now.” Clarisse shook her head dismissively. “All you need to understand, dear, is that my magic was drained out of me over and over again across the years while my husband rose ever higher in the Austro-Hungarian court. Simply dismissing your creatures from Tremain House took nearly all that I had left.” Her lips curled into a smile. “Nearly . . . but not all.”
    Slowly, sinuously, she rose to her feet, while Miss Blenheim smiled behind her, a smile of deep satisfaction.
    “I have been waiting for this day for two long years, miss,” said Miss Blenheim. “Did you really think you could dismiss me so easily? Knowing all that I do about you and your family?”
    Agatha could only shake her head numbly.
    “It was tremendously helpful of you to keep all your books and supplies so carefully organized in your little office,” Clarisse said. “When combined