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with murder in his eyes, and behind him a lady—the baroness, Kit guessed—gave a wail of despair.
     
     
    Kit watched for Violet at her window, and knew it would be his fault if she died. He and Eldbert kept a vigil outside the garden gate of Violet’s manor, until one day she appeared at the window and gave a weak wave.
    “Ye gads,” Eldbert said, passing Kit his telescope. “She looks hideous.”
    Not to Kit. She looked lovely and alive.
    A week later Ambrose caught the measles. He hacked and ran a raging fever and afterward blamed Kit for imperiling his life. Miss Higgins, having been infected years ago, did not fall ill.
    Their small band met for the last time one late afternoon in early August. They had managed to sneak off only because the baroness was helping Eldbert’s father visit sick families in the parish. Kit studied Violet’s face and thought that even her unwholesome pallor would not stop men from falling in love with her. Eldbert and Ambrose were being sent away to school. Violet wouldn’t have any friends soon, he thought.
    “I’m going away, too,” Kit said.
    She looked across the grass, her gaze stricken. “Where?”
    “I’m being sold,” he said. “There’s a bill posted on the workhouse gate if you’d like to buy me.”
    “You’re being—”
    He hated himself for having told her the truth, even if it was for her own good. A girl like Violet had no business playing with dangerous boys like him. She was so naive, he would have stayed in this godforsaken parish to keep her safe if it were within his power.
    “You’ll be a blacksmith or a chimney sweep’s apprentice if you’re lucky,” Ambrose said, sounding half-sympathetic. “Has anyone bid for you yet?”
    He could have pushed Ambrose’s arrogant face into one of the graves. “Yes, as a matter of fact. It isn’t official, but it looks as if I’m being apprenticed to a cavalry captain.”
    Ambrose snorted, unimpressed. “You mean the old drunk who thinks that his son haunts this graveyard?”
    Kit pulled a stone from his pocket. “He doesn’t drink now,” he said, daring Ambrose to defy him. “And he knows his son is dead. He was killed at war.”
    Violet had turned away, tears in her eyes. “When are you going, Kit?”
    He tossed the stone into the air and caught it. His throat hurt, and he thought he was getting sick again. “I don’t know.”
    “You could be a worse apprentice,” Eldbert said, adjusting his spectacles. “A dentist could have bought you. I wouldn’t mind being apprenticed to an officer myself. It isn’t an easy life, being the son of the parish surgeon.” He reached into his coat and took out a letter opener that Kit guessed had come from his father’s desk.
    “What is that for?” Ambrose asked, sitting up at attention.
    “It’s for us to seal our pact of friendship in blood and agree that we shall all meet again in ten years.”
    “What should we call ourselves?” Violet said, looking up at Kit.
    He smiled at her. “The Bleeding Idiots.” He frowned at Eldbert. “You aren’t giving her a scar?”
    “Don’t worry, Kit,” she said.
    He turned his head. He felt an inexplicable urge to kiss her hand and knew that for her sake it was a blessing that he had to go away.
    They enacted the ritual at the thin stream that trickled amid the crypts. Ambrose shrieked the loudest when he pricked his finger, not as much from the pain but from the blood that dripped onto his trousers. His cry drew Miss Higgins from her post on the slope to scrub at the spot by the stream with a stone, Lady Macbeth in a mobcap, muttering, “I’ll lose my job if I have to explain what I allowed under my guard. The four of you are incorrigible.”
    “Five,” Violet murmured.
    Six, actually, if one counted the child Miss Higgins had no idea she was carrying.

Chapter 3
    The Marquess of Sedgecroft’s Benefit Ball
London 1818
     
    K it strode across the private stage of the Park Lane mansion. In one hand he