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woman with a sparkling expression who seemed always about to break into flirtatious laughter. When she did, a network of fine lines crinkled around her eyes, and for some reason that was what most attracted Jacob Todd. He could not judge her age—he thought somewhere between twenty and thirty—but he imagined that in ten years she would look the same because she had good bones and a queenly bearing. She was wearing a peach-colored taffeta dress and no adornment but a simple pair of coral earrings. The most elementary courtesy demanded that he do no more than simulate the gesture of kissing her hand, not actually touching it with his lips, but he was so overcome that unintentionally he planted a full kiss on her hand. That greeting was so inappropriate that for an eternal moment they both stood frozen in uncertainty, he clutching her hand the way you grip a sword, and she regarding the trace of his saliva, not daring to wipe it off for fear of embarrassing the visitor, until they were interrupted by a little girl dressed like a princess. Todd shook off his anguish, and as he straightened up intercepted a slightly mocking glance exchanged between the Sommers. Trying to smooth over his gaffe, he turned to the child with exaggerated attention, determined to win her over.
    â€œThis is Eliza, our protégée,” said Jeremy Sommers.
    Jacob Todd committed his second blunder.
    â€œProtégée? I’m not sure I follow you.” he said.
    â€œIt means that I do not belong to this family,” Eliza explained patiently, in the tone of someone speaking to an idiot.
    â€œNo?”
    â€œIf I do not behave, they will send me off to the Papist nuns.”
    â€œWhat are you saying, Eliza! Pay no attention to her, Mr. Todd. Children get strange ideas. Of course Eliza belongs to our family,” Miss Rose burst out, rising to her feet.
    Eliza had spent the day with Mama Fresia, preparing dinner. The kitchen was at the back of the patio, but Miss Rose had had it joined to the house with a walkway to avoid being embarrassed by serving dishes that were either cold or splattered with dove droppings. That room blackened by grease and soot was the indisputable kingdom of Mama Fresia. Cats, dogs, geese, and hens wandered at will across the floor of rough unwaxed bricks. There the goat that had nursed Eliza ruminated through the winter; by now it was very ancient, but no one would think of sacrificing it, for that would be like murdering one’s mother. The child loved the aroma of the dough in the pans as the yeast sighed and worked the mysterious process of leavening; the smell of caramel beaten to frost cakes; the fragrance of mounds of chocolate melting in milk. On Miss Rose’s musical Wednesdays the serving girls—two Indian adolescents who lived in the house and worked in exchange for food—polished silver, ironed tablecloths, and made the crystal sparkle. At noon they sent the coachman to the pastry shop to buy sweets prepared with recipes jealously guarded since the times of the colonies. Mama Fresia always used the occasion to hang a leather bag of fresh milk to the horses’ harness, and on the trip back and forth it was churned into butter.
    At three in the afternoon, Miss Rose called Eliza to her bedroom, where the coachman and the valet installed a lion’s paw–footed bronze bathtub that the chambermaids then lined with a sheet and filled with hot water perfumed with mint leaves and rosemary. Rose and Eliza splashed around in the tub like children until the water grew cool and the maidservants returned with armfuls of clothes and helped them into stockings and boots, underdrawers to the knees, batiste camisoles, contrivances with padding over the hips to accentuate a slim waist, then three starched petticoats and finally a dress, which covered the body completely, leaving only head and hands exposed. Miss Rose also wore a corset stiffened with whalebone and so tight that she could