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the day’s newspapers had been shoved aside to make a large space. President Milner was absent. The other man seated there in the pool of candlelight was bent over a sheaf of papers with an intensity that Maddy had last seen in the students she helped teach at the First Day School. His elbows were spread, straining the tailoring of his midnight blue evening coat across broad shoulders, and as she came closer, he pushed back his dark hair impatiently with one hand— giving an excellent impression of some wild poet laboring in a garret over his art.
    Suddenly, before she reached them, he threw down the pen and rose to face her in one swift motion, for all the world as if he wished to hide what he’d been doing.
    He looked at her for an instant, and then smiled.
    The fervent student, the impassioned poet, both vanished in that seasoned gallantry. “Miss Timms,” he said, in just the way a duke would say it—calmly, with a slight bow. His eyes were dusky blue, his nose straight and strong, his clothing perfectly tailored and his bearing well-bred; and somehow, in spite of this polished veneer, he managed very well to resemble a complete and utter pirate.
     
    Precisely as one had expected—although somewhat less decayed, in a physical sense, by his way of life than might have been supposed. He gave the impression of a firmly controlled energy, with nothing dilatory or degenerated about him—no softness at all to his solid and imposing frame. Next to him, her father looked fatally pale, as if he might dissolve into a wisp and vanish at any moment.
    “My daughter Archimedea,” Papa said. “Maddy—this is the Duke of Jervaulx.”
    He pronounced it entirely differently from the way they’d been saying it—as if it began with an “sh” and didn’t rhyme with “talks” at all, but instead with a sound like “hoe.” She felt exceedingly provincial, realizing that their habitual “Jervalks” wasn’t even remotely correct and recalling with mortifying clarity the number of times she must have mispronounced it to his butler. She sincerely hoped they had Friend Milner to thank for the information, and not Jervaulx himself.
    She offered her hand to shake, abstaining from a salutation or curtsy, or even a nod, as befitted a plain person and a Friend. She’d been brought up to shun such mumbling customs as saying “Good evening,”
    for to wish someone a good day when he was in an evil day was to offend God and the Truth. Nor could she say that she was happy to make the duke’s acquaintance, as that would have been another untruth, so she settled for the universal address of: “Friend.”
    His greeting was not so spare. “It’s my wholehearted pleasure to be at your service, mademoiselle.” He caught her hand and lifted it briefly, lowering his eyes, then released her. “I must apologize to Miss Archimedea for all the hours I find I’ve kept her cooling her heels in my house. I’ve been cursed with a headache these past two days.”
    Maddy wondered what his excuse was for all the days before that, but Papa only said, “I hope thou hast recovered,” with every evidence of real concern. Her father always told the truth, so of course he would believe the man, poor naive Papa.
    “Quite recovered.” The duke grinned, and winked at Maddy, as if they were some sort of conspirators together. “Miss Archimedea had her doubts, I know.”
    Her father smiled. “Yes, she’s in a great quake over whether thou‘ lt shame me beyond holding my head up on Third Nights ever again.”
    “Papa!”
    At that moment, President Milner scratched at the door and came in, spreading his arms and whisking his hands like an enthusiastic shooer of chickens. “Miss Timms, Mr. Timms—it’s time. Come and be seated, and then the duke and I shall take our places in front.”
    “I’ll need Miss Timms,” the duke said, catching her arm as she started toward her papa. “If you would…” He looked into her eyes.
    It was, Maddy knew