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the shop. But I expect you to practice your addition and your curtsies.”
    Giving a gap-toothed grin, the tiny girl with her white-blond braids dropped almost to the ground. Chuckling, Fiona helped right her. “You will be curtsying to the likes of Mrs. Walsh, Nancy. Not the queen.”
    The little girl’s grin was still cheeky. “But Mrs. Walsh thinks she is the queen. Will Miss Mary be here when we come back?”
    “Oh, I expect so. She is just busy working today.”
    Nancy gave a solemn nod. “Counting stars.”
    “Exactly. Now, off with you before your mother worries.”
    She taught children of shopkeepers and chemists, pupils Margaret had groomed and then been forced to leave because of frail health. Fiona hoped her friend’s health would benefit from her move to Margate. They had a debate to finish over Fermat’s Last Theorem.
    In the meantime, though, at least for two months, the very lucky Ferguson sisters would keep up the town house where Margaret had run her school for children of enlightened parents. Within that time, Fiona prayed she would be able to find another place they could afford to stay and teach. If not…well, she had faced uncertainty before. And if there was one thing Fiona Ferguson excelled in, it was dealing with uncertainty.
    After watching the little girl hop down the steps of the tidy brick row house, Fiona closed the door and returned to the south parlor to clean up the slates and books Margaret had loaned her.
    Anyone from Hawesworth Castle would have been appalled at her living conditions. Rather than the hundred servants Hawesworth enjoyed, she and Mairead had one female helper and one man-of-all-work they shared with two other families. More often than not she was paid in foodstuffs and services. In fact, Fiona’s next chore for the day was to help Mrs. Quick figure out how to stretch the ham hock Nancy Peter’s butcher father had exchanged for the week’s lessons.
    Since most of the furniture had gone with Margaret, the guest salon was graced with no more than a tinny pianoforte, an unpretty brown settee, two stiff-backed chairs, and a few odd tables Fiona had negotiated for French lessons, which was plenty. If Fiona and Mairead were working, they sat at the dining table Fiona had acquired from the rag-and-bone man. If they weren’t, they shared the warm kitchen with Mrs. Quick. The only rug resided in the schoolroom, and the only artwork had been done by her students. She and Mairead shared a bed, rationed coal, and turned cuffs and hems. Other than that and the roof over their heads, they had nothing.
    They had everything. They were off the streets. They had food and heavy cloaks and a bit of coal for the fires. They had their correspondence from their friends around Europe, which was their only frivolous expense, and the Royal Observatory up the hill. And they had each other. For that Fiona was most grateful. Now that Ian was gone, Mairead was all she had left in the world.
    That thought brought Fiona up sharp, leaving her standing alone in the echoing room, slates in one hand, the other hand pressed against the shard of grief that had lodged in her chest. Considering how little she had seen her brother Ian while growing up, she was surprised how sharp her grief still sat on her shoulders. It was as if a foundation stone had gone missing from her house, threatening its stability.
    No , she thought, eyes briefly squeezed shut. It was as if she had been left to balance a heavy, unwieldy load on only one leg. She had done it before, of course. This time, though, there was no hope of regaining that balance. Mama was gone, Ian was gone, and the only person left who loved her was Mairead. And Mairead couldn’t help her. It was Fiona’s task to help Mairead.
    Deliberately opening her eyes, Fiona put the slates away and set off for the kitchen, in the hopes she would find Mrs. Quick preparing dinner.
    “There you are,” Mrs. Quick snapped from where she was chopping carrots at the