When I went to find Antonia in the morning, she was wearing a yellow scarf belonging to one of the twins and finishing a big bowl of porridge with gusto. “Guess what, Wizard!” she said with an excited smile. “Hildegarde and Celia are going to teach me to ride a horse!”

“It’s very good of you, my ladies,” I began, “to help take care of my, uh, niece, but you really-”

“We want to do it, Wizard,” said Hildegarde.

“They were going to teach me to read,” said Antonia, “but I told them I already knew how.”

“Then later today,” said Hildegarde cheerfully, “we’ll teach her how to deal cards off the bottom of the pack.”

“What?!” I glared at the twins while Antonia grinned in anticipation.

“It can be a very useful skill for a lady,” said Celia, effecting a serious tone, “learning how to spot cheating so she will not be tricked herself. So we’ll see you this afternoon, after our ride. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we need to put on our riding habits.”

“Make sure the door is tight,” I heard Hildegarde say as it swung shut in my face. “He’s an old man. The shock of seeing us dressing couldn’t be good for him.” And all three of them-including, I was mortified to hear, my daughter-began to giggle.

Since it looked like I wasn’t going to spend the morning trying to make Antonia feel as comfortable with me as she apparently already did with the twins, I instead went to look for Gwennie.

I found her in the kitchen, slicing mushrooms for lunch. We grew mushrooms in the castle cellars, and the cook made excellent soup with them. If Paul had not yet persuaded his mother that he was unready to marry anyone, Gwennie had yet to persuade her own mother that she would never be a cook.

I worked the pump for her. “Antonia seems happy that you put her in the suite with the twins, Gwennie-uh, Gwendolyn,” I said.

But her frown had nothing to do with Antonia or with whatever I chose to call her.