Aunt Clara has alternately thrown her thunderbolts of disdain and rained down her indifference on me from the day Toby and I arrived at her door, nearly four years ago. Uncle Henry’s half sister’s orphaned children. Not only were we barely blood relations from the bottom of the social heap, but we were willful youngsters at that, prone to speaking without thinking and doing without asking permission. If it hadn’t been for our doting eldest cousin, Aunt probably would have turned us away within that first month.

“He wants to see you after breakfast, Aunt,” I say. “He has something to tell you.”

She nods, but her lips sink and her face goes pale. “That was my intention.”

“He’s asked me to tend to him regularly, though. As his nurse.”

“Nonsense,” says Aunt Clara, with a sweep of the jam spoon. “That’s a mother’s duty.”

Uncle Henry rubs at the back of his balding head, his overused signal that he is uneasy with the friction in the room. Neither Aunt nor I pay him any attention.

“He was very specific,” I insist, my words racing out quicker than my understanding of them. I am lying, but a spy must embrace the unexpected. If I don’t put myself to good use, I’ll have no reason to be here at Pritchett House, and Aunt Clara would like nothing better than to pounce on this point.

After all, I am sixteen years old, nearly grown, my school days finished, my fiancé dead on the battlefield, my future as valuable as a wooden nickel. Death tolls are delivered with the paper every morning, and it’s not as if I haven’t imagined this dark hour. I need Quinn as never before. He’s Aunt’s favorite, her baby boy, but Aunt doesn’t have the patience to nurse him or for that matter, anyone to health. If I care for him with diligence, or so I tell myself, the family’s gratitude will keep me here until I find a better plan. But if I’m ahead of Aunt Clara, it is only by a step.