"It will do no good to appeal to him," Cassandra said. "Bruce made it quite clear that he considered my freedom a generous exchange for everything else. No charges were ever brought against me in his father's death because there was no proof that I had killed him. But a judge or a jury might well find me guilty regardless of the lack of conclusive evidence. I could hang, Alice, if it happened. Bruce agreed that no charges would be pressed provided I left Carmel House and never returned – and provided I left all my jewels behind and forfeited all financial claim upon the estate."

Alice had nothing to say. She knew all this. She knew the risks involved in fighting. Cassandra had chosen not to fight. There had been too much violence in the past nine years – ten now. She had chosen simply to leave, with her friends and with her freedom.

"I will not starve, Allie," she said. "Neither will you or Mary or Belinda. I will provide for you all. Oh, and you too, Roger," she added, tickling the dog's stomach with the toe of her slipper while his tail thumped lazily on the floor and his three and a half paws waved in the air.

Her smile was tinged with bitterness – and then with something more tender.

"Oh, Alice," she said, hurrying across the room and sinking to her knees before her former governess's chair, "don't cry. /Please/ do not. I will not be able to bear it."

"I never thought," Alice said between sobs into her handkerchief, "to see you becoming a /courtesan/, Cassie. And that is what you will be. A high-class pr – A high-class pros – " But she could not complete the word.

Cassandra patted one of her knees.

"It will be a thousand times better than marriage," she said. "Cannot you /see/ that, Alice? I will have all the power this time. I can grant or withhold my favors at will. I can dismiss the man if I do not like him or if he displeases me in any way at all. I will be free to come and go as I choose and to do whatever I will except when I am… well, working. It will be a /million/ times better than marriage."