"A few small ones," Lydia said truthfully, folding the telegram and unlocking a drawer of the gilt secretary at which she worked. Its contents exploded into a puffy mountain of household accounts and pathology notes. Lydia regarded the mess blankly, as if the entire desk were not awash with dissection diagrams, notes on the endocrine system, correspondence from other researchers on the subject of ductless glands, milliners' bills, menus, silk samples, copies of Lancet, and the first draft of her article on pancreatic secretions for the January issue of British Medical Journal, on which she'd been working when Ellen had made her entrance. She shook back the cloud of lace from around her hand and determinedly stuffed the contents back into the drawer, which she then forced shut. She opened two more drawers with similar results, finally poking the telegram down into the side among a sheaf of notes concerning electrostimulation's effect on the production of adrenaline. Her friend Josetta Beyerly was forever joking her about not reading the newspapers even enough to know who the Prime Minister was, as if prime ministers-and in fact Balkan kings- didn't come and go at the drop of a constituency. Reading newspapers only caused Lydia to wonder whether people like Lord Balfour and the Kaiser suffered from hyperthyroidism or vitamin deficiency and how she could find out, and she'd found that the speculation distracted her from her work.

"He says he'll be back today." It was unreasonable of her, she knew, to feel relief. Jamie was perfectly able to look after himself, as she had known last night, lying awake and fingering the heavy links of the silver chain around her neck. When she had dreamed, it had been of a corpse-white face upturned in the distant gaslights of a London alleyway, strangely reflective eyes, and a mouth snarling to show the glint of outsize fangs. She'd awakened then and lain listening to the ram on the ivy until morning. There had been no reason for her to be afraid. Handing off the telegram said. There was no reason to be afraid now.