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“Will you tell Cook I’m having two guests for dinner?”

“Including Lord Phillip?” asked Bagshaw.

Georgie frowned. Phipps. Was he even a guest at this point? He was just…here. For better or worse. “Two in addition to Lord Phillip.”

Bagshaw inclined his head. The door shut behind him.

“I am four and twenty years old,” Georgie told the empty room, experimentally. The clock ticked back at them. They ate their eggs and went up to the bluff.

“Will you come to dinner?” they asked Elf when she’d decided it was time to break for the day, both of them more tired from repeatedly chasing the twins out of the trench they’d been digging than by the digging itself. “You and Agnes?”

She had dirt on her forehead, from swiping at her hair, and they wanted to grab her with their dirty hands, and make her filthier, everywhere. But: twins.

Georgie behaved.

“Depends,” said Elf. “Is lapdog still on the menu?”

She was twinkling at them. The fact that they weren’t naked with her this very moment in a fern brake seemed a crime.

“Seven o’clock,” they said. “You’ll see.”

When they arrived home, they discovered that letters had too. Letters wishing them joy on their birthday from Rosalie and Anne, and Harry as well. His letter was the shortest, but it wasn’t short on affection, and ended with him sending his best love. Georgie rubbed a finger over the inked phrase, sudden tears pricking their eyes. Harry’s last few letters had struck a colder note. But to be fair, he’d been answering Georgie’s aggressively petulant missives, a mix of pleas and insults, which, all at once, seemed shameful.

They’d made a cake of themself before the entire ton, it was true, and they’d infuriated, and possibly, yes, as Elf had suggested, terrified, their brother.

When they’d woken up from the crash, head throbbing, Harry had been sitting at their bedside, white to the lips, his chair surrounded by a mess of threads, because men didn’t have knitting or needlepoint to absorb their nervous energy. Henry had spent the long hours of his vigil picking apart his handkerchiefs. He’d yelled. The moment Georgie’s eyes focused, he’d yelled. And Georgie had latched onto the yelling, instead of the fretting, which, in retrospect, was just as obvious.

This banishment had struck them as vindictive, controlling, harsh. But maybe Harry was as fearful as he was furious. Maybe he hadn’t been able to think of any other way to force Georgie to slow down. Reflect on their stupidity.

Spiting Harry by learning nothing from this experience was childish. It was spiting themself.

They weren’t a child. They were four and twenty.

They dressed in a black tailcoat and breeches for dinner. Maturity didn’t mean conformity, after all.

Elf and Agnes had both dressed out of the trunks in the tower—that is to say, like Gainsboroughs—Elf in blue striped silk, Agnes in the pale purple. Georgie tried to ignore just how much of Elf’s bosom her gown left undressed.

Agnes gaped when they bowed in greeting.

“Are breeches fashionable for women to wear in London?” she asked.

“Assuredly not.” They winked at her. “But at least they’re legal. You can get arrested in Paris.”

At the table, Agnes did a very creditable job of adoring the soup. It was excellent soup. Everything was excellent. The wine, the fish, the golden pies, the roast. The company. Even Phipps. Hartcliffe—and marriage—aside, they liked having Phipps knocking about.

Life is here.

It ran through their head, as it had that golden day on the river. Life wasn’t something happening somewhere else, at some bigger, better party. It was here, now, wherever and whenever they allowed themself to feel it, to feel this beautifully, joyfully alive.

“Is it the fifth?” asked Phipps during a lull in conversation. He slashed with his fork. “Georgie, it’s your birthday.”

“Oh,” said Georgie, and took a sip of wine. “So it is.”

“You didn’t mention it.” Elf was staring.

“Joy!” Agnes clapped her hands.

“You do seem gay,” observed Phipps, leaning back in his chair. “For all your moaning, the country agrees with you. You realize we missed the Epsom Derby? My God, I didn’t think of it until just now. I was meant to go with Cecy. She couldn’t wait to show me her hat. From Milan.” He leaned forward abruptly and emptied his wineglass.