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The Olgilvie Gallery was an opulent temple of art. Like always, upon entry, Alan was greeted as a high priest. The crowds made way for him, then drifted along behind. Why look at the paintings when you could look at an esteemed art critic as he looked at the paintings? Easier that way to glean a fashionable opinion.

“I thought this was a private view,” said Miss Finch. Two women right in front of her stopped short, and she sidled toward him to avoid being pincered between their bustles.

“All the more reason to be seen at it.” Tall as he was, he could see plenty. He looked between, and even above, the seas of top hats. There. Lloyd Syme. He stood on the crimson-carpeted marble stairs that swept up to the main galleries. His snow-white hair waved back from his wide brow, and his spectacles blazed, reflecting the electric lights. He was speaking—orating, more like—to a small group of elegantly dressed young men clustered on the lower steps.

Alan tightened his grip on the gold top of his cane. He had a vast collection of canes: shafts of ebonized bamboo, malacca, rosewood, porcelain, horn, topped with every conceivable handle in coral, ivory, silver, gold. Some contained secret compartments for tobacco and matches, or liquor. And some concealed blades.

Not this one. A good thing, given that the urge to cross swords with Syme twitched his every muscle. How viscerally satisfying it would be: literalizing the duel of ideas, steel against steel.

He quickened his pace toward the stairs, striding around the pillars. Striding—almost as though he didn’t need to think about the placement of his feet.

And just like that, he stumbled.

Fitfully dormant on the carriage ride, the pain lashed as it came to life. A lightning bolt streaked down from his hip, liquefying marrow, setting it to boil. He had to lock his knee to keep the leg from buckling. A dead halt. All around, people continued streaming this way and that. Thank God, they didn’t register his distress.

Miss Finch, though. She was close enough to feel his awkward step. She, too, stopped walking and looked up at him, a questioning line between her brows.

“Hazardous, these bustles.” He heard himself say it, heard his plausible drawl as he waved at a grande dame and her lace-festooned daughter, whose swaying skirts might almost have impeded his own movements as she passed.

Miss Finch opened her mouth, but then—

“De’Ath!” Nelly Knotwood elbowed toward him. In her formless terra-cotta gown, she presented a splendid example of the room’s other faction of females, those who eschewed bustles and garbed themselves like medieval maidens, or, in Miss Knotwood’s case, Roman statuary. Alan held himself upright and molded his lips into a smile.

“It’s a circus!” She grinned at him, exposing the gap in her front teeth. “I’m fleeing downstairs. I can’t answer another question about my bronzes. Everyone wants to know why I didn’t finish them. They’re meant to be partial!”

Alan imagined his body were a bronze, or rather, a figurine of wood and papier-mâché, something he could manipulate from on high, like a plaything or puppet. During these episodes, he had the uncanny sensation that he ventriloquized himself.

He shook his head. “You’ll never convince the literal-minded.” How adroit he’d become at handling this situation. His voice hit all the right notes. “Better to tell them you ran out of clay.”

Miss Finch hadn’t removed her eyes from his face.

“Miss Finch.” He addressed her. “This is Miss Knotwood, the sculptor. Her latest series is on view upstairs.”

Miss Knotwood acknowledged Miss Finch with a friendly nod.

“Are you a suffragist?” she asked. “You might prefer my portrait statues. Lady Dewhurst commissioned ten, of historically significant women. Sappho, Hypatia, Mary Wollstonecraft, Joan of Arc . . .”

Alan’s good hand began to ache where his palm pressed his cane. Sweat was dampening his brow. He felt like Joan of Arc, like his leg was a burning stake. He could maintain his composure, but only up to a point.

He swung his gaze to the left . . . and glimpsed a way out.

“There’s Lady Dewhurst now,” he observed. “Talking with the Baron of Ludlow. She seems ready to spit in his eye.”

Miss Knotwood’s chin jerked around. “Oh no.” Her brows lowered. “It is Ludlow, isn’t it? Excuse me while I save her from herself.” She stalked off.

Alan glanced at Miss Finch. Her expression was troubled.

“De’Ath!”

This time it was William Henley, the editor of the Magazine of Art. He roared at Alan good-naturedly as he crutched by, flanked by poetical youths in fringed shawls.

“Where’s that biography you owe me?”

Alan exhaled slowly through his nose. He needed to collapse in the wings, but he was still in the footlights, still Alan De’Ath.

The show must go on.

He responded smoothly. “I sent it straight to Mammon.”