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“Wait for what?” Papa’s face was completely red.

The moisture wicked from Elfreda’s mouth. Her stomach roiled.

“What?” repeated Papa.

The drawing room was filled with antiquities, and also antiquaries. In fact, the antiquaries had doubled in number. Ten men sat in bishop’s chairs arranged loosely around the tea table. The tea things were shoved to one end, and trays of grave goods occupied the majority of its surface.

Elfreda’s gaze moved from Papa to Sir Graham. Then to Nicholas Fluff. Simon Sykes. Mr. Incledon. Hudson Roach was there. Hudson Roach, the Albion Society treasurer. He always wore around his neck the Albion Society money-horn, a stag’s horn mounted with silver, from the reign of Emperor Louis I. She looked at the horn, and then briefly at Craven Braybrooke, author of Observations on the Body-Armour Anciently Worn in England. He sat beside Stephen Pettigrew, the engraver who made the plates for the Society’s annual publication, Antique Monuments.

Finally, she looked at the Barrow Prince. His chair was angled away from the table. He’d been sketching a bronze casket set on a flower stand, but now he closed his notebook. His eyes bored into her. Everyone’s eyes bored into her.

“Miss Marsden?” The Barrow Prince’s low, rough voice scraped upward at the end, interrogatively.

“A little suspense is well and good,” observed Mrs. Alderwalsey, smirking around at the assembled men, before fixing again on Elfreda. “But you should get on with it.”

Ants were marching down Elfreda’s spine. Her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. Her head filled with noise.

“While I still have my teeth,” said Papa.

She tried to press the hum down into her throat. Sound buzzed behind her lips.

“For God’s sake.” Papa slammed down his teacup.

A word flew out. It wasn’t a suitable word, alas.

“Romeo!” she cried. The room went completely silent. She wished desperately that the floor would open. Could she have said anything more foolish? Georgie. It was Georgie’s fault. Georgie, who’d teased and kissed and laughed and listened their way into her life. And out of it. They were the reason she’d managed to speak at all, and the reason she’d spoken like a woman about to swoon, not from nerves, from love. She couldn’t think of Georgie without a million feelings flooding through her, making her less rational, and maybe…more herself. Not because women couldn’t be rational. Because rationality without the emotions, without the senses—it was cold and incomplete.

Her back straightened. She met Papa’s eyes.

“Did you say Romeo?” He looked flabbergasted.

“Of course she didn’t,” Sir Graham assured him. “She said Rome. I believe she found a Roman antiquity.”

“Did you find a Roman antiquity?” Papa was obviously relieved by Sir Graham’s suggestion. He looked better disposed already, face expressive of a readiness to welcome her back into his good graces. He glanced at the reticule she was holding and held out his hand.

She swallowed. “I found antiquities verifying the location of the Great Heathen Army’s winter camp.” She could barely hear herself over the nervous hum in her skull, the wild roar of blood in her ears, but she was saying words, suitable words.

“I found their hoard,” she was saying. “I haven’t yet counted the objects, but there are easily two hundred, including coins. I brought a few of the coins.” Her fingers fumbled at the drawstring of her reticule. She shook the gold and silver into her palm.

A collective intake of breath greeted the sight.

“By Caesar’s ghost!” exclaimed Sir Graham.

“Where? Where did you find it?” Many voices went up in unison. “Where is the camp?”

“Show me the coins.” Papa had rounded the table and was nearly upon her. She remembered, suddenly, the lighter weight of the buttons in her palm that day in Thornton. How she’d gone, for a moment, hollow like a bell, ringing with panic in the afternoon light.

She shouldn’t feel panicked now. Papa was smiling broadly, beaming with the fondness of a father who wouldn’t dream of putting his unaccompanied daughters on a public coach, all but penniless.

“You’ve done well, youngling,” he murmured. But even that—the approval she craved—didn’t make her stomach unclench.

She could tell he was about to embrace her and stiffened. Only she’d mistaken his movement. His arm swung out, but it was so he could sweep the coins from her hand into his. He strode back to his seat at the table.

“Gentlemen,” he said, sitting. “I shall not withhold a moment longer.” He paused, for two moments, posture regal, while the antiquaries leaned toward him. “The Great Heathen Army overwintered on the bluff at the edge of my park.”

“You old slyboots.” Sir Graham scowled. “You never said.”

“I began digging months ago.” Papa’s smile was sly indeed. “Guided by a Mercian annal. And assisted by my brilliant daughter, who has carried me the first fruits of my endeavor.” He beckoned to Elfreda. She walked to him on legs that did not feel like her own.