At nineteen—very nearly pushing twenty!—Dora was on the verge of being considered a spinster, though she had supposedly entered society alongside her cousin. In reality, Dora knew that Vanessa had only put off her own debut for so long in order to keep her company. No one in the family was under any illusions as to Dora’s attractiveness to potential suitors, with her one strange eye and her bizarre demeanour.
“Have you ever wondered what might happen if we bred a horse with a dolphin, Sir Albus?” Dora interrupted distantly.
“I—what?” The older fellow blinked, caught off his stride by the unexpected question. His salt-and-pepper moustache twitched, and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened, perplexed. “No, I cannot say that I have, Miss Ettings. The two simply do not mix.” He seemed at a loss that he even had to explain the second part. Sir Albus turned his attention instantly back towards Vanessa. “Now, as I was saying, the mare was purebred, but she wasn’t to be of any use unless we could find an equally impressive stud—”
Vanessa winced imperceptibly at the repetition of the word purebred. Aha. So she had noticed the awful pattern.
Dora interrupted again.
“—but do you think such a union would produce a dolphin’s head and a horse’s end, or do you think it would be the other way around?” she asked Sir Albus, in a bemused tone.
Sir Albus shot Dora a venomous look. “Now see here,” he began.
“Oh, what a fun thought!” Vanessa said, with desperate cheer. “You do always come up with the most wonderful games, Dora!” Vanessa looped her arm through Dora’s, squeezing at her elbow a bit more firmly than was necessary, then turned her eyes back towards Sir Albus. “Might we inquire as to your expert opinion, sir?” she asked. “Which would it be, do you think?”
Sir Albus flailed at this, flustered out of his rhythm. He had only one script, Dora observed idly, and absolutely no imagination with which to deviate from it. “I... I could not possibly answer such an absurd question!” he managed. “The very idea! It’s impossible!”
“Oh, but I’m sure that the Lord Sorcier would know,” Dora observed to Vanessa. Her thoughts meandered slowly away from the subject, and on to other matters. “I hear the new court magician is quite talented. He defeated Napoleon’s Lord Sorcier at Vitoria, you know. He does at least three impossible things before breakfast, the way I hear it told. Certainly, he could tell us which end would be which.”
Vanessa blinked at that for some reason, as though Dora had revealed a great secret to her instead of a bit of idle gossip. “Well,” Vanessa said slowly, “the Lord Sorcier is almost certainly in London, far away from here. And I wonder if he would lower himself to answering such a question, even if it were the sort of impossible thing he could accomplish.” Vanessa cleared her throat and turned her eyes to the rest of the garden party. “But perhaps there are some here with a less impossible grasp of magic who might offer their expert opinion instead?”
Sir Albus’ moustache was all but vibrating now, as he failed to suppress his outrage at the conversation’s turn away from him and his prized horses. “Young lady!” he sputtered towards Dora. “That is quite enough! If you wish to discuss flights of fancy, then please do so somewhere far afield from us. We are having a serious, adult conversation!”
The man’s vehemence was such that a drop of spittle hit Dora along the cheek. She blinked at him slowly. Sir Albus was red-faced and shaking with upset, leaning towards her in a vaguely threatening manner. Dimly, Dora knew she ought to be afraid of him—any other lady might have cringed back from such a violent outpouring of passion. But whatever impulse normally made ladies wither and faint in the face of frightening things had been lost on its way to her conscious mind for years on end now.
“Sir!” Vanessa managed, in a shocked, trembling voice. “You must not address my cousin in such a way. Such behaviour is absolutely beyond the pale!”
Dora glanced towards her cousin, considering the way that her lip trembled and her hands clutched together. Quietly, she tried to mirror the gestures. Her aunt had begged her to act normal at this party, after all.
For a moment, as Dora turned her trembling lip back towards Sir Albus, a chastised look crossed his eyes. “I... I do apologise,” he said stiffly. But Dora noticed that he addressed the apology to Vanessa, and not to her.
“Apologize for what?” Dora murmured absently. “For impacting your chances with my cousin, or for acting the bore?”
Sir Albus widened his eyes in shocked fury.
Oh, Dora thought with a sigh. That was not the sort of thing that normal, frightened women say, I suppose.
“Your apology is accepted!” Vanessa blurted out quickly. She pushed to her feet as she spoke, dragging Dora firmly away by the arm. “But I... I’m afraid I must go and regain my composure, sir. We shall have to discuss this further at another time.”
Vanessa charged for the house with as much ladylike delicacy as she could muster while hauling her older cousin behind her.
“I’ve fumbled things again, haven’t I?” Dora asked her softly. A distant pang of distress clenched at her heart. Acute problems rarely seemed to trouble Dora the way that they should, but emotions born of longer, wearier issues still hung upon her like a shroud. Vanessa should be married by now, Dora thought. She would be married, if not for me. It was an old idea by now, and it never failed to sadden her.
“Oh
