Septimus Brody-in other words, a poem addressed explicitly to Vander-that Mia herself had written. They were puzzling over The Love Song of E.
It was only then that she truly understood that she had entered that final, innermost circle of hell.
Panicked, Mia dashed behind the sofa and slid down until she was entirely concealed. The library was at the end of the corridor, so there was no escape. Even worse, she quickly recognized the voices as those of Vander and his friend Tobias, who seemed to be calling himself Thorn these days. She was searching the shelves for anything resembling her favorite novel, Eliza Heywood’s Love in Excess, when she heard, to her horror, the sound of boys approaching. Mia finally retreated to the library, a tranquil room with book-lined walls. He and the other Etonians spent their time swigging brandy although it was not yet noon, cursing loudly, and generally pretending to be far older than their fifteen years. He was too godlike for someone like her.īesides, it wasn’t as if he danced attendance on any other girl. Mia didn’t mind that: she was happy worshipping him from afar. It seemed probable since the Duke of Villiers’s eldest son, Tobias, was best mates with Vander.Īs it turned out, the house was indeed overrun with boys on holiday from Eton and among the horde was Vander, who roundly ignored her. Mia had begged her father to attend the Villiers’s musicale on the chance that the object of her adoration, Evander Septimus Brody, future Duke of Pindar, would be present. They were revealing themselves in rapid succession. And he was beautiful too, with a face that resembled the stone angels that guarded babies’ graves. He was the most sensitive, intelligent boy in the world (or so Mia thought). She had entered the third circle over the last year or so, when against all reason, she had fallen desperately in love with the same duchess’ son, Vander. Her second circle had added a far worse indignity: her charming, widowed father was conducting a flagrant affaire with a married duchess that everyone in the fashionable world knew about. Mia’s first circle had required her to make her debut at fifteen, under the aegis of a hired chaperone, because her mother was dead. Mia’s governess had taught her all about Dante’s nine infernal circles. At fifteen, Emilia Gwendolyn Carrington already had a pretty good idea of what hell was like.
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