Chapter 6

6

Three intense, sweaty hours had passed. Andrew was smudged in kerosene oil. And if he was smudged, Lily was a wreck. Her face had black streaks down the side; her hands were completely covered in old ink and oil. Even her hair, which had fallen from its two comfortable buns, and now appeared to be something resembling a magpie's nest, had oil soaked into it.

Lily's extensive notes on disassembly, it turned out, were less helpful on the question of re-assembly than she had believed. They'd put together pieces and then taken them apart and reassembled them, over and over, until finally they had come to this, the most important part.

There they had hit the worst snag yet.

"You see," Lily was saying, with something of a strain in her voice, "this clamshell mechanism is how the press operates. The paper goes here; the printing plate here." She gestured. "If we can't get this hinge together, we're done for. It's a very tight fit. You have to hold the hinge perfectly in place, or the bolt won't go in."

Andrew gritted his teeth. "I'm holding it. It's in place."

"Steady now." She picked up the long pin that held the hinge together. "This time, it has to go in."

It had not gone in on any of the five previous times. Lily found the entrance and pushed. But no matter how hard she tried, she could not insert the rod more than half an inch.

"Are you holding it?" she demanded.

"Lily, you haven't even pushed far enough to get to the bit where what I do matters."

"I know!" she muttered.

"Then why are you asking?"

"It's too big!" She let the pin drop to the floor. "It won't fit! None of this works. If I can't get the hinge together, there is no press. If there is no press—" She cut herself off and looked around.

Dusk was threatening. The shed, once bright and almost warm in the late winter daylight, was becoming cooler, shadows lengthening. The three tables had been assembled—the thing that looked like a furnace had weighed about a hundred pounds ("just" a hundred pounds, according to Lily) and had indeed been a furnace ("a cute little job furnace," she'd said, the way another person might coo over a kitten).

Slowly, Andrew lowered the pieces of the press to the floor and stretched out his arms.

"Oh, no." She shook her head. "I'm keeping you from the inn. You always help with dinner, and I haven't even given you time to send word."

"Lily, this is my afternoon off."

"Even worse." She looked around. "I've forced you to work through your time off. When your cousin finds out, she's going to be angry with me, and nobody is ever going to like me. Ever."

"Lily?" Andrew stared at her in surprise.

She collapsed into a heap on the floor of the shed. "And I was trying so hard! I don't know how to proceed."

There was one thing, at least, he could help with. "Naomi likes you just fine."

The flip side of Lily's sunny exuberance was this: when things started to fall apart, they did so rapidly and without warning.

She rocked back and forth in her little ball. "No, even that's a lie. How can I say I was trying when all I ever do is make stupid conversation and say stupid, wrong things? All I do is waste money. And I promised to make labels for Chloe!"

Andrew knelt beside her. "Lily, are you crying?"

"No." She swiped her hand under her cheeks, smearing oil across her face. "Absolutely not. I'm not a baby."

"Adults also cry, you know."

She ignored him. "I was going to help you when I came to Wedgeford. I wasn't going to be a burden on anyone."

"Lily, you're never a burden."

She tilted her head to look up at him. "My grandfather sent me away because of my radical association with suffragists. But the truth is this: I returned because I wanted to print something illegal."

"Illegal?" He startled.

"Technically, the law wasn't the problem. I was already printing illegal things."

"Illegal in what way?"

She didn't seem to hear his question. "This was not just illegal. It was radical , and that was a much greater danger. It was bad enough what I was already doing. If I started printing things in Hong Kong, I might put the whole household in danger. Of course I'm a burden. Who wants an unmarried relation with unshakeable views on the rights of women?"

Andrew did. "I'm sure it wasn't like that."

"You just think that because you're unflappable."

"Oh, I flap," Andrew told her. "But I don't think this is the time to convince you of your sterling qualities. Have you got any of that kerosene oil? I think we need to clean out the knuckle of this hinge."

"Oh?"

This disrupted her enough from whatever she was thinking that she found him kerosene and a cloth. He began working it in, slowly, while she watched with only the occasional sniffle.

"We have to get this hole here nice and lubricated."

Lily watched him in silence. It was getting darker in the shed. They were alone together. True, the doors of the shed were thrown wide open, but in the velvet of the oncoming night, they could do anything and nobody would see them.

And here Andrew sat, suggestively getting ready to slide a long rod into a lubricated hole. Something was very wrong with him that he was thinking that way while she was so distressed.

"There," Andrew said, fetching the pin and testing it on one part of the hinge. "That's so much better. There must have been old oil clogging it up."

"I thought…" Lily's voice wavered. "I thought it wouldn't fit."

"You can't just shove it in. You must use a gentle touch. Here."

He lifted the two pieces, aligning them.

"You do it. Put it in, Lily."

His heart beat wildly. In the dark, he could see her finding the pin, lifting it up. The cylindrical end scrabbled at the opening.

"Align it properly," Andrew said. "Don't hurry. Breathe in."

He could see the silhouette of her chest expand.

"Breathe out, then just slide it through."

She exhaled, and when she did, the long hinge-pin finally slid all the way through. Lily let out a gasp that was incredibly suggestive. "It's in!"

Andrew shifted the machine so that it was standing upright, and before he could do anything, Lily threw her arms around him. He could feel the heat of her body pressed against him, the weight of her against him. Without thinking, he wrapped his arms around her.

It was totally inappropriate. He was going to leave smudged oil prints the size of his hands on her. Everyone in Wedgeford would know what had happened, if they caught sight of her laundry. Somehow, though, the idea of leaving a mark on the woman who he could never have appealed to him.

"We did it!" Lily exclaimed.

"Not quite." In the growing dark, he could still see a few black silhouettes, unused pieces of cast iron. "We're not yet done."

"There's just the treadles to go. I can manage those by myself in the morning." She looked up at him from the circle of his arms. Her lips looked almost violet in the blue of the oncoming dark. Her eyes were deep pools of black. "I took extensive notes," she told him. "I'm sure it will take at most twenty minutes."

He could tell she was on the verge of relieved laughter by the tone of her voice. As for anything else he might have seen in her expression…

His arms were around her. He knew he should move them, and yet somehow, he found himself holding her just a little closer. She made a little noise of surprise.

Not protest, he didn't think. Without seeing her features, he could impose his own feelings on them.

Here, holding Lily in the darkness, he could imagine that she was going to kiss him. And if she did, Andrew knew he would kiss her back.

Don't, he warned himself. You can't.

The warnings did no good. He was already swaying toward her.

Lily was unaware of the danger. "Thank you," she told him gravely. "I always panic when things start to go wrong. I don't know why."

She was so close that he could feel the heat of her breath against his chin.

"I do." He could practically feel her drooping at those words.

She let out a sigh. "You're right. It's because I have no sense."

"It's because you hold nothing of yourself back. When you're excited, you're all excited. When you're nervous, you run to panic. You are always three hundred percent."

She let her forehead hit his chest. "I know. I'm always too much."

"That wasn't what I meant. I would never want a single half-percent less Lily." He'd had zero percent of her for too many years.

"That's sweet of you to say."

"Especially," Andrew said, looking upward, "when I can work with her to slide a long shaft into a tight, lubricated hole."

"You are good at that." She sounded impressed by his prowess rather than offended at his innuendo.

"Any time you need a lubricated hole serviced, I'm your man. It's a special service I offer. Just for you."

He could feel the pressure of her fingers grow against his arm, could feel the warmth of her breath rise from his chin to his lips as she came up on her tiptoes. Maybe she had picked up on the innuendo. Maybe he was wrong about her feelings for him. Maybe she did…

"Lily." His voice shook.

Her breath warmed his cheek. She leaned in. He felt himself tense—both ready and not ready.

Then her lips touched his cheek gently, lightly, cataclysmically.

"Thank you," she whispered.

The touch felt like lightning, lancing through his system. He stood there in silence, unable to respond. Lily pulled away from his embrace, stretching and rolling her neck from side to side, an unreachable silhouette in the darkness.

Andrew let out a long, covert breath.

It was as bad as he'd feared. He had always liked Lily. It had just been the way of things.

He'd also known that he would never act on his feelings. Why would he tie a woman he liked to him, when his entire world could be upended by the discovery of a captain's log or the intervention of a younger brother?

Naomi had accused him of holding a candle for Lily. It felt more like he was containing a bonfire: suppressing it as best he could, refusing to let it glow. And that made all the sense in the world. After all, Lily was the only one who was allowed to shine so brightly.

Andrew, by contrast…

Andrew had a logbook to steal from her.

Perhaps that was why he'd done everything he had. Why he'd found her furniture, why he'd helped her put together her press.

Because he was going to steal the captain's log from her tonight, and after that, he wouldn't deserve Lily's enthusiasm any longer. If she never found out, he'd always feel guilty. And if she did…

Lily would hate him if she knew the truth. At least that would take care of his futile hoping.

"Wash up," he said to Lily. "And come to the inn. I'm sure you're starving."

"But—"

"But nothing." He exhaled. "Come have dinner and let Wedgeford welcome you home."

Three seconds in the common room of Wedgeford's inn—three seconds of people shouting and laughing—and Lily almost turned and left. If nobody saw her, they could only suspect her of being busy, rather than a coward. But Andrew had asked and?—

Before Lily could lose heart, Jeremy and Kai caught sight of her. "Lily!" they called. "Over here!" Then it was too late.

Food was served. People gathered. Lily did her best to sit on the edge of the bench and nod when conversation demanded.

The problem, though, with being newly back in a small village was that you became a person with a story, and no matter how small Lily attempted to make herself appear, she could not fight the inevitable basic human interest that arose in a small village because there was someone new.

"So," Naomi was saying. "Your press arrived, and it's assembled. What do you plan to do next?"

"I've already sent an inquiry to London. I'll likely need more metal than I planned if I want to make Chloe's plate."

"I wasn't asking about that," Naomi said with a smile. "There's time, I'm sure. I meant it more socially."

"Socially?" Lily looked around wildly. Social was not her forté. It was not even her pianissimo. "Oh, there's Mrs. Abbot. I told her yesterday evening what I was planning to do in Wedgeford. That was serendipitous. I have something for her. If you'll excuse me?—"

"No problem," Naomi said cheerfully, and before Lily could escape from the table, she called Mrs. Abbot over. What could Lily do, but stay there and smile?

"Here." Lily took the book out of her satchel. "It didn't take me long." She handed it to the woman.

"You've fixed it." Mrs. Abbott swiped her hair back. "I'm not sure I should call it a relief. On the one hand, the children will not go to sleep unless I read them one of these stories." She shook the book as if to reprimand it. "On the other hand, they're so awful. They give me nightmares."

Jeremy squinted at the gold engraving on the front cover. "Grimm's fairy tales?"

"I couldn't help but take a look as I was repairing the water damage," Lily said with a shake of her head. "They do seem a little…um…violent. But children often love that sort of thing."

"Awful, bloodthirsty things, these little stories." Mrs. Abbot shook her head. "Nonetheless, thank you. We agreed on thruppence, did we not?"

Chloe glanced sharply at Naomi, who gave a little wide-eyed nod in return, mouthing something that looked like "three pence?" Naomi nodded back.

Perhaps Lily had made a mistake. Was it wrong for her to charge to fix a children's book? Should she not have done that?

Her greed was too much. "That's correct."

Mrs. Abbot passed the money over, and despite the inevitable disapproval, Lily felt like dancing a jig. She'd earned money! She could absolutely earn a living, although…

It would take a great many waterlogged books for her to do so.

Naomi waited until Mrs. Abbot had left, book firmly under her arm, before she looked at Chloe and raised an eyebrow.

"Lily, how long did it take you to fix the water damage on that book?"

"Me?" She considered this. "Maybe five hours between last night and this morning before breakfast."

"And you're charging three pennies?"

"Is that too much?"

"It will take you four of those to earn a shilling," Chloe said. "Eighty of them to earn a pound. Eight hundred of them to earn what a boy could earn as a laborer on a farm, and you'd work…" She paused, likely calculating, "eleven hours a day, every day doing nothing but fixing books of water damage. I do not include the time to obtain this work. You'll have no time to cook or maintain a kitchen garden. And Mrs. Abbot has the means to pay better."

Lily couldn't make sense of what Chloe must mean. "Can you explain what exactly I did wrong here?"

"You had better not bid your labels to me on such a scale," Chloe said in scolding tones. "I don't hold with undervaluing anyone's labor. I was paying two pounds a month for a thousand labels."

"Two pounds a month! But these are machine stamped! I could not possibly demand so much in exchange for what is at most a day's work. I had been thinking a few shillings, perhaps, depending on the cost of metal for the plate?—"

"You must have invested a good bit in the machinery that makes it so simple, not even counting the training to run the machinery." Chloe folded her arms. "You must command some return on your investment."

"Maybe six shillings?"

Chloe took out her board clip and glared at it, as if something on her list were somehow at fault. "Why must I always bid women up when I do business with them? Please understand, Lily, I do this out of pure selfishness. If your prices are too low, you will be run ragged with both too much business and not enough rest, and one day, you will become sick from overwork or your machine will break, and you won't be able to afford a replacement part. Then I will not get my labels on time, and it will cost me far more than what I would save to scramble for an alternative. I require that you charge me an honest price for your labor and investment. I suggest that you do so for everyone."

Lily stared at her. "Should I ask for as much as eight shillings, then?"

"One pound, six shillings," Chloe countered. "I'll be saving six shillings in the bargain."

Lily cringed. "But that's far too much."

"In that case," Chloe said snippily, "you may refuse the work."

Very carefully, Lily reevaluated every childhood conversation with Chloe. Chloe had always been like this to her: matter-of-fact, brushing aside objections without giving them a moment's consideration. As a child, Lily had assumed that Chloe simply hated her, and for good reason.

But one didn't offer large sums of money to someone you hated. Possibly one also didn't make them scallion pancakes. Or at least, Lily didn't.

Lily peered at Chloe with a newfound sense of dawning realization. "Are you just…always like this?"

"Like what?" Chloe seemed taken aback.

"Bossy," Naomi said from the side, hiding a grin. "And yes. She is always like that."

Lily bit her lip. "What about one pound?"

"My offer will not go down," Chloe told her, nose in the air. "No less than one pound six shillings, with proportional increases as our label requirements grow."

"But that would be a full worker's salary on its own!"

"It would be what a woman might be paid in a month if she worked in a printer's shop. It's less than a man would make by half." Chloe glared at her. "The shop would pay the woman twenty percent of what they took in, and a man forty percent. As you are both shop and laborer, you must accept the profit the printer would make. That was your purpose in buying a press, was it not?"

Technically, Lily had not thought through the details of money and accounting. She'd mostly focused on the freedom in printing her translations. If she had her own press, nobody could tell her no. She'd assumed the money would work itself out, somehow. The print shop had always made do, and its owners had scarcely had to work to achieve that goal.

But Chloe had always been good with business.

"Very well. I accept."

"Good." Chloe smiled, as if everything had been cleared up. "I'm beyond delighted. Pretty soon I'll have you bargaining me up, as you are supposed to do. Now, that's enough of business."

Perhaps, Lily thought, glancing between Chloe and Naomi, Chloe had never actually hated her. And perhaps Lily had never noticed.

Noticing was not high on Lily's skill list.

"In any event," Naomi said, "none of us have anything interesting to speak of. We've all been mired in Wedgeford for the last month."

She said nothing more, just glancing at Lily, but even Lily understood that for the offer that it was.

One of the social rules in Wedgeford—one of the ones that Lily actually understood—was that one didn't ask details about where someone had come from. Almost everyone here had come to escape something, and it was generally agreed that it was beneficial if people were allowed to leave their pasts behind.

For Letta Grimsley, that meant she did not have to tell everyone about the husband who had told her to quit her associations or face his wrath. Wedgeford had given Letta the opportunity to start anew, to take a new name, to forget her past, and perhaps to marry again (technically illegal, but morally justified) if she ever chose, or to find a group of spinsters and provide each other with mutual support.

"There's little I can tell you. I learned printing. I worked with the Hong Kong Aid Society in my spare time." That sounded like the kind of thing an upstanding woman would do; most of what they'd done, after all, had not even been against the law. "I obtained a logbook on the way home."

Andrew, beside her, nudged her leg and gave his head a careful, small shake. Right. He didn't want to talk about his earldom openly until he knew for sure.

"But never mind that," she said breezily. "That's Andrew's to talk about." It was the wrong thing to say; she knew it the moment the words left her.

"Andrew's?" Naomi looked at her cousin. "What secret is this between you and Andrew?"

"Ummmm." Lily looked around desperately. Luckily, Andrew recognized her predicament for what it was: a total inability to lie.

"I have no secrets," Andrew said airily. "I am an open book."

"The book is open," Naomi said. "And it's blank."

"Nonsense," Andrew shot back. "The book is open and it's very amusing."

"I'll grant you ‘funny' or ‘curious.' I'm not sure you merit an ‘amusing,' let alone a ‘very.'"

"There you are." Andrew grinned. "I'm funny. Naomi has said it, so it must be true."

"That much I will agree with." Naomi nodded. "I am often right." And the conversation moved on.

Lily was rather impressed. The thing was, she knew Andrew was misdirecting. Of course he had a secret; she knew what it was. Yet nobody had noticed.

"I love that we're talking about me," Andrew continued. "There's excellent reason to do so. Who else would provoke so much scintillating discussion? It is only I, the most interesting person in Wedgeford."

"You are superlatively silly," his cousin shot back. "I'll grant you that."

"You see? I'm superlative."

He'd shifted the topic of conversation to something completely different. And yes, Andrew was always like this…but was that for a reason? Had he always been changing the topic, and she'd never noticed?

Suddenly, the memory of that morning's conversation with his mother returned. She'd asked Lily to be patient with her son.

What had she meant by that?

Surely, at least this: that if Andrew wanted to change the conversation, Lily was going to help him.

"Shall I tell you all about my poetry volume?" she asked.

"Yes." Was that a hint of relief in Andrew's tone? Lily wasn't sure any longer.

"You did mention printing volumes earlier," Naomi said. "What kind of poetry? Written by whom?"

Lily opened her mouth, eager to explain, then shut it just as swiftly. She had learned, from experience, that saying "I would like to print poetry written by the radical members of my women's aid society" did not always receive a favorable response. Particularly in Hong Kong, where such things were generally considered illegal.

"Just some poetry written by the Chinese members of the Hong Kong Aid Society," Lily said. "About…" How to put it? "The modern condition."

"What is the modern condition?"

"The way we live." Lily looked down at her hands. "The way we breathe. Who we are expected to be, and who we are inside, desperate to come into the light no matter how many people say that you mustn't. You don't belong in this space, they say, when you have felt all your life that?—"

Lily paused. She was doing a bang-up job of not mentioning the radical nature of her poetry. How was it that Andrew could change the subject of conversation without anyone noticing, while Lily couldn't do it even if she tried? Everyone was looking at her with some degree of widened eyes. She was raising her voice. She was getting too excited. She was being too much once again.

She took a deep breath. "Poetry about that, you know. About the things…" Who was she fooling? She was going to publish the volume. People were going to know. "The things women should be allowed to do."

She looked around at Chloe and Naomi. They had both married, and recently at that. They might not feel the same way about the rights of women. She had no idea how they would react.

Lily had never been good at not saying things she meant with her whole heart. "Which, if you are wondering," Lily concluded, "is just about everything."

"I took an ambulance class last year," Naomi interjected, surprising her. "They tried to keep me out because I was unmarried, and they thought I would be ruined by putting bandages on a male body."

Lily gasped. "How ridiculous."

"People always want to talk to my father about sauce," Chloe said. "And I know the business side better than he does."

"That's precisely what the poetry is about! We're real people, and it's like half the population doesn't notice!"

Jeremy and Kai exchanged glances.

" I notice," Kai said dryly.

"Good for you!" Lily waved a hand. "I'll print you a man-ticket."

"A…man-ticket?" Kai looked around. "I'm not familiar with that term."

"Neither am I," Andrew confessed. "But now that I know they exist, I want two."

"It's a little ticket, sized like a calling card. On the front, it says…" Lily pondered. "‘This man-ticket entitles the bearer to our deepest and most heartfelt congratulations.'"

"Oh, dear," Andrew said.

"And on the back?" Jeremy asked.

"In small print, it says: ‘for he is a man, and yet despite this grievous shortcoming, he is aware that those who are not men are also people.'"

"Lily," Andrew said with a smile, "are you being sarcastic?"

"No. If men need a man-ticket to take women seriously, I will print them by the bushel. I'm being extremely serious. You see, one of the things I noticed, going from Britain to China, and then back aboard ship where women from multiple nations traveled… There is something happening right now. It's global. You can feel it in the air. Everyone is chafing. Everyone feels the same way, whether we speak of it aloud or not. I will print my man-tickets and I will print my Chinese poetry, because women in England need to understand that they'll be stronger if they stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us, rather than..."

Rather than telling me we befoul their cause, Lily didn't say. Her voice was rising in her excitement, and the only one who knew about her ill-fated sojourn with the suffragists was Andrew.

"That's, um. A very nice goal." Jeremy nodded. "Print a volume, maybe a few hundred of them?—"

"A hundred?" Lily felt scandalized. "But everyone should read it. The moment we are in—the conversations I have had. The world needs to know that so many overlooked people the world over are human with our own dreams and wants and thoughts. We have so much capacity in our smothered hearts, and it's begging to be let free."

Kai sucked his teeth. "As a practical matter, just because someone needs to hear something doesn't mean they'll want to listen."

"I know," Lily said, "I've already thought of it. Nobody wants to read a translation done by stupid Lily Bei, farmer's daughter, whose grandfather drives an ox cart. That's why I have, ah, enlisted the translation services of Imperial Princess Wei Na."

Jeremy squinted. "I've never heard of her. And I would have."

"She lived a humble life in Hong Kong until her death. She's descended from Ming Dynasty emperors. She's lived a humble life, under the circumstances, but she's learned and intelligent. She was my godmother."

There was no such concept in China, of course, but what English suffragists didn't know would help Lily sell more poetry.

Jeremy slowly tapped his fingers on the table. "You're sure your, uh, godmother was telling the truth?"

"Well, technically, she never lied, because also technically, she doesn't exist. I made her up out of whole cloth," Lily said. "But I have extensive documentation—her family gaapou and a certificate from a trusted authority attesting to its authenticity. How else am I going to get English people to buy my poetry? They love everything Chinese, as long as it doesn't involve an actual Chinese person. It's perfect: mine is translated by someone who doesn't exist, so they won't have to acknowledge her. And they adore princesses. Why not give them both, and thus force them to discover us as real people?"

"Lily!" Andrew looked delighted. "You? Telling a lie?"

She could feel her shoulders slump. "I know. But I'm not as inflexible as I was as a child. I felt badly about it for a while, but it helps to think of it more like a hou. A hou with…extensive documentation."

Andrew shook his head. "I don't know what that word means."

"It's an art name," Kai responded. "Sort of like a nom de plume. My father sometimes used one as an affect. Although, my advice would be…" He looked over at Lily. "If you're going to adapt this kind of art name… Maybe don't tell anyone else about it, except us. We'll keep it secret."

"Oh." Lily frowned. "You're almost certainly right."

"I wish you the best, then," Jeremy said. "And I'm sure I'd love to buy a volume when it's available."

"Bring it to Parliament with you," Lily advised. "Let everyone see you reading it, if you don't mind."

"I don't at all," Jeremy told her. "Speaking of art—Kai, Chloe tells me that you've been asked to do an exhibition of your pottery in London?"

Lily felt a little proud of herself. Maybe she'd said a little too much, a little too exuberantly, but she'd got her main point across and had listened to other people in turn.

After a few minutes, Andrew leaned in. "Lily," he murmured in a low voice, "I think you're going to do smashingly well with your poetry."

"Thank you."

"And if this poetry makes your smothered heart breathe…" He met her gaze.

For some reason, the look on his face made her hold her breath. There was something intense there, something sad. She wanted to know how he would finish that sentence. Her whole body seemed to vibrate, waiting.

He looked away. "I'm happy for you."

"Oh." She smiled helplessly at him.

Behind them, two men had started arguing—the kind of arguing that went swiftly from shouting to shoving.

Andrew stood with a sigh. "I have to go see to that." He touched her shoulder. "I'll be right back."

She could feel the phantom echo of his touch right on the line between skin and blouse as he walked over to the commotion. Andrew was the exact opposite of Lily. He was good with people and excellent at conversation. He always knew the right thing to say.

And yet he'd never told her she was strange, or that it was odd how excited she became about trivialities. He never asked her questions like "why is your heart smothered? Don't you have plenty to do?" He never scoffed at her dreams.

He had even done her that tremendous favor years ago, before she'd left for China.

For one moment, that image flashed into her mind: the weight of his body on hers; the calluses of his fingers, rough yet gentle against her sides. Her face heated and she shook the memory away.

More than anything, she wanted to make this right for him. If anyone in the entire world deserved an earldom, it was Andrew.

She watched him across the room. He set a friendly hand on the arm of a man nearly eight inches taller than him, laughing and conducting him outside with some kind of promise or other.

The fight didn't happen; everyone returned to smiling again. That was the Andrew Lily knew: so, so good that she could feel her fists clenching.

She was going to give him what he deserved.