Chapter Fourteen
The men dined with them again and afterwards they played card games. The disconcerting sense of connection that Pip had felt on the sheep-down persisted, sometimes strongly, sometimes barely noticeable, but always there. It was as if a thread had been tied between herself and Lord Octavius, invisible to the eye and yet there, a persistent tug on her awareness, so that even when she wasn’t looking at him she knew exactly where he was and what he was doing.
She wondered whether he felt it, too.
The girls went to bed, and it was time for Pip’s lesson in defensive techniques. The four of them went to the schoolroom. The men pushed the desks back, took off their tailcoats, rolled up their shirt sleeves, and took turns pretending to attack her.
Pip practiced jabbing their ey
