In the carriage, Kingsley sat opposite Evadne. She studied him solemnly while her gloved hands tossed an indeterminate number of silver sixpences backward and forward.

‘You’ll do,’ she said finally, pocketing her coins.

Her announcement jerked Kingsley from brooding about his foster father. Dr Ward often left home abruptly, pursuing one of his many academic investigations, but he always left instructions. Always. He was a man who loved a list of things to do, preferably for other people. ‘I’m glad.’ Kingsley caught himself. ‘I’ll do for what?’

‘My project, remember?’ The sixpences reappeared in her hand and she absently rolled them between her fingers. ‘When you started your act I thought I’d made a poor decision, but things became far more interesting after that.’

Kingsley frowned. Perhaps this was some sort of music hall argot he was unfamiliar with. ‘Go on,’ he said, carefully.

‘That’s the way.’ She reached out and patted his hand. ‘Each season, I make it my job to take up with one of the less experienced members of the cast and befriend them. I was about to say “show them the ropes” but I hardly think that’s what’s needed in your case, is it?’

‘I know my ropes,’ he said faintly. ‘It sounds as if you’ve apprenticed me.’

She smiled. It was a cheeky smile and Kingsley could imagine himself growing to like it. ‘I’ve seen your details,’ she said, ‘and I know that I’m older than you are. From my lofty advantage of two extra months on the planet, I’m making it my responsibility to help you along.’

‘You make it sound as if you’re adopting a puppy.’

‘And what’s wrong with that? Don’t you like puppies? Clarence has a wolf-hound, you know, that he raised from a puppy. It can fetch, when it wants to.’

‘No, I do, it’s not that.’ He stopped, reviewed what Evadne had just said, and blinked. ‘Clarence?’

Evadne stopped juggling. Kingsley wasn’t sure how, but the sixpences disappeared. Then she produced a locket on the end of a silver chain that, apparently, hung from her neck. She flipped it open. ‘This is Clarence. He’s my intended.’

Kingsley had never actually heard anyone called an ‘intended’ before. ‘Congratulations. A respectable fellow, from the looks of him.’

She raised a very precise eyebrow. ‘Clarence is more than respectable. He’s well-to-do. You’d be startled if I told you his family name.’

‘I’m sure I would be.’

‘He’s studying. Brilliantly. Kings College.’

‘I see.’ Kingsley peered at the locket. ‘It looks as if you’ve torn his picture from a magazine.’

Evadne sniffed. Kingsley had never seen anyone sniff elegantly before, but Evadne achieved this difficult feat. She snapped the locket closed. ‘Clarence has featured in any number of journals of the better kind.’

‘Not as the defendant in one of the more sensational court cases, I hope.’

She ignored this. ‘I’m telling you about him so we won’t misunderstand each other. When I say that you interest me, I want it clear that it’s not like that.’

‘That?’

‘That.’

‘Oh, that!’

‘Exactly. Which doesn’t mean I’m being unfriendly. You’re not without a rough and ready charm, after all.’

Rough and ready? Charm? Kingsley was wary of Evadne’s quicksilveriness, and not quite certain how to approach her. He sensed that half her jibes were challenges, and that he’d lose her respect if he couldn’t rise to them – but the other half?

She opened her locket and peeked at it again. ‘A magazine, you say?’

‘Trim the edges a little neater next time.’

Evadne pursed her lips and snapped the locket shut with a flourish. It disappeared down her neckline, something that Kingsley hardly noticed at all.

‘Now,’ she said. ‘If I’m to make you my project, we need to have a few things clear.’

‘I, for one, would appreciate having a single thing clear.’

She flashed him a smile. ‘You’re game, at least, I’ll grant you that.’ She composed herself. ‘Do remember, at all times, that the polite term is “albino”. Not “snowdrop”, “chalky” or “ghosty pants”. The condition can be termed achromia, if you’re feeling pedantic.’

‘I rarely feel pedantic. I occasionally feel Atlantic, but only when I’m at sea.’

She awarded an instant’s scorn to this sally, which Kingsley took as a victory, then went on. ‘How much do you know about albinism?’

‘With some trepidation that I’m presenting myself for rightful ridicule, I’ll say: “as much as the next man”.’

‘Next to nothing, then.’

‘Correct,’ Kingsley said, with the impression he’d escaped lightly. Already, he appreciated that he needed to be on his toes when talking to Evadne Stephens.

‘Then I won’t attempt to transform you into an expert straight away.’ She drummed her fingers on her knee in an interesting syncopated beat. ‘Let it be said that on top of the obvious skin and hair characteristics, achromatic people also tend to have vision problems – short-sightedness, astigmatism, things like that.’

‘Let me see if I understand this properly. You have vision problems and yet you were able to read that sign pointing to the station from yards away, at night.’

Evadne stood. She turned off the gaslights in the carriage, and her whiteness was even more ghostly in the shadows. She took off her spectacles and held them out to him. ‘Put these on.’

He gasped. It was as if the carriage were bathed in gentle sunlight. Everything was dizzyingly blurry, swooping and swelling as he moved his head, but it was a well-lit blurriness.

Evadne plucked the spectacles from his face and adjusted up the lights. She inspected the spectacles before slipping them back on.

‘That’s remarkable,’ he managed.

‘I have a number of pairs of corrective spectacles. Some are for special purposes. Others can be adjusted for varying circumstances.’ Evadne sat and patted her coat. ‘I can’t go out in the daylight without something strongly tinted. At night, though, some light enhancement is useful.’

‘Where did you get them?’

‘I made them.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You say that as if juggling and practical optometry were an odd combination.’

‘Well, not so much odd as unexpected.’

She waved that away. ‘Now, is there anything else you wanted to know?’

‘There is indeed something else I wanted to know.’ He crossed his arms and settled them on his chest. ‘Where did you learn to juggle?’

Evadne put a hand over her mouth, then burst out laughing. ‘Oh, well played, sir,’ she said, ‘well played.’

‘Thank you.’ Kingsley felt as if he’d passed another test. ‘But I’m genuinely interested in an answer.’

Evadne touched the chain at her neck. ‘You can imagine that I’ve grown accustomed to being an object of attention.’

‘For your juggling.’

She peered over the top of her spectacles. ‘Now you’re almost being tiresome.’

‘Sorry.’

‘You need to understand that I’ve been called a freak,’ she said, ‘and worse, so I’ve developed a number of ways of coping with people. Anticipating their reactions is one of them.’

‘And I confounded you when I asked about your juggling instead of your albinism? I apologise.’

‘Don’t. I enjoy being confounded. It happens so seldom, after all.’ She grinned. It was a totally unaffected expression of impish delight. She had excellent teeth, Kingsley noted. ‘I learned juggling from my uncle Frederick, who must never be mentioned.’

‘Anywhere, or just in your family home?’

‘You’ve heard of families having black sheep? Uncle Frederick is the sort of black sheep that black sheep shun.’

‘He sounds like a useful uncle to have.’

‘He is. Once he taught me juggling, to my parents’ horror, he went to sea and I didn’t see him for years so I had to find help wherever I could.’

‘It was the same with my magic.’

‘My uncle Frederick taught you magic? I knew he’d been around, but I never . . .’ She took out a pocket watch, a handsome gold repeater. A man’s watch, if Kingsley was any judge, but he’d already come to understand that Evadne Stephens was anything but conventional.

He sat back, easing into the rhythm of the train as it clicketty-clacked towards London, and he tried not to worry about his foster father. Kingsley had always feared for his foster father’s safety, despite his reassurances that the scrapes he’d encountered and the disreputable characters he dealt with presented no real danger. The letter from his foster father’s valet had echoed Kingsley’s misgivings, and thus amplified them.

What had the old man found himself in this time?