"think I've grasped it, but then it's gone. Even some of his mannerisms--the way he cocks his head to one side and stares at you, expecting you to divulge the secrets of the universe?" "I know that look well. If he's upset and curses up a storm, he gives it to me. It works, most of the time." "I've heard him spout out animal body parts I've never considered," Grayson said, and they both laughed. Miranda heard her daughter shout, and turned to see P.C. running away from three swans, laughing like a hyena. She said, "I must give most of the credit to P.C. She smacks him whenever he falls back into stable cant or curses, then counsels him to keep his goal in mind, namely her as his wife, and she can't marry a boy who talks like a barn cat. Yes, yes, I'm coming to accept my precious daughter one day marrying an orphan with no family who calls himself a barn cat." She gave him a crooked smile. He took her fine-boned white hand with its long, graceful fingers and lightly squeezed. "I would like to kiss you, but I fear P.C. would attack me with a broom." Miranda patted his cheek, laughed again, and skipped away. She was pulling more bread out of another skirt pocket. Grayson stood watching her play with the children, all of them throwing bread to the dozen swans honking and flapping around them. In that moment, he thought the air did smell like apples and another smell he couldn't identify. Pomegranates? CHAPTER SEVEN Sunday It was Sunday morning, and it wasn't raining. It was pouring. "I told the mistress," Manu said in his soft, precise monotone as he poured Grayson his coffee, "the few remaining lake gods, those not on holiday in London, are angry. They have"