For Darkness Shows the Stars

said to her in the caves. She hadn’t been jealous of Ro’s scarf, and she wouldn’t be jealous of a sun-cart lesson and a conversation, either. Still, Andromeda knew this new man that Kai had become. Perhaps she knew what it looked like when Kai was interested. Perhaps, now that he was a famous explorer, he was interested quite a lot.
    Tatiana piped up. “Olivia is still a child. She has been given far too much liberty ever since the death of her parents. Horatio is a good man, of course, but he does not know how to raise a teenage girl. He was made the head of his household at seventeen, and she has been the lady of the house since she was eleven. They have some . . . strange ideas. Look at the way he allows her to dress.”
    Elliot was pretty sure that Andromeda steered them into the next puddle. Tatiana shrieked and drew back to avoid the splash of mud. Elliot barely managed to hide her smile. Tatiana had also been made the lady of the house as a young teen.
    “There are those who’ve been holding their own since they were that young,” said Donovan. “Like my sister. It’s been eight years since she and I left our estate—she was only twelve, and I was eight. We made it all right.”
    Tatiana’s eyes widened, but she remained blessedly quiet.
    As they passed, Elliot got a quick glimpse into Kai’s cart. His hands were covering Olivia’s as he showed her how to work the controls. Elliot focused very hard on the horizon until the grinding noises coming from the other cart faded into the background. When driven properly, Elliot realized, the carts made almost no noise at all, just a soft whir as the wheels spun and a clank whenever the shocks moved over the bumpy dirt road. This was much better than the smelly roars of the tractor.
    Andromeda spoke again. “Would you like to give it a try, Miss Elliot?”
    Elliot looked down at the controls the Post was offering her, and then up into the other girl’s strangely bright eyes. As usual, she could read nothing. Was Andromeda hoping to embarrass her, too, or was she trying, in some odd way, to even the score with Olivia? It had been a long time since Elliot had viewed the operation of machinery as anything more than a chore. She’d spent too many hours driving the thresher and tractor around in the heat of the midday sun.
    And yet she found herself taking hold of the controls. The cart needed a light touch, she discovered quickly, as her first attempt to put pressure on the accelerator sent the machine careening over the next hill. In the backseat, Tatiana squealed and jounced into Donovan’s lap. He gently pushed her off.
    “Sorry,” Elliot said, correcting the speed. The setup, she noted, was surprisingly similar to the tractor she’d grown up using. Because of this, she found her way around the controls with ease and was able to keep the cart going at a swift but steady clip until they arrived at the barn.
    Elliot pulled the cart to the side, expertly parking in the shade of the barn. She handed the controls back to Andromeda. “Nice cart.”
    Andromeda smirked. “You aren’t what I expected, Miss Elliot,” and left Elliot to parse those words as she joined her brother on the grass.
    Much to Elliot’s chagrin, they decided to wait until Kai and the Groves had caught up to leave her alone in the barn. Tatiana took Elliot by the elbow and led her out of earshot. “Do you think . . . Were they insinuating that Captain Wentforth might have . . . designs on Olivia Grove?”
    “They met less than an hour ago,” Elliot replied firmly. It was the only true thing she could bring herself to say.
    “Horatio would never allow it,” Tatiana stated. “ Should never allow it. A Post? It would do irreparable damage to their family’s reputation.”
    “And if they did get together, it would do incomparable good for the estate’s finances,” Elliot couldn’t help but point out. “I gather that all these Cloud Fleet Posts are extremely wealthy. Probably far more wealthy than the Groves.” It would also do good to remind Tatiana that whatever fear she had for loss of reputation due to Post influence, the Norths had been the ones to accept their money—not the Groves.
    “You don’t think they’d marry !” Tatiana exclaimed in horror. “But they’re Po—” And then she must have remembered what Mrs. Innovation had told her yesterday—that free Posts did marry. Nevertheless, the word seemed to curdle Elliot’s blood, even if it was