Free Silver in the Blood by Jessica Day George

to smoke cigarettes with the coachman behind the stable.
    â€œHaving a cigar with the gentlemen, were we?” Her father winked at her.
    â€œI thought perhaps it was just an empty car,” she said, trying to sound dignified.
    â€œWell, it isn’t, and now you smell like some dreadful gentleman’s club,” her mother complained. “Open a window, someone. I can’t stand the reek.”
    Lou subsided into her seat, chastened. Why did such things always happen to her? If she wasn’t accosted bystrange men, then she was wandering into the wrong train car and . . . being accosted by strange men again! She sighed and rubbed at her skirt, hoping that the smell wouldn’t stay in the silk permanently.
    â€œWho is that strange man?”
    Lou glanced up at her mother’s shriek, and let out a small screech of her own. That Awful Man was standing in the passageway, peering into their compartment! She thought she might really have an attack of some sort now, and could only gasp for air. Lord Johnny appeared beside him, and Lou wondered for a fevered moment if she was simply hallucinating all the beaux she didn’t have. Lord Johnny spoke to That Awful Man, and then they both went on down the passage toward the young lord’s compartment.
    â€œLouLou, are you all right?” Her father knelt in front of her, grabbing her hands. “Just breathe, darling, you’re turning quite pale!”
    Lou did her best to relax and breathe, but then the twins woke up and demanded something to eat. Maria shouted at them to be silent because she had just had a shock: a strange man had ogled her, and then Adam wanted to know what
ogled
meant. But Lou’s father stayed at her side, talking in a soothing voice that she could barely hear above the din, until she was able to catch her breath again.
    â€œI’ll be all right,” she assured him after a little while.
    â€œDid you know that man? The first one?” Her father pressed her hands.
    â€œN-no,” she stammered. “He just startled me.” She felt her stomach churn at the lie. “But the younger man was Lord John Harcastle,” she admitted. “Dacia’s Lord Johnny, you know, from London.”
    â€œI see,” her father said, looking as if this explained a great deal.
    â€œThat horrid boy!” Her mother was even more hysterical now. “Don’t ever say his name again! To think what we might have lost if Dacia had . . . if they had . . . I can’t even say it!”
    â€œEloped?” Lou’s father suggested.
    â€œDon’t say it!” her mother screamed.
    â€œWhat does
eloped
mean?” David wanted to know. Adam giggled and elbowed his twin in the ribs.
    â€œNever you mind,” their father said.
    â€œBut they didn’t, not really, Dacia thought he . . .” Lou trailed off. Not even her father was listening to her, and she didn’t really understand what Dacia had been doing.
    The conductor arrived to see what all the screaming was about, and offered Mrs. Neulander wine and smelling salts, both of which she happily accepted. She was less happy that the conductor was unwilling to throw the men who had peeped at her off the train, when he learned that one of them was an English lord.
    Lou leaned her face against the cool windowpane, and wished that meeting Lord Johnny had helped her make sense of what was happening with her family. She was just as baffled and frightened as she had been before . . . no, more so. And the train still had more mountains to cross, and more borders, before she reached Bucharest.
    Lou could not wait until they arrived in Bucharest and she was reunited with Dacia. Dacia always seemed to have the answers, and if she didn’t, she would figure out how to get them.
    Â 
    THE DIARY OF MISS DACIA VREEHOLT
    22 May 1897
    I wish that you could somehow help me. I do not know where to turn. There is something very wrong among my mother’s