Night of a Thousand Stars by Deanna Raybourn

at hand if trouble comes, and I can go and find things out. Two pairs of eyes and ears are better than one,” she added slyly. “And if it means we find poor Sebastian sooner, well, miss, it would be criminal not to try. As you said, what if he is come to some harm? What if he’s in need of friends to aid him? Just think of it, that poor fellow, perhaps chained to a wall somewhere in those heathen lands—”
    I held up a hand. “There is no need for melodrama, Masterman. And I thought you believed he was a criminal.”
    She drew herself up. “No lad who reads
Peter Pan
can be all bad.”
    And that was that. I would not give her the satisfaction of knowing that I was secretly glad to have her along, but the notion of being so far from everything and everyone I had known in pursuit of adventure had been the slightest bit daunting. It would be good to have her play Watson to my Holmes, although I was quite sure she would have taken umbrage at being the sidekick.
    The only fly in the otherwise satisfactory ointment was leaving Father behind. I crossed my fingers behind my back as I explained that friends had invited me on a nice long sea voyage, and since Masterman was accompanying me, the lie made perfect sense. Father said little, but our last evening together had been marked by his silence. He had turned in early, and it had been left to George to bid us farewell at the station the next morning with a whistled tune and even a semblance of a smile as he waved us off. I told myself it was for the best. The cottage was small and Father’s health was precarious. George had been right to insist on my being respectful of Father’s privacy, and I reasoned to myself that the sooner I learned to stand on my own two feet, the sooner Father and I could establish a mutually respectful relationship of equals. It had been lowering to throw myself on his charity, although his response had been heroic. Now it was time to show him what I could do on my own.
    Mother was a different affair altogether. I didn’t trust her to accept my decision to leave the cottage as gracefully as Father had, so I waited until the morning we departed for France to post a letter giving her the same vague lie I had offered Father. I calculated it was only a matter of time before Cubby managed to spill the beans, but in the meanwhile it would buy me a bit of breathing room.
    Breathing room. I drew in great draughts of sweet sea air and blew them out slowly. The rushing to and fro of the past weeks vanished, and I stood on the deck for ages, watching the sun stretch its last reaching rays over the horizon before it fell away. There was a short purple twilight and then the stars began to shimmer to life.
    A quote—something from
Peter and Wendy
—teased at the edge of my mind, and I whispered it aloud, just to hear a voice in the midst of all that shimmering darkness. “‘Stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must just look on forever...’ But what is the next bit? Something about old stars seldom speaking but the little ones still wondering.”
    “Enjoying yourself, my dear?” I turned at the sound of a voice in the shadows behind me.
    “Good evening, Colonel. Did you need me?”
    He emerged from the gathering darkness, walking heavily with the aid of a stick. He seemed a little fatigued from the journey so far, although his spine was still straight as a lance. From what I had learned, his life had been a series of losses. First the family fortunes, then a young wife and infant child, then a succession of battles that had left him the worse for wear. But there was still something vital about him, and he had proven far more shrewd and alert than what I had expected from Cubby’s description and our brief meetings in London.
    He waved off the question. “Not a bit of it, child. I thought it might be nice to come out and see the stars. First night on the open sea is always the start of the journey, I feel. That’s