By the age of twelve, Emilia Bassano knew that most people saw only what they expected to see. She thought about this as she lay on her belly, her skirts bunched up beneath her, her chin on one fist. With her free hand, she was building a faerie house.
The whitest pebbles from the front drive of Willoughby House ringed a carpet of moss. On it, she had crafted a tiny home of twigs, laced together with long shoots of grass and capped with a roof made of birchbark. Dog-rose blossoms served as windows; twined columbine and kingcup lined the entrance.
She added a spotted red toadstool she’d found in the woods, a perfect throne. She’d filched a polished obsidian king from Peregrine Bertie’s chess set. Also known as the Baron Willoughby, he was the brother of Emilia’s guardian—Susan Bertie, the Countess of Kent.
It was their quarrel that had made Emilia flee outside to escape. She placed the chess piece close to the toadstool. Emilia thought, naming him after the king of the elves in the French poem which she’d studied last week with the Countess.
“Your Majesty,” Emilia said, “here’s your lady wife.” She reached for a second piece she’d taken from the chess set, a smooth ivory queen. If Oberon had a wife in the poem, she wasn’t important enough to mention.
Emilia needed a name that made her unforgettable. she mused. “Titania,” she pronounced.
Finally, she set down the third chess piece between the king and queen. A small, dark pawn. She could still .