Forsythia's voice in the darkness prompted Pippa to bolt upright in her bed, one hand pawing any moisture from her eyes even with the darkness as concealment. She had not realized her cousin was awake, but had some part of her hoped she might be?

"I—" she caught herself, uncertain how to respond. "It was the letter. Papa wrote to me as if... as if I were grown."

The words had been in that special language adults knew so well, able to say things without really saying them. They had carried a gravity that she had seen before, but that had seldom been directed to her.