mess pawing through my closet. Decades of servants, maids, chauffeurs, and chefs prevented her from learning the skill of putting things back where she found them. “Darling, put your hair up. You’ll wear the blue off-shoulder gown with the teardrop earrings and Victorian choker.”
Mother emerged holding my gown with both hands. Delicate like a loud noise would make the silver beads fall like rain. “Black pumps, I think, darling. You’re a vision in black.”
“Lovely,” I said sarcastically. “So, I can’t choose my husband or my outfit. How far are we regressing, Mother? Am I not allowed to feed myself anymore? Are you assigning someone to wipe my ass?”
She cringed. “I’ve told you about that language, Belle. You’re a lady. Act like it.”
I made a harsh noise in my throat. “You’re funny, telling me to act the way society demands. Especially since you missed the last hundred or so years where we left arranged marriages behind. These days even a lady has a choice. I’m not going.”
“Yes, you are.” She draped the dress over my bed and joined me at the vanity. I wasn’t wearing a lick of makeup, my hair was still wet from the shower, and I hadn’t made it past the underwear and slip. Like I said repeatedly, I wasn’t going.
“I know you don’t understand this all right now.”
Mother wrapped my wet strands around her finger and brushed it against my cheek like she used to do when I was a little girl. “Some traditions survive for a reason, Belle. Society has changed, but one thing hasn’t. People still lie, cheat, and kill for money. We want to ensure the partner you have for the rest of your life is one you can trust.”
I bit my lip, penning in the frustrated reply. One more try, Belle. Make her hear you this time.
“Mom, you don’t have to worry about a man lying or cheating me because I’m never getting married,” I said. “To anyone. Ever.”
She tossed her head. “Don’t be ridiculous. A life alone is almost a worse sentence than one with a money-chaser.”
“Mom—”
“This is for the best, Belle. One day you’ll see that.”
Well, can’t say I didn’t try.
“I won’t see anything, because I’m not going!”
“Belle!” she shrieked. She smacked the wood, toppling my lipsticks and raining them on my lap.
Wide-eyed, my heart ricocheted in my chest. My mother never yelled at me. Spoke sternly? Yes. Forced reprimands through gritted teeth? Certainly. Raised her voice? Absolutely not. Ladies never shouted, and if there was one thing Dame Cecilia Lewis-Adler was, that was a lady.
She bore the fact in her name, manner, station, and appearance. She rested firmly in her fifties, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at her. She was gifted an ageless beauty where wrinkles graced only the corner of her eyes and the specks of gray in her hair blended gracefully with her golden hair. Her jewel-green eyes made strangers stop and look again. In her, I saw myself in thirty years... with some noticeable exceptions.
Every day Mom dressed in the sharpest of pantsuits in the finest fabrics. She didn’t step foot out of the mansion unless draped in pearls or diamonds. Everyone she met was dear or darling.
I, on the other hand, wore the clothes I made. Plaid skirts with oversize leather buckles. Cutout dresses. Cropped tops with my name sewn on the front. Mother called my taste eclectic because, again, she didn’t abide strong language. I wasn’t really a draped-in-gems person, and I tended to call people all the names they didn’t want to hear.
My mother and I were different in many ways, but I always felt she was on my side.
Until now.
Her expression softened. Taking a deep breath, she smoothed my hair down and kissed my crown. “I apologize,” she said. “I don’t want to fight with you, Belle. Please, for once just... do as you’re told.”
I glared hard at her in the mirror, wondering not for the first time that year who this woman was. My final year of high school had been a nightmare for many reasons, but chief among them was the bomb my parents dropped after my first week. The news that they’d be sending me to Citrine Cove and they’d hear no argument about it.
I’ve known about our community’s archaic tradition most of my life, but my parents never once said I’d have to participate until that one evening as I sat on the terrace sketching. I knocked over one of my mother’s favorite glasses jumping to my