“Agreed.” The tunic was tossed to Lillian. “Ah, wait. I have it. Yes. Here we are.”
She used both hands to free a new gown from the mess, shaking away all the rest in a tumble of unwanted glimmer. She turned around to me with it held up in front of her, a smile at last breaking through the calm.
The dress was beautiful. Of course it was; all of them had been. This one was floaty and silvery gray, the color of the moonlit mist of my dreams. It had a silver sash and a dash of silver sequins along the bodice. I knew straightaway it was worth more than I’d make in a year as a governess.
Probably more than five years.
“Try it on,” Sophia said.
I didn’t move.
“Oh.” She looked around the room, sighing. “Right, everyone out. Give her some privacy. Go on.”
Lillian went first, still mindlessly clutching the discarded dresses. The others filed out in an unenthusiastic line.
“You, as well,” Sophia said pointedly to Mittie, who’d stayed on the bed.
“Why should I? It’s my room, too.”
Lady Sophia only stared at her. Mittie’s mouth tightened into a downward curve, her pug face gone sour. She was no match for Sophia’s ranking in the pack, and she knew it.
“Fine,” she huffed, and went. The door slammed hard behind her.
Sophia looked back at me. “You needn’t be concerned about undressing in front of me. I don’t care a whit about your body or your modesty.” She walked over, shoved the dress into my arms. Layers of gauzy silk puffed against my chest. “Try it on.”
“Why?” I demanded. “So you can tell me to take it off and then kick me out in my knickers? Or, better yet, tell me I may borrow it and then accuse me of stealing it?”
“No,” she said, flat again. “I want you to wear it to the tea.”
“Why?” I wasn’t going to play her game, not without proper answers.
“Because Chloe will be there. And I want to make her as miserable as I possibly can.”
My arms dropped. The silver dress felt light as paper in my grip.
“She’s my sister,” Sophia said. “Didn’t you know? Stepsister, actually. Her mother wed my father four years ago.”
“You hate her,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
“You’ve no idea.”
“How will me in this make Chloe miserable?”
“Anything that drags attention away from Chloe makes Chloe miserable.”
The lamplight flickering on Sophia’s desk behind her burned a halo around her pale hair. She gazed at me bright and hard, an unlikely angel in a schoolgirl’s shape.
I lifted a shoulder. “Fair enough. I’ll wear the dress.”
Her distant smile returned. “Good.”
• • •
The route back to my tower lay thick with night. I knew the way well enough now not to need illumination. My feet took me where I needed to go.
Sophia’s dress was a silken veil across my arms. It tugged at the shadows behind me, murmuring to the dark as I climbed.
My door was closed, as I’d left it. But there was something at the base of it. Something new.
It was a box. A small one, cardboard, unadorned. I picked it up and felt a weight sliding around inside, singing as it moved.
By the light of my window I pried open the box to find a circlet of tiny roses made of solid gold, perfect as true life, attached to a pin.
It was a brooch.
A message had been written on the inside lid. It read: For your tea. And I didn’t come in.
Chapter 12
Tranquility at Idylling was surely the largest, oddest house ever graced with the word tranquil in its name. It was much newer than the usual aristocratic manor homes that dotted the English countryside; a sprawling, five-story wonder of limestone and stained glass and spires commissioned by the present Duke of Idylling after he’d decided to remove his family from Iverson Castle fifteen years before.
In fifteen years, it had not been finished.
Walking through its halls, it was easy to imagine that it never would be.
Even on that day, the day of my first visit to the house, I was struck by its strange and awful beauty. It seemed a construction of elaborate nonsense, of inspiration and madness combined. Rounding each new corner was a lesson in surprise; it was always wise to glance both up and down before committing to the next step.
Up, to see if you were about to be concussed by a stray bit of pipe or scaffolding.
Down, to make certain the floor didn’t suddenly end.