Matilda patted Hazel’s shoulder. “We mean it. We will keep an eye out.”
Evelyn nodded. “We will fetch them and keep them out of trouble if we see anything suspicious.”
Hazel inhaled, trying to calm the pounding of her heart. “Thank you,” she murmured. “But I still think none of you grasp how effortlessly mischievous they can be.”
Cordelia looped an arm around Hazel’s shoulders. “Oh, we grasp it. We simply choose to have faith.”
Hazel blinked up at her. “Well, that makes one of us.”
Matilda stepped closer, her calm presence a soothing contrast to Cordelia’s buoyant energy and Evelyn’s soft concern. She laid a gentle hand on Hazel’s forearm.
“Hazel,” she said quietly, “you know I adore your sisters. But… have you ever considered that perhaps they act up because you hold such a tight rein on them?”
Hazel stiffened. “I do not hold a tight rein.”
Evelyn made a delicate sound of disagreement, and Cordelia laughed into her fan.
Hazel glared at both of them. “I simply keep them from disaster. You know, like I’ve always done?”
Matilda nodded with sympathy. “Yes. And we all appreciate your… remarkable skill in doing so. But they are still young. When you press too hard, they push back twice as much. It’s their nature.”
Hazel frowned, looking across the ballroom again for any sign of the girls. Nothing.
Matilda continued. “And Hazel, dear… you are married now.”
The words hit Hazel with strange force.
“You are a duchess,” Matilda said gently. “You have a new life, new duties, a new household to oversee. Your sisters are no longer your responsibility in the same way.”
Cordelia nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly! They’re old enough to get into trouble and old enough to getoutof it.”
Hazel crossed her arms. “You don’t know them as I do.”
Evelyn smiled knowingly. “Hazel, all younger siblings cause chaos. It is their nature and in a way, their art form.”
Hazel tried to let her friends’ words sink in because all of it was true. Her duties had shifted. Her life had changed. Her role in her family had transformed the moment she saidI do.
She understood all of that. She even agreed with it, and yet that unease twisted in her stomach in the guise of tension she had lived with for years.
“If I let go,” Hazel murmured, “everything falls apart.”
“Hazel, you’ve been holding everything together for so long, you don’t remember how to let others try.” Matilda smiled at her.
Hazel sighed.
Cordelia squeezed her hand. “Maybe it’s time.”
Hazel wanted to believe them. She wanted to step into her new role with grace. She wanted to trust that the world wouldn’t crumble the moment she stopped bracing herself against it.
Yet, she couldn’t shake the prickling unease beneath her ribs that somewhere on these very grounds, her sisters were brewing chaos like alchemists in training.
Perhaps Matilda is right. Perhaps I need to release my grip.
But Hazel’s instincts whispered that it was not the time for that yet, not when everything else in her life was changing so abruptly.
She forced a small smile. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said softly. “But I still can’t help feeling that something is… not right.”
Cordelia’s eyes widened. “Oh! We should check the refreshments. Or the orchestra. Or?—”
