Madeline’s fingers curled around her reticule strap. “I cannot.”
“Why?” Tessa demanded, stepping closer, eyes narrowing. “Is it because you don’t want to look pretty?”
Madeline’s breath caught, because the question struck too close to wounds she kept buried.
“It is not that,” she said carefully, voice soft. “It is only… unnecessary.”
Tessa’s gaze sharpened with the strange, unchildlike perception that sometimes startled Madeline. “Are you scared?”
Madeline froze. Across the room, Wilhelm’s posture shifted slightly, as though he had heard more than he was meant to.
Madeline forced a smile that felt brittle. “Very well,” she said, because she could not bear to disappoint the child, because she could not bear to see her face fall. “If it will satisfy you.”
Tessa thrust the gown into her arms as though she had won a battle. “It will.”
Madeline retreated behind the changing screen, hands trembling faintly as she undressed. The fabric was cool when she pulled it over her head, sliding along her skin with a softness she was not used to wearing, and as she fastened it, she stared at herself in the mirror with a tightness in her chest that was not vanity but disbelief.
She looked… different. Revealed, as though she had been hiding herself under plain cloth for so long she had forgotten what it was to be seen. She stepped out.
Tessa gasped, then clapped her hands. “Oh!”
Madeline’s cheeks burned instantly. “Tessa?—”
“You look beautiful,” Tessa declared with utter certainty. “Like a princess, but not a silly one.”
Madeline swallowed hard, her heart pounding. She tried to laugh, tried to make it light. “It is lovely, but?—”
Her words faltered because Wilhelm had gone very still. He was staring at her with an intensity that made her skin prickle. His mouth was slightly parted, as though he had forgotten for a moment how to compose himself, and Madeline felt a rush of heat sweep through her so sudden and humiliating she almost stepped back automatically.
“Your Grace?” she managed, voice quieter than she intended.
Wilhelm blinked once, as though the sound of her voice pulled him back from some dangerous distance. His expression rearranged itself into control, but his eyes remained fixed on her, dark and unreadable.
“It suits you,” he said, and the restraint in his tone only made the words more intimate.
Madeline’s throat went tight. She tried to focus on Tessa instead, because Tessa felt safe and Wilhelm did not. “It is too much,” she murmured.
The modiste, who had been hovering nervously, stepped forward with a critical squint. “It is… pretty,” she said, and then her gaze dropped, lingering at Madeline’s waist with the same thoughtless scrutiny she had used on Tessa’s scars. “But it is too tight through the bodice. You have… filled it out.”
Madeline felt the remark land like a slap. Heat rushed to her face, sharp and immediate. Her hands flew instinctively toward her skirt as if she could smooth away humiliation, and she forced herself to smile even as her chest constricted.
“I will change,” she said quickly.
She stepped back behind the screen before anyone could see the sting in her eyes, before the shame could settle too deeply.
But Wilhelm’s voice cut through the air a moment later, low and deadly calm. “You will not speak to her that way.”
Silence. Madeline held her breath, fingers frozen on the buttons at her back.
The modiste stammered. “Your Grace, I did not mean?—”
“You did,” Wilhelm said. “You meant to criticize her body as though it were your right.”
“It was only a remark,” the modiste pleaded.
“It was an insult,” Wilhelm replied, each word placed carefully, like a weight dropped onto a scale. “And no one has the right to insult a member of my household.”
Madeline’s pulse thundered, as the words wrapped around her with warmth and fear at once.
