“You scared them away,” she said, motioning toward her window, which was open. She had scattered bits of seed and crumbs across the deep sill, and there were bird and mouse droppings across the stone.
“You know I like birds,” I said, carefully, not mentioning what we both thought: Lucy dined on little sparrows for supper. I gestured to the crumbs. “But we work so hard to keep the mice away, and here you are with welcome gifts.”
Elin saved the runts. The birds with the broken legs and the spiders in the corner. The injured and the left behind. But where she felt affinityor duty, I saw only patience for weakness. She might fuss over a bird with a bent wing, but she’d never deign to wring the neck or pluck the feathers from the capon she liked to eat for supper.
“I take it from my portion.” Settling her quill back into the inkpot, she nodded toward the picked-apart remains of the oat cake that sat beside her bed.
“Wenthelen wants you to eat your portion.” I waved a hand, dismissing her concern. “And if it were you that had made the oat cakes, perhaps you would not be so quick to share them with the rodents.” I had not come upstairs to talk to Elin about her creatures and critters, but it was often difficult not to get sidetracked by a worldview that felt so different from my own. Every chore Elin couldn’t manage to complete, by ineptitude or lassitude, was a yoke to be borne by another. As if reading my thoughts, Elin tucked her unblemished fingers—long, slender, and completely unfamiliar with the quern stone we used to turn grain to flour—into her lap. I glanced around at her chambers: Here she spent her morning thinking of poetry, practicing her penmanship, participating in the specific labor of being a lady, when, if I listened carefully, I could still hear the crank of Wenthelen’s mill.
I smoothed her bedsheet with a flat palm. “I came to talk to you about the ball.”
“Oh, yes.” She smiled, then hid her mouth behind a lifted hand. “The ball. It is a duty to partake in social gatherings from time to time, as it strengthens the bonds of community.”
“You might just say you’d like to go.” I snatched the sheet tight, trying to imagine her, innocent and senseless, navigating the rapidly changing social landscape that surrounded the palace. “Though I do not think you’d enjoy life in the court.”
She reached for her small booklet—the compendium of good behavior for young woman—as if it might offer some protection. The volume had once belonged to her mother and now seemed to perform the duty of an absent parent. “I would never imagine that the princewould be interested in me,” she said, modestly. Her finger agitated one of the pages.
“There will be plenty of eligible connections present besides the prince.”
Hope lit her features. “Then you will chaperone me?”
“If you go,” I said slowly, hoping she would understand, “then it will signal that you are ready to be an adult in the world. And if you are an adult in the world, then you will need to be one in this household.” I gathered myself. “Your attendance requires a dress with a train and feathers for your hair. I will ensure you have what you need, but I expect you to contribute to the expense—the considerable expense—of your going.”
Her nose wrinkled in distaste at the discussion of financial affairs. “Once I am married, I will have the means.”
“I cannot wait until then,” I exclaimed. “You’ll need to contribute— to participate—in the work it will entail in this household.” I wanted to speak with complete clarity, to ensure she understood, so I enunciated each word: “To help pay, you will collect the ashes from the fireplaces every morning and sell them to the rag-and-bone man, who will use them to make lye.”
Elin, already pale, blanched. The action was beneath our household, and, even in our squalor, beneath her station. “The ashes?” she echoed, faintly, drawing her feet inward.
“There are few places left to find extra coin.”
She fixed me with her blue eyes. “I cannot be perceived as a lady without truly embodying one.” She looked down at her thin hands, still placed delicately in her lap, as if they were already speckled with soot. “If I allow myself to coarsen, who would have me?”
I stiffened, preventing my own back from twisting on her behalf. “And if you do not collect the ashes, how will you get to the ball? I will advance you the fabric, and everything else, but you must do these things. For the sake of contribution and for the sake of this household.” I nodded to her little book. “You must find virtue in humility.”
She waited a moment, weighing, I think, all her desires. To go to the ball, to be a lady, to escape the life we all lived together, she would have to stoop to do the things she had thus far considered herself above. “All right,” she said with a nod that confirmed something to herself more than to me.
“Good,” I replied—satisfied, but not pleased, for already I knew that pennies from ashes would not be enough to cover the added expense. “I’ll see to getting you cloth and trimmings. You can finish in time if you apply yourself diligently.”
It was difficult not to add moreifs.Ifyou had ever learned to sew practical items instead of the samplers meant to demonstrate a young girl’s prowess.Ifyou were able to finish a useful project instead of just the useless litany of accomplishments meant to mark your own refinement.Ifyour father hadn’t needlessly spoiled you.
Elin widened her eyes as if she could hear my thoughts and turned to look out the window. The palace’s turrets were barely visible in the distance. “I used to dream about going to the castle. When I was little, my mother would go to balls. She’d be gone for days at a time.”
“Dreams do not bear the fruits of utility.” I made little effort to soften the edge in my voice. “You’d best focus on your work and figuring out that dress.”
But it wasn’t true. Dreams were what kept one alive. It was only that mine had already come true—and then disintegrated.
CHAPTER EIGHT
After Henry kissed me, my days did not feel expansive enough to contain all that I felt. If I had been eager to get outside to see him previously, the distraction—the pull—reached new heights. I could barely sleep. We rushed to meet one another as often as we were able, taking less care with our subterfuge. The proximity to having something I wanted only made me want it all the more.
Sigrid, convalescing, was easily forgotten. Any guilt I might have had about what had happened to her was overshadowed by my bliss with Henry. But a handful of days after the accident, we visited her.
Laid up on a daybed in her chambers, she sat propped against a pile of pillows. On her hand, she’d wrapped her stained bandage with a lace ribbon. Sigrid was not an easy patient. Covered in wasp stings, puffed and red and itching, she reprimanded her maidservants at every turn.
Made uncomfortable by such blatant snarking, I took a step closer to Henry. And Sigrid, asinine in some ways, but shrewd in all others, quickly saw that something had shifted between the two of us.
“You two are…” she observed. For a moment, there was no malice on her face, only surprise. I still take satisfaction in that surprise. Shedid not see me as a threat, or even someone to think about, until that moment. She soon recovered and offered one of her signature smiles. “I see you’ve made great use of my convalescence.”
