Sigrid covered a look of momentary consternation—she had not known we knew her son—gratifying my hurt pride. But the small satisfaction was somewhat nullified when the queen put a hand on theprince’s arm. It was an intimate gesture, the worrying, rubbing grasp of a mother—the unconscious bid to secure your child to you, to confirm them, to feel them. What devotion could be communicated in such small friction. It was my first moment of viewing them side by side, and understanding, more instinctively and less rationally, the extent of their connection. They looked so alike. That yellow hair. The same curved pull at their lips. A question started to form in my mind, an uneasy prickle, but the prince shrugged his mother away and sauntered two steps toward us before I had a moment to examine my feelings. “Splendid of you to come,” he said, stopping in front of Rosie.
She looked back to me, as if for confirmation, face aglow. “Your Highness,” she replied, turning.
He gestured toward the ballroom doors. “I just have to finish all this”—a wave of a hand in the air, insouciant and suggestive of plenary and oppressive duty—“and then we will dance.”
We, he had said. A promise. A delightful, fat little promise that offered the possibility of an entire kingdom. I couldn’t meet Sigrid’s eyes, for I did not want to see anything on her face that denied it.
The attendant had ushered in another girl behind us, and we took our cue to step forward. Rosie and Mathilde kneeled. Sigrid held out two gloved hands and they kissed her knuckles. I was distracted from the discomfort of this—my daughters, kneeling, before Sigrid—because I noticed her glove did not have an empty finger. It must have been stuffed with cotton. A small vanity reminiscent of a lace ribbon tied to a blood-spotted bandage.
It was all over quickly. We were soon backing from the room, making way for the next round of girls in feathers, pushed along like jewels on a strand, the great moment behind us.
My daughters’ eyes widened as they took in the ballroom. Skirts made from every manner of silk and brocade swirled and swayed across the dance floor. Sumptuous drapes partially shrouded an entirewall of enormous windows. Oversized mirrors reflected countless chandeliers and sprays of flowers. Silver and crystal-laden banquettes supported towers of exotic sugared fruits and spherical pastries. Wealth had been measured and displayed in every manner of sugar and glass.
“The music!” Rosamund clapped her hands. Her curled hair sat in a luxurious pile on her head, escaping tendrils prettily framing her beaming face. She looked with delight at the orchestra playing at the other end of the room.
“There is so much food.” Mathilde surveyed the banquettes. “Without there being much to actually eat.” Along the edges of the dance floor, tables were covered in cascading bowls of punch and molded blancmange and goblets of mulled wine. Tureens of white soup—punch made from veal broth, cream, and ground almonds—steamed beside jellies and sweetmeats and platters of small biscuits and light wafers.
“Do not eat the prawns,” I told them, eyeing the towers of shrimp. “If you must use the facilities, make sure you are accompanied at all times. And do not drink too much punch. You must not dance with unknown men. But do not refuse a dance if you are asked. Try not to be a wallflower. Avoid dark-colored liquids for the sake of your dresses. And I know it is your first ball, buttrynot to look gobsmacked, Rosie. And try to show some felicity, Mathilde.”
“But I am gobsmacked,” Rosie whispered, the light of a hundred chandeliers reflecting in her eyes.
“And it is hard to feel felicitous when you have persistently emphasized the great import of this evening,” Mathilde accused me.
“Then pretend. Obviously.” I widened my eyes back at them. “You must be presentable.”
“Yes, Mama,” Rosie said.
Mathilde put a pretty smile on her face. “Had I been aware that being presentable entailed diminishing one’s sentiments to the point of insignificance… perchance I would have refrained from harboring any at all.”
“Oh, hush,” I snapped, for Lavinia had spotted us and was makingher way over, daughters in tow. “And do not dance with just anyone, for your evening will get full and you won’t be able to accept a dance with the prince.”
“You have told us both to dance and not to dance, to avoid men and to accept them.” Mathilde counted these instructions off on her fingers.
Rosie interrupted her, tugging on my sleeve plaintively, like a small girl. “Do you really think the prince will dance with me?”
“I think you have reason enough to hope for a dance—with him and any other eligible man.”
We waited as Lavinia closed the final few yards between us. “Well, that was quite an ordeal,” she exclaimed, fanning herself. “So many young women waiting in the antechamber! Girls, sure, but how about us mothers? Nowhere to sit and not a chair in sight. My knees were just screaming.”
Bouncing on her toes, she continued: “But it went well. It went well. Did it not go well, Beth?” She tossed a glance over her shoulder at the twins. “I hope your girls fared as well as mine. The prince was not in the receiving room, but I do think the queen noticed them. Or at least noticed the pompons they wear in their hair, for I had the queen’s own coiffeur fashion them.” She turned to survey the room. “Good heavens, what a scene. No expense spared; you can see for yourself.”
Addressing her daughters, she began to gesticulate toward the dancing. “Girls, girls. Beth. Take a turn around the room so that people might admire your figures.”
The twins glanced at one another, alarmed.
“Go on, go on. Beth, go!” Lavinia began a shooing motion with her fan, the feathers quivering.
Rosamund stepped forward, offering her arm to one of them. “Come with me. I’ll join you.” Bethia—Bethesda?—looked up at her gratefully.
Mathilde looked at the other twin, resigned. “Come along, then.”
The first twin—Bethesda, I had decided—leaned toward Rosie, nodding down at her dress. “Such delicate needlework. You must share your seamstress.”
“Why, thank you! I made—” Rosie caught my look and stopped herself short. “I am ever so appreciative.” She glanced back and forth between the twins. “Yours—both of yours—are… the height of refinement.”
Lavinia nodded, satisfied. But, a moment later, watching her daughters’ pompons disappear into the crowd, she leaned in to my side and whispered: “If you call them both Beth, you never need tell them apart.”
The dancing continued as the number of people in the ballroom swelled. So many young women. So many best dresses and herb-filled baths and rouged cheeks and cinched waists and dance lessons. A while later, when the prince had finished receiving, I could feel the hope in the room crescendo, every person waiting to see what would happen. The room did not hush, or quiet, when he appeared, but rather increased in its intense energy, the music picking up speed, the awareness of every person finely tuned to his royal presence. And so it was under the watchful eyes of an entire ball of people that the prince strode over to one of the banquettes and began to eat goose liver tart.
