“I know, dearest.”
She glanced frantically around the room: upturned dresses and discarded, half-finished embroidery projects and, on the floor, near the bed, a pair of stockings, inside out. “I have nothing ready—I can’t possibly be ready.”
“They’re already here.” I went back over to the window. The carriage was making slow progress. The only advantage of an estate that hadn’t been well maintained was that our potholes would buy us a few precious minutes. Still, I felt my breath hitch. “I need to go wake your sister. Hurry.”
She let out a chirp of despair.
Unlike her sister, Mathilde slept with the curtains pulled shut, each beam of errant light unwelcome. I strode straight to the windows and pulled back the thick drapes, coughing from the dust.
“Please get up.” I nearly tripped on a potted fern. “My goodness, you keep it so dark.” I peered around in the dim light: The silk-covered walls had begun to peel in the corners. A small table where Mathilde did her letters was piled with books. In bed, beside her, I saw there were more—volumes placed at haphazard angles. “I don’t even know how you can see in here.”
“It helps me sleep.” She stared at me from the bed, eyes alert. “I heard the carriage.”
“Then you know to hurry,” I urged, because she still hadn’t moved.Avoid raising your voice unnecessarily, Agatha said.
“Mama—” my daughter called. I paused at the door, turning back. Mathilde gestured toward my ankles and mud-covered boots.
“Oh, by God’s bones.” I sighed. “Wake Elin if you have time, butonly if you have time. I want you in the hall when they knock on the door.”
In the end, I couldn’t change my boots, or wash off the mud, but I did put on a new skirt, one that puddled on the floor and covered my mess. If I had peered into a looking glass, I was certain I would have seen a disheveled sight: hair escaping in pieces, chest flushed from running. My extra minutes had been devoted to my girls, and when they assembled behind me on the stairwell, I was relieved to see them dressed and ready, in contrasting gray and yellow silk.
At first glance, my daughters looked alike—tall and big-limbed with long dark hair. Mathilde was more beautiful. She had gray eyes and a dusting of freckles and an imperious nature that lent itself to a sense of mystery—or at least an ingrained sense of hierarchy. If she lacked warmth, I told myself it was because she was older, and had seen more, and her nature was to observe and absorb. She was more helpful to me, able to see what needed to be said or done and do it without my bidding. But there was a hardness in her that I assumed had come from a hardness in me, as if she had been carved out of the same material I was made of when she’d formed herself in the womb.
Rosie had her father’s aquiline nose, and a broadness to her face that she balanced with elaborate updos and extra rouge. But if she lacked her sister’s natural graces, she more than made up for it with charm. She was happy and flirtatious and embraced all the frippery that Mathilde resisted. She had perfected the art of being a woman. My father would not have recognized her tools, but she wielded them with prowess.
Any mother who tells you she loves all her children—or appraises them—equally is lying. There is no way to measure or balance love. Love is an animal of its own bidding and inclination; it prowls and pounces and feels; it grows and it hurts and it withers. My love for the girls wasranging and reaching. It assessed them because assessment was a part of protection. It saw their differences, because to ignore them would be to love them less. The love of a mother does away with scales and measurement altogether; it envelops and understands and embraces what is cracked along with what is beautiful.
We arranged ourselves in the entry hall. Alice—as angular and tall and thin as a board—came in and stood beside Wenthelen. I was relieved to see that she, too, had put on a clean apron and covered her hair. I waited on the middle stair and Mathilde and Rosie stood behind me in birth order. I could feel their breathless bodies when the knock came.
Our front door was tall and wide and heavy. The hinges screamed when Wenthelen swung the giant panel open. The royal messenger stood on the other side of the threshold, and behind him, a page. The footman, muddy from his exertions, remained beside the carriage.
“Lady Bramley,” Alice announced, and stepped aside.
“Good day,” the messenger said, and I returned the greeting.
“I bid you welcome.” I gestured for him to come inside. He stepped up and over the stone at our doorstep and looked around the entry hall.
When our home was built, however many years before—and it had been built at various intervals, so each part of the house dated to a different time, like an ever-growing creature that, across decades, sprouted new appendages—the entry hall had been given the greatest attention. Above the beams that crossed over our heads, there was an intricate, if now faded, mural. The walls were covered with tapestries that started at the roofline and touched the floor—showpieces that we were able to maintain, thanks to Rosie’s prowess. At one time, the room would have been filled with a house of people standing in order. What we lacked now in staff, we made up for with candlesticks and rugs; we’d emptied other rooms of the house so that the entry could remain opulent.
The messenger cleared his throat. “I am a messenger of His Royal Highness, the king.”
“We are humbled by the honor of your visit,” I replied.
The page—a petite boy of no more than twelve—raised a small horn and blew it, the noise shrill and echoing in the hall. From inside his tunic, the messenger withdrew a scroll and spent a moment picking at the reluctant knot.
Rosie tried to stifle a nervous snigger behind me, and the messenger looked up sharply. She bit her lip and we waited in silence until he loosened the ribbon and undid the tie. Before reading, he looked around, eyes sliding over Wenthelen and Alice, pausing on me and then on each daughter, before continuing around the room, taking inventory.
Finally, he held out his scroll, though he spoke without looking at it. “On behalf of His Royal Highness, I come to your home this day to invite you to attend a celebration of the prince’s name day. Festivities will begin at sundown on the twenty-seventh day of this month.” He loosely rebound the paper, indicating he’d finished.
I nodded, feeling echoes of the same relief and apprehension that the carriage had stirred earlier. “We thank you kindly.” Behind me, my daughters dipped and curtsied, echoing my platitude. “The roads are hard, and the day is long. May we offer a moment of respite?” I swept my hand behind me, toward the hall, as if there were a table of tiered platters of food, cakes, and candies on display, just past the doorway. Wenthelen froze, at the edge of the entry, terrified the messenger would call my bluff. We had cider. We had oat biscuits. A stew fit for a peasant. A dead rabbit. That was all we had. I steadied my breath.
The messenger replaced the scroll back in his tunic and shook his head. “There are many households to visit.”
I worked to keep the relief from my face. “May your journey continue safely.”
But the uniformed man then pulled a different paper from his pocket and consulted it. “The invitation is extended to the honorable Elin of Bramley and her guardian, Lady Etheldreda Bramley.”
Behind me, I heard Rosamund and Mathilde suck in air.A steady and even tempo, said Agatha in my head.Remain calm, keep the chin high.“I can confirm that the invitation has reached the home of Elinof Bramley,” I said. “But we have more than one woman of age in the household.”
