“You’ve got flour in your hair,” I say.
She wipes it away, leaving a streak of white across her face.
I gesture at the rising dough by the hearth. “You’re going to bury us in brioche.”
“Poor Bram, then he’d have to die alone.”
The reminder of his immortality always makes me feel sick, but I laugh anyway because it’s Olive, and she smiles so big when I do.
I lean my elbow on the counter. “Be honest, do I look ridiculous?”
Olive taps flour out over the butcher-block counter as she considers. “You look like a very fancy dog.”
“Rude!”
“I said a fancy one!” She wipes her hands on her apron. “Come here.” She cranks the spout and wets a towel to run over the front pieces of my hair, smoothing out the horrible curls. She then rearranges the pins. “Much better.”
There’s a knock on the front door, and together we run to get it. Bram has come alone, wearing a burgundy waistcoat, his cravat in a ruffle, his face as perfect as always. He bows his head at us. “Lady Ito, you look lovely.”
“I did her hair!” Olive exclaims, but I’ve already slammed the door behind us.
He leads me up a path, along the gentle hill that winds around the palace. “I hope you don’t mind I’ve arranged for dinner in the orangery tonight.”
I’m startled by the sound of footsteps behind us and turn to see an old woman in a horribly out-of-fashion dress following us.
“Our chaperone for the evening,” Bram explains. “I am committed to propriety, but thought you might like to be rid of Bolingbroke for the evening. The Countess of Tribley is one of my school chum’s great-aunts. She’s really good fun, a hell of a cardplayer, but half-deaf, so I figured she’d do perfectly well.”
I laugh and wave to the old woman, who waves back.
The orangery is covered in one thousand votive candles that flicker against the glass walls in the dark.
There’s a table set with candlesticks, silver, and a white tablecloth under one of the orange trees. I’m not one for grand gestures, but it really is lovely, even I have to admit.
Countess Tribley takes an armchair in the corner and pulls out her knitting.
Bram is an attentive listener. He asks all the right questions. How many siblings (four brothers, I’m right in the middle). My interests (reading, the pianoforte, painting). What my hopes for the future are (travel).
“Travel?” He looks taken aback. “Like, to the sea?”
“Across it,” I answer too boldly.
I never wanted to marry, not like the other girls. It’s ironic, I suppose, that my great-grandparents risked everything crossing an ocean to come to this country and I’ve spent my whole life longing to leave it. I was never going to be able to do that with a husband by my side and an estate to run.
I didn’t plan on being a wife. I planned on being a painter, or a pirate, or a poet.
That’s the thing about girls like Marion and me, who were raised on stories about lands ruled by humans and not by a faerie queen. We know just how wide the rest of the world is.
I should have ducked out of the May Queen competition early, but as usual, my pride got the best of me. I spotted my father in the audience and remembered the lecture he’d given me over and over again in my youth.Whatever you do, try your best.It would have broken his heart to see me fail on purpose, and he would have been able to tell. I know he would have.
Bram’s face lights up. “I’ve seen so little of the human world. I dream of seeing more.”
I’m surprised to hear him say something in direct contradiction to his mother’s strict isolationist policies.
I tell him what my grandparents said about Kyoto, the winding streets and damp, hot summers. He’s alarmingly pretty as he listens, his perfect jawline cradled in his hand.
When I’m finished, he gestures at the beaded handbag I placed on the table.
“What’s in there?” he asks.
