Bram walks to the other side of her to help her to her feet.
“You must be the famous Lydia,” he says kindly, with a voice one might use to speak to a small child.
She looks up at him, as if only just now realizing he was there. There’s a moment of pause, and I’m racking my brain for something charming to say to defuse the situation, when Lydia clutches her stomach and retches all over Bram’s fancy shoes.
“Lydia!” I exclaim. Bram steps back in shock. Vomit splashes all over the gravel and onto the stars embroidered on the hem of my dress.
“Lady Benton, are you all right?” I don’t know which of us he’s asking. He pulls a handkerchief from his breast pocket and passes it to Lydia.
She doesn’t take it. Instead, she mutters, “I’m sorry. I’ll find Mama,” and runs off into the big house before either of us can stop her.
“I’m sorry about my sister—oh, and thank you for the book!” I call over my shoulder, but I’m so busy chasing her, I’m not sure if Bram hears me.
I race inside, near frantic with a sickening combination of humiliation and worry. The golden candlelight stings after the darkness from outside. My eyes burn with tears of embarrassment, and my mouth still aches, as if bruised by the kiss.
Bram doesn’t follow us, and I hardly blame him.
Back in the ballroom, the music swells like nothing has changed.Viscountess Bolingbroke still dozes in her wing chair, and the other five girls lean on the wall nearby in various states of boredom.
Marion looks on the verge of falling asleep herself; Olive swivels her head around the ballroom, giving her an air of quiet desperation; Emmy, Faith, and Greer have stolen a bottle of champagne and are giggling, barely disguising the sips they are taking behind their feather fans.
For a horrifying second it looks like Lydia is about to run directly through the center of the dance floor, where couples are spinning like tops. I’ve done so much work to rehabilitate my family, and this would undo it all.
But blessedly, she cuts left, to where my mother is lounging in a half circle of love seats with her friends. Lydia collapses into our shocked mother’s shoulder. I make it to them seconds later. Lydia is inconsolable, incoherent.
“Darling, what happened?” My mother isn’t asking Lydia, but me. Sweet Lydia, always given every benefit of the doubt by our parents. Of course my mother assumes it must have been my fault.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I say. “She humiliated me in front of Prince Bram, though.” I loathe the rage that rips through me, the concern I felt just seconds ago transforming into a familiar anger.
Lydia and I, always two sides of the same coin. Her hurt is spilled out onto the floor, messy in a way that demands it be witnessed. Mine, shoved so deep down, my steps are heavier with the weight of it.
Why can’t she suffer in a more palatable way? Why can’t she find a way to make her agony lovable, her pain marriageable, when I’m trying so hard?
Be prettier when you cry,the part of me I hate most wants to say to her.
Maybe this is the crux of my anger with Lydia. I am ready to marry a man I do not love to save our family. I am relieved that Lydia, the person I love most in the world, will be spared the same fate, yet I resent her for letting me do it all alone.
My mother hauls Lydia to her feet. “I’ll send a note tomorrow with news of your sister’s health. I’m sorry, sweet girl, she didn’t mean to do this.”
How could my mother know anything Lydia means to do, when I don’t think Lydia knows herself?
Lydia raises her tear-streaked, snotty face and meets my eye. “I didn’t mean to.”
She never means to. That’s the problem.
I love her too much to bear looking at her like this.
So exhausted by the turn in the night’s events, I walk out the door and to the carriages without an escort. If I get scolded by Viscountess Bolingbroke in the morning, so be it.
The carriage delivers me to the front of the palace, and I cut through the grounds to the cottage.
A parade of storm clouds has blown in, nearly blocking out the light of the moon and stars. I drag my heavy, beaded dress through the grass, trying to outrun the rain. The air smells of it; it won’t be long now.
I expect the cottage to be dark and quiet with the other girls still at the ball, but I startle at the sound of fabric moving through the grass.
From the corner of my vision a flash of movement makes me jump. For a split second I think it’s the other girls returning from the ball, but it’s not.
Queen Mor walks toward me, only a few dozen feet away, hersteps completely silent. Her pale skin is a near-ghostly pale blue in the moonlight, her dark hair loose around her shoulders.
