“But you were forced to marry Miss Trelayne,” remarked Imogene.
Oh, Imogene, thought Drew.We can always count on you, can’t we?
“Iwasforced to marry her, Imogene, and who’s fault was that?” said Lachlan.
Drew frowned, not caring for this answer.
“But we all ratherlikeMiss Trelayne, don’t we? Or Drewsmina, as I believe she should be called,” he said. “A crucial part of moving on is making improvements to yourself so you may rise up, better than before. Also, allowing yourself to seek help. From others. Miss Trelayne is here to help all of us rise up.”
“If I might cut in,” said Drew, “I should like to add something from my own life—an experience where I was, in a way, broken and beaten and yet here I am. I lived to tell the tale.”
“Oh yes, your horrid mother,” enthused Ivy, ready for another story.
“Well, yes, she plays a role in it. But remember after the dressmaker’s shop, when I told you I’d had a friendship with a man of whom I was very fond, but he was too poor and inconsequential for my mother to accept, and she had him sent away?”
“Oh yes, the man who would not kiss you,” said Imogene.
“Yes.” Drew cleared her throat. “I should like to point out that he had many other fine qualities.”
“Uncle subscribes to a different brand of courtship,” put in Imogene.
“Imogene,enough,” said Lachlan.
“What I was going to say,” Drew said, feeling her cheeks redden, “is that after this man was relocated to the other side of the world, I was so heartbroken, so despairing, that I entered a very dark sort of... mindset. For many weeks I felt an inescapable hopelessness. And it was only in this... midnight of my life, that my stepsister, Cynde—the very princess we came here to see—sent me a note and then sought me out. From the moment she learned of my heartbreak, she showed me great understanding and kindness, and she was an attentive friend to me until I could feel lightness again. We have been so very close ever since. And our friendship—which is among the greatest gifts of my life—would not have happened if I’d not been so very wretched from heartbreak.”
“But why not, if she was your sister, after all?” asked Imogene.
“Well, because I’d been terrible to her, hadn’t I? I didn’t evenlikeher. My mother had taught me that lovely people deserved nothing but resentment and suspicion. Honestly, before my heartbreak, there was little room for any friend in my life; I was too wrapped up in my own... my own self.
“Being broken, in contrast, has made me able to see others—to see myself, first and foremost, and sort out all the bits I didn’t like. That heartbreak also made me able to see girls like the two of you. And I’m ever so grateful. Can you see? You may be uncomfortable and uncertain now, but eventually you’ll be grateful for the times you were not on the tip-top of the world.”
“I shall never be grateful for T.O.E.,” said Imogene.
“No and well you shouldn’t,” said Lachlan. “Let us call aspade a spade. However, I believe what Drewsmina means is that your challenging slog to normalcy will have unexpected rewards and . . . it willfortifyyou in a way. Other debutantes may seem graceful and gilded, but you are strong. And how much better strength will serve you than guild... or even grace.”
Drew was nodding, looking at each of them, hoping they understood. They stared back, a little less enrapt by her story than the torches and riots of their uncle’s.
“But do you see?” Drew asked hopefully.
“Perhaps if you’d allowed your ‘friend’ to kiss you,” volunteered Imogene, “he might have fought harder to remain.”
“Thank you, Imogene. I think, perhaps, youhavemissed my point,” mused Drew.
And now everyone laughed, as she’d hoped they would.
“What I mean to say is this,” she finished, “ourfailureis what allows us to grow up and improve. If everything in life floats along swimmingly, we rarely bother to make alterations, to invite new people into our lives, to make adaptations and overcome.”
“But why did Princess Cynde help you?” asked Ivy. “If you had been so very dreadful to her?”
Drew shrugged. “Cynde is one of those people in whom compassion and kindness simply...dwell. She is as good and true as my mother is spiteful and disloyal. If you’re very lucky, you’ll have the occasion to encounter someone like that in your life. You may be that person, and you do not even know it.”
“I am not that person,” declared Imogene.
“Keen observation,” said Lachlan.
“I can say that Cynde has had her own terrible heartbreak, and perhaps that is what made her so very kind. We should ask her. Not today of course, but the next time she is in Pollen Street.”
“But have we missed our audience today?” asked Imogene.
