“Would you like to brush my hair?”
Amelia leapt off the bed. “Yes, please. How did you know?”
Eleanor rose from the bed and grabbed her brush from the dressing-table. “Oh, a lucky guess. Mind the pins. There are about a thousand of them, and you’ll have to get them all out or else they’ll become tangled in my hair while I sleep.”
Amelia dragged the pillows from the bed and plopped them onto the floor in front of the fire. “I will. Will you sit here?”
Eleanor settled onto the rug, pulled her knees up and hugged them with her arms.
Amelia began to pluck the pins from her hair, one by one. “You were about to tell me about when you and Lady Charlotte were girls.”
“That’s right. I was. Let me see.” Eleanor tapped her fingers against her legs. “We learned to ride together. There’s a lovely wood on the grounds at Bellwood, our home in Kent, and we used to ride there and pick bluebells.”
Pluck. “Did your papa teach you to ride?”
Hardly. “No, our brother Alec taught us—me and Charlotte, and our other brother, Robyn.”
Amelia dropped a handful of hairpins on the floor next to Eleanor. “Uncle Julian taught me. Uncles and older brothers are quite as nice as younger sisters, I think.”
“They are, rather.”
They both fell silent for moment to consider the merits of uncles and older brothers, then Eleanor said, “I hate to say it, but Charlotte was a naughty child, just like the Mowbray sisters. She was always the first to dirty her frock, or race Robyn on her horse, or climb to the top of the oak tree so she could peer into the governess’s window on the third floor.”
Amelia paused her rhythmic strokes to consider this. “She does sound naughty.”
“Oh, she was. Once she even climbed the tree at night and scratched at Miss Lettings’ window until the poor old thing heard her at last, then nearly had an apoplexy to find Charlotte’s face leering at her through the glass.”
Amelia dropped another handful of pins on top of the mound on the floor. “There, that’s all of them, I think. Was Miss Lettings your governess?”
Eleanor breathed a sigh of relief as the last cursed hairpin slid free and her hair tumbled down her back. “Yes. One of many, I’m afraid. She left soon after that, which was, of course, what Charlotte wanted all along.”
“Oh, my. I suppose Charlotte was punished?”
Ellie’s smile faded. “That time she was.” By their father, who’d been livid to find he was to be put to the inconvenience of securing another governess for his daughters.
“But not every time?”
“Not as often as you’d think. Certainly not as often as she deserved.”
Amelia gathered a thick lock of hair in her fingers to work through a knot. “Why not?”
Ellie didn’t answer at once, but closed her eyes and let Amelia pull the knots from her hair.
Because I made sure of it.
She was still making sure of it, even now. “She didn’t often get caught. I was usually the only witness to her crimes, and I never told.”
Amelia’s small fingers plucked at the knot until she’d worked through it, then she picked up the brush again. “I suppose you were naughty yourself, and didn’t want her to tell on you.”
Eleanor turned her head to the side so Amelia could brush the hair by her ear. She’d been as naughty as Charlotte, but in a different way. Even as a child, she’d been careful to pull the strings from behind the curtain. “I was as bad as Charlotte was, but that’s not the reason I didn’t tell.”
“Why, then?”
Eleanor clasped Amelia’s wrist and drew the child around to stand in front of her. “Because sisters protect each other, Amelia.”
“But what if your sister did something terrible, and you were very angry with her?”
Eleanor shook her head. “Sisters do not turn their backs on each other, no matter what.”
