I poked my embroidery with the needle. My flowers looked like shrimp on green sticks.
I had never been good at embroidery. I had never been good at anything except causing trouble, as my stepmother told me countless times. A part of me knew it was true and was ashamed of it.
Dread churned in my gut at the thought of Genevieve married or painting landscapes for wealthy ladies in a foreign country. I would be all alone, left for Lydia to throw at every possible suitor. Papa was rarely home. He would not be there to stop it.
Lydia finally stopped pacing. “I know. You will attend the Season.”
I pricked myself with the needle. “What?”
“Yes. You will attend with Genevieve,” Lydia said, punctuating her sentence with a nod. “Duchess Wilhelmina is hosting the Season this year. I don’t expect you to be her favorite, not after you destroyed her gift to Julianna. But it will do you good to have a strict mentor and well-mannered peers. All the better if you find a young man willing to marry you.”
I sputtered at the prospect. “But stepmother, I’m much too young to attend—”
“Nonsense! You will be seventeen in three months. What better age to come out?” she said. “The welcome banquet for debutantes is in a week. That is plenty of time to send your name to the palace.”
There was a spring in her step as she headed out the parlor, humming to herself.
A drop of blood soaked into my embroidery, but I could only stare at Lydia’s retreating figure.
Me? A debutante?
––––––––
“IT’S ALL JULIANNA’Sfault!” I said, fuming as Theodora helped me into my nightgown.
Despite being a house away, Julianna’s operatic singing reverberated through my walls. I had learned to tolerate her singing lessons for the past twelve years, but tonight I found her voice especially irritating as she went up and down the scale.
Rowena fluffed my pillow. “It’s partly your fault too,” she said, tucking a stray curl into her bonnet. “Freshly fertilized dirt in tea? Honestly, Amarante. You’re depriving my rose bushes.”
Theodora began combing my hair. The scent of this morning’s raspberry tarts lingered on her apron. Both of them had shirked their duties in the kitchen and garden to see me to bed for the past two days. They usually did when I was upset or in trouble, or both. I was immensely grateful. There was comfort in Theodora’s steady hands and Rowena’s jokes. It reminded me of my childhood, when the two had been my nannies.
“Your stepmother never goes through with her punishments,” Theodora said, meeting my eye in the mirror.
“She seems serious this time.” I slumped my shoulders, brushing a speck of dust off my vanity.
“Don’t fret, dear,” she said. “You’re too young to attend.”
I shook my head. “I’m turning seventeen in three months.”
Theodora dropped the comb with a clack. “What?”
I repeated myself.
Rowena sucked in a breath. “Seventeen? Already?”
The two of them exchanged a glance. Julianna hit the highest note of the scale and held it with a strong vibrato.
“Exactly. Iamold enough to attend.” I hopped onto my bed and sunk into the freshly fluffed pillows with a sigh. “If only Papa were here.”
Papa always prevented my punishments, like the time he stopped Lydia from shipping me off to a boarding school for troubled young ladies. But even boarding school seemed tame compared to the Season. Attending would mean passing the threshold from girlhood to womanhood. And there was no going back after that.
“Yes, of course!” Theodora exclaimed, pacing the room with sudden energy. “We will write to him immediately.”
Rowena nodded. “Not a moment to lose.” She gave the bedsheets one final tug and kissed the top of my head. “Sleep tight, dear.”
With that, she exited my room just as Julianna began practicing her trills.
I gave Theodora a questioning look. She, however, was too busy pacing to respond.
