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“I could have done the job for you, Lady Steph,” she said quietly into Stephanie’s ear. “But I would be afraid of not getting it cut even. If the left side ended up shorter than the right, then I would have to cut the right side a bit higher. But I might cut it too high, and then I would have to cut some off the left side.”

Her efforts to speak unheard by anyone except Stephanie herself were in vain. Everyone’s attention was fixed upon the show being enacted before them.

“And it would end up so short it would scarcely cover your ears,” Lady Molenor said.

Maria half shrieked and Katy giggled.

“It would be a crime,” the dowager duchess said. “You would be clapped in irons, Hetty, and dragged off to the deepest dungeon.”

“Are there dungeons at Redcliffe?” Lady Molenor asked.

“There are not,” Estelle said. “You are quite safe, Hetty. Besides, you were explaining why you would not cut Stephanie’s hair.”

The Marchioness of Dorchester’s maid, standing to one side of the dressing table, her hands folded neatly at her waist, said nothing.

It had all started at the breakfast table when Mama, thinking, as Hetty just had, that she was speaking softly enough to be unheard by anyone else but the marchioness beside her, asked if there was by chance a hairdresser in the village. The marchioness had replied somewhat less softly.

“My maid is very skilled with the scissors,” she said. “I must confess that I never seek out a professional hairdresser. I did not do it even when Marcel and I were in London during the spring. What is your need, Clarissa?”

By that time every ear about the table—every female ear, anyway—was alert.

“I would like to have my hair cut,” Stephanie said, though it was a blatant lie. She would like no such thing. She had lain awake half the night dithering and nauseated and almost weeping again.

There was a chorus of protests from about the table and even from one of the men.

“What?” Mr. André Lamarr said. “You would cut off your crowning glory, Stephanie? Do not do it.”

“Just a few inches,” she said. “Dry ends.” Ends that had been drying out since she was nine years old. “Thank you, Lady Dorchester. May I speak to your maid and ask if she is willing to do it for me?”

“It is a wet day,” Lady Dirkson said with a glance at the window. “There is nothing to do but share old gossip in the drawing room. May my sisters and I come to watch, Stephanie, if Viola’s maid can be persuaded to do the job this morning?”

“I must confess to a curiosity to see just how long your hair is,” the Dowager Duchess of Netherby said.

“I feel the same way, Aunt Louise,” Estelle said, her eyes twinkling at Stephanie. “Would it be a terrible imposition if I came too?”

The upshot was, of course, that all the ladies came. And somehow Katy found out and came too with her mother.

“Goodness,” Lady Dirkson said. “Your hair really does need trimming, Stephanie. It will be far livelier afterward and still very long. You will be happy to be rid of all the dead stuff.”

Stephanie closed her eyes and then spread her hands over her face.

“What have I said?” Lady Dirkson said, sounding genuinely concerned. “I was not insulting you, my dear. It is in the nature of hair that it must be trimmed at least every year or so. When was yours cut last?”

Stephanie lowered her hands. “I cannot even remember,” she said. “When I was seven or eight, perhaps.”

“What?” There was what seemed like a collective gasp from everyone in the room.

She might as well explain. “My father admired my hair on the night I had it up for the first time when I was nine,” she said. “It was the occasion I described to you, Katy, when I did your hair a few days ago. And he asked me to promise that I would never cut it. He died suddenly not so very long after, and I have never been able to bring myself to have my hair cut. It is silly, I know, but I thought it would seem I was cutting some of him away as well as breaking my promise. But I realized when I was talking with Mama last evening in the conservatory that he would not have meant the promise to be applied so literally. And the memory of him is not in my hair. It is in every part of me.”

The farce continued then. They all had to dash at her to hug her and assure her that of course she was right and her papa would not have intended any such interpretation of the promise she had made. More than a few handkerchiefs were dabbed surreptitiously at eyes, and Mama turned her back to the room for a while to gaze through the window.

“I would feel the same way if something happened to my papa, Lady Stephanie,” Katy said. “But your papa was right about your hair. I wish mine was even half as splendid.”

All attention swept Katy’s way, and she in turn was swamped with hugs and assurances that her hair was beautiful and probably the envy of all her friends. The marchioness’s maid in the meanwhile had stepped up behind Stephanie, scissors in hand.

“I think I am going to have to take off about five inches, my lady,” she said. “There will still be plenty left and it will be more beautiful than ever when it is dressed as usual.”

Stephanie smiled at her in the mirror and crossed all her fingers tightly in her lap as she concentrated upon controlling her breathing and not panicking.