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It was the first thing anyone had said all day that Viola could hold without flinching. She turned it over and found it bore the weight.

“How long will you stay?” she asked. “With me, I mean. You have the twins, and Manion — ”

“Long enough to see you on your feet, and not a day before.” Hannah’s smile was warm, but something passed behind it — the children, the distance, the husband waiting in the country — and Viola understood that her sister’s being here at all was a thing borrowed against another life, and could not be borrowed forever. “We shall not think about that yet. For now you are not alone, and that is what matters. The rest we shall manage as it comes, the way one manages anything, by not looking too far down the road at once.”

Viola leaned her head against her sister’s shoulder, and for the first time since Mr. Braithwaite had read out those impossible words, the fear loosened enough to let her breathe.

“Tomorrow,” Hannah murmured, “we begin. Tonight you need only write to Papa, and sleep, if you can manage it.”

“And if I cannot?”

“Then you will lie awake being suddenly, scandalously rich, which is a far better class of sleeplessness than you are used to.” Hannah pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and rose to ring for fresh tea, the first having long gone cold between them. “Write your letter, dearest.”

* * *

Madame Lefebvre’s establishment lay behind a bow window of small, gleaming panes. The moment Viola stepped inside, the cold knot she had carried since the will was read began, against all expectation, to loosen.

It was a shop plainly meant for ladies who had never once asked the price of anything, and Viola felt the old impulse to apologize for taking up room in it. Bolts of silk stood stacked along the walls — celestial blue, primrose, a green the color of new beech leaves — and a long glass threw the whole bright room back at itself. Beside her, Hannah drew a breath of pure pleasure.

A small, dark-eyed woman came forward from the back of the shop, a tape measure looped about her neck. “Lady Manion. And this will be Miss Trent.” Madame Lefebvre dipped a curtsy and looked Viola over with a frank, kindly, professional eye. “Welcome, mademoiselle. We begin with the plates, I think, and see what will suit you, and then the silks.”

Viola had never in her life begun anything of the kind. The gowns she owned could be counted on one hand, and every one had been turned, let down, or made over from something of her mother’s. She had learned to set a sleeve and to coax a tired hem into looking less tired. She had never once stood in a room and been invited to choose.

“I should not know where to start,” she confessed.

“Then it is fortunate you have me.” Hannah gave her a warm, conspiratorial smile and drew her by the hand to the table where the fashion plates lay spread.

Madame turned the painted figures one by one. “This line is much worn this season: the high waist, the narrow skirt, the sleeve caught up so. It will become you, mademoiselle, with your height.” She set two plates aside. “A morning dress in the figured muslin to begin. Walking dresses. Two for the evening, and a riding habit, if mademoiselle rides.”

“She does, and we shall have the habit, and mayhap a third for the evening besides.” Hannah’s eyes were bright. “Oh, do not look so stricken, Viola. You are permitted to enjoy this. It is allowed.”

They came to the silks. Madame brought the bolts one at a time and laid them across Viola’s arm, that she might see each color against her skin. The blue, when it came, made even Viola pause: a soft cornflower blue, and in the long glass it warmed her face in a way she had not known cloth could do.

“Oh, that one.” Hannah’s whole face lit. “That one above all, Viola — it was made for you.”

Viola let her gaze travel the rows of silk and stopped, almost without meaning to, at a sprigged muslin the color of clotted cream. “That one is pretty,” she said, and then, hearing herself, half wished the words back.

But Hannah only beamed. “It is. Madame, the cream sprig as well.” She leaned to Viola’s ear. “There. That was you, choosing. It does not hurt, you see.”

Viola touched the cornflower silk, half afraid to do so. The bolt alone was worth more, she did not doubt, than every stitch she had ever owned together. The thought sobered her, as such thoughts always did, and her free hand went of its own accord to her pocket, to the small cool weight of her father’s watch chain. She had carried it every day since leaving home — a thing of no value, he had called it, a thing to pawn if she had need. She would sooner have parted with every bolt of silk in the room.

“Hannah,” she said, low, as Madame went to fetch the trimmings. “How is all this to be paid for?”

Her sister did not look up from the ribbons. “Leave the account to me, dearest.”

“But — ”

“Madame extends credit; it is how these things are done. The bills are settled at the quarter, not counted out in coin across the counter like a fishwife’s wages.” Hannah’s smile came easily, yet something in the swiftness of it made Viola wonder, for half a moment, what arrangement her sister had made, and with whom. Then Hannah held a length of silver ribbon to the cornflower, and the question slipped away. “There. Do you see?”

She did see. That was the dizzying thing. All her life, Viola had seen only what was wanting — the coal measured, the candles counted, the one good dress kept for best. Now there was a young woman in the glass, choosing cloth for gowns she had never dreamed she might own. Behind her stood a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, vast and not yet real. And ahead of her lay a future that no longer narrowed to a single quiet room in her father’s house.

She had never had choices before, and did not quite know what to do with them.

“You are thinking again,” Hannah said. “I always know. You go very still, the way you do when something has frightened you.”

“I am thinking that I do not know what I am to become.” Viola turned from the glass. “A month ago I knew it exactly. I was to keep house for Papa, and grow older, and be glad of it. There was a great deal of comfort in the knowing.” She spread her hands. “And now — ”

“And now you might be anything.” Hannah took her hands and pressed them. “A lady with her own house and her own fortune, who answers to no one. You may marry, or not, as you please. You may do a great deal of good. You have a houseful of servants and widows in a parish depending on you already.” Her voice gentled. “I know it frightens you. But it is not a smaller life you have been handed, Viola. It is a far larger one. You need only grow brave enough to stand up in it.”