“You girls are too old for chaperones,” she replied. “When I was a girl, simply being seen in a man’s presence was enough to be compromised, but it’s different now with you modern girls.”
Violet breathed a sigh of relief while Rose’s eyes sparkled. “So we can visit with gentlemen—”
“In public, or with one of your sisters.” Lady Redborne eyed her daughters, a deep furrow emerging between her brows. “You are clever girls. Do not cause trouble for your father tonight.”
Fern sank further into her seat. Her mother would never have to worry aboutherbeing alone with a man.
“You know how important your father is, my dears,” Lady Redborne droned on. “And he loves you girls above all else.”
As the unwanted, unexpected, and unprecedented fifth daughter of one of Oxfordshire’s few remaining prominent members of the peerage, Fern was, like her garden namesake, relatively unnoticed in the presence of her sisters. London society had given them the moniker of The Flower Sisters, the talk of the town when they walked the streets of Oxford, even more so when they traveled to London for the season. The girls were known for their beauty, social graces, and sparkling wit. Lord and Lady Redborne raised their children with unabashed adoration and pride.
Rose, at the moment of her birth, became the shining light of the family. With her gleaming chestnut brown curls that seemed to glow from within, to her bright emerald green eyes and sparkling smile, Rose brought a certain ebullient bliss to the Waverly home.
Fern was a dull reflection of her twin, as though someone looked at Rose’s image in a dusty mirror, dimmer and duller around the edges. She rarely brushed her lank brown hair, pulling it aside in a haphazard knot to reveal her face, less heart-shaped and more pointed at the chin, her lashes pale and often indistinguishable from her pallid, freckled face. Where Rose’s smile made her eyes sparkle, Fern’s lips rarely parted with joy. Her eyes were her lone remarkable feature, hazel sparkling like pieces of amber embedded in moss.
Unfortunately, sparkling eyes that never emerged from the pages of a book did not constitute a social grace.
The ladies descended from the carriage in front of a smart clothing shop on High Street, not yet open to the general public. For the Flower Sisters, daughters of Oxford’s most powerful aristocrat, the shopkeepers kept special hours. Fern’s feet had not yet reached the pavement when her mother and sisters darted into the cramped but tidy store.
Fern sighed. She hated visiting the modiste. The process of selecting fabric was heavenly, feeling each bolt of cloth, letting it run through her fingers like flowing water. But after those initial moments, it became unbearable. Standing partially dressed in front of a stranger, letting said stranger touch her body, wrap fabric around her, pin her, while she held perfectly still.Dreadful. Inevitably her mother would override her choice of fabric, moving away from soft cottons and linens to stiffer fabric that would “flatter her silhouette.” Whatever that meant.
She sat in a tufted chair, picking at the coarse fabric and waiting for her turn in the torture chamber. She began tapping her slim fingers on her thighs, the routine smoothing the rough edges of her nerves. The seemingly random tapping was anything but. She exhaled slowly through her nose as the familiar motions of Mozart’sRondo ala turca, her favorite piece, slid from her fingers. As children, all five girls learned to play the piano, but only Fern fell in love with the instrument. She was fascinated by the patterns of the notes, how mere dots on a page could create chords, that when paired with dynamics actually created emotions that left her near weeping.
Rose burst through the curtains wearing her newest custom creation. Cascading layers of peachy pink spilled from the high waist, delicate embroidery sparkling across the bodice and along the hemline. Her cheeks flushed to nearly an identical color and pure joy glimmered in her eyes. “Oh Mama, it’s perfect!” she gushed.
Her mother and Violet gasped in unison before stumbling over each other in praise. “Simply delightful!” “A beauty of the highest caliber!” “You will be the star of the night!”
Fern knew her twin was happy. Rose’s emotions were the only ones Fern could consistently understand. She simply could not comprehend why a mere dress would make her sister react so strongly.
Dresses made it hard to climb trees so she could watch the stars. Dresses kept her from running up the stairs as quickly as she wished while carrying large stacks of books. Dresses tangled in her legs when she was trying to find a comfortable position on the settee in the library. Dresses were for ladies.
Which Fern most decidedly was not. At least, not according to her mother and her disappointed sighs.
Fern forced a smile, making sure the corner of her eyes wrinkled. She had observed the qualities of Rose’s smile, then tried to copy them. Crinkly-eyed smiles seemed to please her mother.
“Well,” Lady Redborne said, clapping her hands once and causing Fern to jump. “Fern, it’s your turn, then we shall try Violet.” Fern flinched as she walked to the raised dais at the center of the room as though she were stepping up to the gallows. By the time she was down to her chemise, Fern’s stomach was roiling. When the loose fabric was dropped over her head, her teeth clenched. As the seamstress began pinning and tucking, Fern’s entire body twitched and squirmed in response, her head pounding.
“Fern, please.” Her mother’s brows furrowed as she examined her youngest daughter. “Hold still.”
“I’m trying,” she ground out, clenching her fists.
“Mrs. Hastings cannot possibly get a good fit if you won’t hold still.”
“I won’t be holding still when I’m wearing the dress, so shouldn’t she make it with that in mind?” Fern snapped back, her flailing arm knocking into Mrs. Hasting’s hand and scattering a dozen pins over the floor.
Mrs. Hastings gasped, Rose and Violet winced, and Lady Redborne’s cheeks turned crimson. Fern bit her lips until she began to lose feeling around her mouth. Her clenched fists twitched at her side, her breathing ragged in her chest. She forced her gaze to the woman paralyzed at her side. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, so low with shame she was not sure the seamstress heard her.
“Fern,” Rose murmured, stepping onto the dais. Her voice soothed Fern’s soul like a balm. Rose was often the only one who could reach Fern when she lost control. Rose taught her sister to read the faces of others, how to put the positions of the eyes, nose, and mouth together in a formula to equal an emotion. “You’ll need to have the dress ready for the ball. Mama will be so happy to see you looking lovely.”
Fern dropped her chin to her chest. She couldn’t disappoint her mother, yet again. Lady Redborne possessed a nearly infinite well of patience, but when dealing with her youngest daughter it seemed to run dry, and with increasing frequency. She never raised her voice, or expressed her disdain in explicit words, but a mere sigh or look communicated volumes.
“Perhaps,” Fern said, her voice trembling as she focused on releasing her clenched hands, “I should not attend the party tomorrow. I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.” She hazarded a glance towards her mother. The woman’s delicate face focused on her lap, her cheeks flushed. Violet stared at her slippers as though memorizing the embroidery on her toes. Mrs. Hastings hunched over the pile of discarded pins, sweeping them up with little huffs of annoyance.
“This is not up for discussion, Fern,” Rose said gently. “Papa would be so disappointed if you were not there.”
“He never notices me.” That wasn’t entirely true. Lord Redborne and his youngest daughter shared an intense bond, unique among the sisters. At the age of three, she started taking books from her father’s library. Her mother was certain her daughter was merely mimicking her father’s actions, but Lord Redborne disagreed. When she was seven, she began reading the ledgers for her father’s estates. Once her father found her writing the figures from memory on her chalk slate.
Perhaps she’s brilliant, her father said to her mother one evening, as they watched Fern writing furiously in one of her ubiquitous notebooks. Her governess had taken to buying them in bulk whenever they went into town.
