Tamsin shot her a perturbed look. “Alice, darling, I’m concerned by how easily you succumb to a handsome sea captain with a dog.”
“To Alice’s credit,” Ruby managed to say, “the man has eight dogs. Eight times the persuasive power of a single canine.”
Alice picked up her puppy again, which had piddled on the floor and was now engaged in a pitched battle with her boot laces. “He only has seven now. This one’s mine. I’m not giving her back.”
Tamsin made a faint despairing sound.
And Ruby found herself looking at Alice.
Alice was nuzzling the puppy’s ear. Her face was pink and flecked with dirt and plaster; her boots were scuffed. She looked a thousand times more windblown and disheveled than Ruby had ever seen her in all their years of friendship in London.
And she lookedhappy.
It had been a long time since Ruby had seen her look so happy.
In the years since her father’s disgrace, Alice had not asked Ruby or Tamsin for anything. She wanted to please—everyone, all the time. She never let her desires show on her face like this, lest her wanting prove an inconvenience. Lest she lose what little she had left to her that she loved.
But she had asked for the dog. And the captain had responded as though her request had been no hardship. As though it were in his nature to give.
Ruby bit her lip. She looked around the room: the moth-eaten drapes, the bare stone floor, the bizarre furniture and abundance of paintings.
She murmured, “Why not?”
Tamsin looked up from her position on the ground. There was dust on her face too, camouflaging the freckles on her cheeks. “What was that?”
“Why not?” Ruby said, louder this time. “Why not stay? What does it matter to us if the house is peculiar? If it’s scarcely staffed? What of it?”
“What do you—”
“Why should we mind?” She scrambled off the bed. “We’rehere. We’ve made it. They did not bar the door or send us back to London in disgrace.” She hiked up the topmost layer of her skirts and used it to clean away the begrimed window, letting in more light. “We can stay for the summer, exactly as we planned. We don’t need a palace or a cadre of servants. What we need is a place to be together.”
Perhaps it was not precisely what she’d imagined. But that didn’t mean she had to give up. Thehousedidn’t matter—only that they were together and happy, with freedom enough to fill their lungs with air.
She dropped her skirt. Light speared through the glass, illuminating Alice’s flushed cheeks, glancing red off Tamsin’s hair.
“We can fix it up,” Alice said softly. She set the puppy back down and moved to the other window, scrubbing at it with her handkerchief.
“Yes!” Through the glass, Ruby could see the ocean, and a tiny bird, white against the summer blue of the sky. “Why shouldn’t we spend the summer restoring the house? We’re the princess’s ladies-in-waiting, and this is her home.”
“We’re not, actually,” Tamsin said. “You do recall that pertinent fact?”
Ruby held out one of the moth-eaten drapes. The sunlight glanced through dozens of tiny holes, casting dappled shadows across the floor.
“That looks very pretty,” Alice murmured.
It did. Somehow the pattern of light and dark looked like lacework: delicate and fine.
“God save me from the two of you and your imaginations,” Tamsin said. But there was something lurking in her voice, a hint of weakening she couldn’t quite suppress.
Ruby locked eyes with Tamsin and let her conviction show on her face. “We can make it beautiful here.”
“It already is beautiful,” Alice said. “It only needs a little shine.”
Ruby bit her lip. “I think we should stay, Tam. I want to stay.”And Alice, she wanted to say.Look at Alice. Look how much easier it is for her to breathe.
But Ruby didn’t have to say it. Tamsin was already gazing at Alice, and by the expression on Tamsin’s face, Ruby knew that she had noticed as well.
The puppy waddled over to Tamsin’s place on the floor, and she put out her hand. The dog licked at her palm, then, delicately, bit the tip of her ungloved finger.
