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“I see her.” Augusta did not turn her head.

“What does she see, do you think?”

“Something she did not order. Drink your negus.”

Rosalind stood in the green her aunt had chosen and her father could not finish a sentence about, holding a cup she did not want. Fear fluttered cold in her chest, because being seen was the most frightening thing that had ever happened to her. And yet, beneath the fear, there was something else, something so new and so strange that she hardly knew it for her own.

Let her look, Rosalind thought, and lifted her chin as her aunt had shown her. Let them all look. I do not think I wish to be invisible any longer.

Chapter Six

The greens came in from the market gardens at the edge of Town, the last good cutting before Christmas, shedding needles the whole length of the Danforths’ hall as they came through in armfuls. Rosalind had found a broom and turned back her sleeves before anyone thought to ask whether she meant to be useful.

No one had asked her, and that was the whole comfort of it.

“You are not to sweep!” Charlotte arrived at her elbow with ivy trailing from both hands. “I forbid it. There are four footmen in this house whose entire purpose is the sweeping of things.”

“The needles are already swept.”

“You will put every one of the footmen out of a situation,” Charlotte said firmly. “Come and make the swags with me instead, for I cannot make a swag.”

“Everyone can make a swag.”

“Not I. Mine come out looking as if the cat had been at them.”

“Then you want someone to hold the wire while you tie, do you not?” Rosalind gave up the broom, and Charlotte looped an arm through hers and walked, and Rosalind went, for there was no resisting Charlotte once she had taken hold of a person’s arm.

Mrs. Danforth kept a generous house off Cavendish Square, not grand but warm, and she had given the back parlor over to the decking of it. Holly and ivy and bay lay heaped upon the long table, and the wire frame for the kissing-bough stood empty in its corner.

Rosalind took her place at the table and felt, for the first time in some days, entirely herself. She had worn the russet on purpose, for one could be busy in russet and never be the figure that caught and held an eye.

So she made swags while Charlotte tied badly beside her, and the afternoon went on warm and loud around them. Three of the mothers wanted chairs nearer the fire and would not say so, and the ivy was running short while the ribbon was not.

And across the table, a fair-haired girl in pale blue was watching Rosalind’s hands at the wire with open admiration.

It was Phoebe, and it caught Rosalind strangely to see her away from her mother’s elbow. At Marbury she had kept her warmth carefully out of sight, but here, with her mother settled among the chaperones at the fire and Cassandra not yet arrived, she let a degree more of it show.

“Will you show me the way of it?” she asked, coming round the table at last. Rosalind showed her the knack, and the next swag Phoebe tied held. Then her glance went to the fire where her mother sat, and the brightness died out of her face, and her voice dropped to a careful murmur. “It is a useful thing to know. Thank you.”

Head down and hands busy in this manner, Rosalind did not see Lord Dover come in. She heard him, after a fashion, for the mothers by the fire sat a little straighter, and a murmur ran toward the door, the whole room gathering itself.

He had not come for her, surely. She was glad, distantly, that she had worn the russet.

He did not go to the fire, nor to the mothers, who were already arranging themselves to be gone to. He came down the length of the long table, unhurried, and stopped across the holly from her to look at her hands at their work.

“Lady Rosalind.”

“Lord Dover.” She looked up then, because she must, and gave him his courtesy before returning to the wire, which was safer than his eyes. “You find us in great disorder. The greens came in an hour ago, and we have hardly made a beginning on them.”

“You looked to have the measure of them when I came in.”

“I am holding the wire while Miss Danforth ties. It is the simplest task in the room, and anyone might do it.” She bound off the swag and reached for the next length, grateful that her hands had somewhere to be. “The kissing-bough needs to be made, if you are willing to be useful.”

He followed her glance toward the corner. “Does it indeed?”

“It is over there in the corner, and it is getting the better of everyone.”

“I would like to be useful,” he said gravely, “and I have just been told that the simplest task is taken, so you must find me a worse one.”