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Chapter 1
The gown that Leah handed to Harper, the daughter of a viscount, was beautiful in colour and designed to where every single thread seemed to have an important purpose. Harper could not help but to imagine herself wearing it.
“This dress is far too good for me, Leah. I cannot accept it. Just look at the fine lace, and the beauty in the shoulders. I would make this dress look less valuable,” Harper said to Leah.
“Oh, stop that. You must be not only kind to yourself, but realistic. You are the one that will make this dress beautiful. As my mother would always say, it is not the dress that makes the girl, but the girl that makes the dress.”
Leah always knew the exact words to make Harper think better of herself. If there was one aspect of Leah that Harper would have taken to give to herself, it would have been her wisdom.
Harper had always felt that she lacked perspective. Not only concerning the world, but herself. It wasn’t easy to see herself in the way others did. Half the time, she was concerned with coming off as irritating or lacking in confidence. Surrounding herself with people like Leah would often negate those sentiments but only to an extent. There was only so much inspiration that she could steal from her friends. Whether it was life or something as trivial as a dress.
That day, Harper gave her best attempt at putting those insecurities aside to focus on her birthday. She was turning twenty-two years old and was preparing for the ball in her honour.
For some reason, her birthday was different from past years. Even though it was not a major milestone of any sorts, like the day she first bled, or the year she left her teens and turned twenty. Yet still, the day held a weight to it. It caused her to fear the moment and retreat inside her thoughts. Because when it came to her feelings, she always needed to know the reasoning behind them.
Going back to the day on which she had first bled, she had been twelve years of age, and that day fell exactly two weeks from her birthday. The moment that she looked down on her blankets and realised the day of womanhood had arrived, a profound sadness had washed over her. And Harper could not understand why.
She had always envisioned the day. Relief, happiness that she had crossed over into a new stage of her life, that’s what Harper had anticipated. Being a child and being looked at as one had run its course. Growing up was an attractive prospect. She could even start daydreaming about what marriage would look like for her one day.
The opposite happened and that bothered her greatly. How could she be sad on such a monumental day? Instead of relief, why was there grief? Why did she feel like a sudden weight had been placed on her shoulders?
“Harper?” the maid had said while poking her head into the room. “What is the matter—” Her eyes quickly fell to the bright red stain in the middle of the bed and a gasp fled her. Her sudden loss for words was funny to Harper. But not the normal type of funny. Her impending laugh was born from nerves. It never came, though. She remained still on the bed.
The maid came running over and gave Harper a long hug. “It is okay feel…whatever it is that you are feeling.” The maid’s eyes drifted from Harper to the sheet. She must have been dying to get rid of the thing and clean it. A maid’s instinct, nonetheless.
“Is it wrong that I feel sad?” Harper asked.
“No, not at all.”
“Why do I feel sad? I thought that I’d feel grown and happy once this happened.”
The maid did not say anything for a moment. It made Harper regret asking. But then the maid finally said, “I do not know. But it will be all right.”
That had been the first time in Harper’s life that she needed to understand the motives behind her thoughts. If she felt sad, why did she feel that way? If she felt stressed, what was causing it? If she could always figure out the reasoning behind her emotions, then that would be the first step to controlling them, avoiding them, and everything in between.
It was not easy on that day with the party growing closer and closer. Just as had happened a decade ago, Harper had anticipated happiness on her twenty-second birthday. The more that she asked herself why she felt the way she did, the more she understood that it was most likely because every day she got older, the more she started to feel as though time was running out.
Another year in age meant less time to read, less time to see the world, less time to find a husband, and less time to start a family. Twenty-two was not a fun age. To Harper, it was a sore reminder that everyone was getting older, and life would not last forever. No matter how beautiful the dress before her was.
“What is it? You do not seem like yourself today? Leah asked, being the ever-observant friend that she was. She tended to put more concern into what others were feeling than herself. Always.
“I am well,” Harper lied. She then looked at the dress and compared it to most things in her life. Something so beautiful would be old news in but a few hours. There was no need to look any further into why she felt that way because she knew of her own tendency to grow bored easily. And perhaps that lent a hand to that sensation of fleeting time. There was only so much of it that she had left to stimulate her high standards of expectation.
“I am going to go try the dress on.” Before she went to try the dress on, she stopped and turned to Leah. “Again, are you certain that you—”
“Yes. The dress is yours. It is your birthday. Do not ask again,” she said with a laugh.
Harper nodded and walked into her oversized closet for privacy. The closet was a room to itself. Lined on the walls were Harper’s various other dresses and corsets organised and separated by shades of colour, starting from the lightest shade of beige all the way down to the deepest shade of blue. On two of the walls, parallel to one another, were mirrors.
As Harper pulled on the dress, made aware immediately by the matter of Leah being a few inches thinner than she was, she hoped that she would love the dress while wearing it, just as much as she did out of it. When it was on, she gave herself a once over in the mirror and was more than happy with her appearance. It changed her outlook on the day by a sliver.
It was enough to make her smile and carry a semblance of hope that her twenty-second year in the world would bring her great experiences and life changes for the better. What those would be, she tried not to think about too much. Surprises were always better.
Harper walked out from the closet to a look of astonishment in the eyes of Leah.
“You look really great, Harper. People will not be able to take their eyes from you at the party for sure.”
The sincerity in Leah’s eyes explained how much she believed her own words.
