Entwined(18)

“What were you dancing?” said Goldenrod.

“Oh, just this and that. I thought a zingarella”—Azalea smiled and said to the ceiling—“if only I could find enough people to dance it with me.”

With a cry of delight, the girls jumped to their feet and Azalea lined them up, showing them how to point their toes and turn on the balls of their feet, and how to jump lightly with just a flick of their foot. A rosy pink touched their pale cheeks, and the mirrors along the wall caught their smiles as they turned, all seeming to feel the warm bit of flicker inside them. Azalea loved dancing for that glow.

“But the zingarella is a closed dance,” said Delphinium, after she had executed a perfect spring-and-land in third position. “All the good dances are. I wish we were old enough to dance with gentlemen.”

“Gentlemen, shmentlemen,” said Azalea. “Don’t you remember lessons with Mother? We danced reels and quadrilles and all sorts of things without a partner.”

“But it’s different, with a gentleman.”

Azalea considered, thinking of the Yuletide ball and the dizzy thrill of being led in perfect form. Stepping as one with a gentleman, sweeping past the other dancers in a billow of skirts. Dancing was different with a gentleman.

A lamp appeared at the ballroom doors, giving highlights to the mirrors and chandeliers. Mr. Pudding, white hair mussed, held the lamp in one hand and rubbed his face with the other. Azalea realized, with all the laughing and dancing, that they had made quite a racket.

“Dancing again, misses?” he said.

Azalea gathered the girls, now yawning and dragging their feet, and herded them out the ballroom to the grand staircase.

“Now, miss, I don’t think it will do, not at all,” said Mr. Pudding as Azalea nudged them up the stairs. He stood at the bottom of the staircase, holding the lamp and frowning. Mr. Pudding’s frowns were nothing like the King’s. Mr. Pudding’s frowns were actually more perplexes. He cleared his throat and took a deep breath, signaling an almost-lecture-but-not-quite-because-he-was-just-the-royal-steward-and-not-the-King. “I can understand cutting about a time or two, it’s not so much dancing I’m worried about, misses, even I myself would turn the other cheek when you trip about, misses, but it’s against the rules and I’ve taken charge of ye all, y’ see, and I can’t let you break the rules of mourning, not even for dancing, which I know your mother loved. I’ll have to lock the ballroom, misses, and I’m afraid that if I catch y’ at it again, I’ll feel it my duty to write your father.”

The girls inhaled sharply at this last bit, the word “father.” They leaned into Azalea’s nightgown as Mr. Pudding, fumbling with his great ring of keys, locked the ballroom door with a click-click. Seeing the younger girls start to tear up, he gave them his lamp and promised to send biscuits and tea to their room, nearly crying himself. But he did not unlock the ballroom.

“I think really he means it, this time,” said Delphinium as they trudged up the creaking staircase, dragging sleepy younger sisters. “He actually locked the door. And he’s never threatened to write the King before.”

“That lock’s nearly impossible to pick,” said Eve, tugging on the ends of her pretty dark hair, which she did when she was worried. “That could be a problem.”

“Our problem is that we’ve been getting caught,” said Azalea. She carried both Jessamine and Kale, one on each arm, and rested on the landing. She leaned against the wallpaper, underneath the dusty portraits of Great-Aunts Mugwort and Buttercup, and exhaled. Every morning these past months, when Mr. Pudding arrived with the Harold Herald, the girls took it from his hands and pored over it, eating their porridge and sorting through every article, hoping for news of the war. Their loyalty ended there. The King could manage himself. Clover once suggested writing him, a thought they quickly squashed. Azalea was sure her pen would snap in two if she tried.

“No more dancing,” said Azalea. “We can’t get caught again. This is our secret.”

“He’ll write the King—”

“Oh, the King,” Azalea spat. The words burned, singeing the air. “What right has he to know? The King is not a part of this family!”

Clover cradled Lily’s curly head to her chest, biting her lip. Flora and Goldenrod clasped their dainty hands in each other’s. Azalea tried to soften her words, but words from a tight throat could only come out taut.

“He’s not,” she said. “No need to let him know.”



Tap. Tap. Clinkety tap-tap.

It had been two weeks since they had last danced, and Azalea lay in bed, awake again. A dream hadn’t roused her this time, but rather an odd tinny noise that had been clinking across the wooden floor of their room, under their beds and butting against the wainscot with a clinkety tap-tap. It sounded like…well, quite honestly, it sounded like a spider dragging a spoon.

Azalea knew it couldn’t possibly be that (or, rather, she hoped it wasn’t), but even so, she heaved herself from the bed and grasped one of Hollyhock’s boots, strewn across the floor. The tapping now clinked from the fireplace, and Azalea caught a glint of silver among the soot. Raising the boot, she tiptoed to the unlit hearth.

The fireplace in their room was massive—so large that Azalea could stand up in it and her skirts wouldn’t brush the sides. The silver hopped. Azalea dove.