“Let’s face it,” said Bramble, tying a green ribbon around her collar. “We haven’t heard a word from him since Christmas. That was ages ago! He’s abandoned you. Surprise!”
Clover’s hands tightened over the ends of her shawl.
“Oh, wait,” squeaked Ivy, who looked out one of the west windows to the front court below. “He hasn’t—Fairweller’s here!”
Clover leaped to the window. The other girls flocked around her. Below them, gentlemen walked across the gravel, LadyFair tethered to the balustrade.
“His steward is here, too.”
“Oh, look, the King’s gone out to greet him.”
“With a gun,” said Bramble.
Everyone leaned forward.
“Pistols!” cried Clover. She fled the room.
“Clover—duels aren’t—oh, hang,” said Bramble. “She’s going to do something rash. Well, at least we can see it from here.”
Two seconds later, Clover streaked out the entrance hall doors, down the marble stairs, her skirts flying behind her. The gentlemen had a split moment to look up before Clover threw herself onto the King in a scatter of gravel, sobbing as she hung about his neck.
The window muffled their voices. Everyone leaned even farther forward.
Clover fell to her knees and kissed the hem of the King’s coat.
“Oh, now, let’s not go overboard,” Bramble muttered.
Fairweller removed his coat and set it over Clover’s shoulders; the King threw it off and put his own coat over her shoulders. Then he gestured Fairweller to follow him inside.
The girls paced outside the library, waiting for Fairweller, Clover, and the King to finish. The King’s voice carried through the door at intervals—usually angry. Clover’s honey tones came through, strong and unstuttering. No one could make out the words, however.
After some length of time, the door slid open, and Fairweller emerged, looking like a man who had been rescued by a choir of angels. Dazed, hair mussed, he looked around him with glazed eyes. Clover beamed.
“Not a day before—” snarled the King.
“Yes, naturally,” said Fairweller. “As you say, Your Grace.”
“And you will leave—”
“Yes—straightaway. As you say.”
He bowed deeply to the King. And to Azalea’s surprise, swept a bow to her and all the girls. Then he delicately cupped Clover’s hands in his, and kissed them with a brush of his lips. He left, almost walking on air.
“Oh, Papa!” Clover cried when the door had closed. She threw her arms around the King. “Thank you!”
“Don’t—don’t—don’t!” said the King. “I am very cross with you, young lady! Azalea!”
He leaned in to Azalea as Clover released his neck and danced across the entrance hall rug, twirling the younger ones with her in a reel.
“You will have to introduce Clover to a lot of gentlemen at balls and soirees and such,” he said in a low voice. “Before she turns seventeen. You must get her acquainted with other gentlemen. Preferably those of our own party!”
“Of course,” said Azalea, watching the laughing, hopping girls about Clover. The light that filtered down from the half-moon window above the door cast bright golden highlights in Clover’s hair and, smiling, she looked the prettiest Azalea had ever seen her. “Only…well. He certainly seems to love her.”
“Traitor,” said the King.
CHAPTER 30
“What’s kissing like?” said Delphinium, one morning in early February. The King had gone out to tend to R.B., and the girls crowded in the nook over bowls of steaming mush, their eyes hungry, but not for porridge.
For the past few days, Bramble and Clover had been positively nauseating. They wrote lengthy letters to their gentlemen, Bramble chattering on about how ripping Lord Teddie was, and Clover speaking of how kind and sober Fairweller was. Sober. That was the word she used.
“Mmm—like dancing, actually.” Bramble pushed her porridge to Ivy and grinned. “You know, the part after a spin, when the room turns around you. What do you think, Clover?”
Clover shook her golden head.
“I think it more…when the gentleman catches you in his arms, that warm feeling that makes your toes sort of curl.”
Bramble’s face twisted. “No…that’s not right. Well, dash it, if we knew more dances—”
“Azalea knowf lotf of danfef!” piped Ivy through a mouthful of mush.
“Oh, yes!” said Flora. And then, catching Azalea’s expression, her face fell. “Oh—no, I suppose not,” she said.
Azalea stood so sharply her chair knocked against the rosebush ledge.
“No, definitely not!” she said. She threw her wadded napkin at Bramble—who at least had the decency to look contrite—and stormed out of the nook.
When she reached their room, she did not cry. She was too angry for it. Instead she cleaned, punching pillows in place, wadding up strewn dresses and throwing them into the basket, mending stockings with a vengeance. It was unbearable, to hear Clover and Bramble go on, when she hadn’t heard a word from Mr. Bradford. She worried, in an overwhelming twisting-stomach pain, that he did love her, but not enough.