“Good guess,” said Bramble. She ran a hand through her tangled knee-length hair.
Azalea smiled and shook her head. Though only two, Kale had a screaming voice to shame a prima donna. In fact, once she started screaming, she only stopped if she got what she wanted, or if she threw up. Azalea lifted her from Clover’s arms, and Kale latched her hands around Azalea’s neck. Azalea shifted, keeping Kale’s mouth from her shoulder. Kale was also a biter.
“You—you had—the dream again, didn’t you?” said Clover as they all sat down around the lamp. Her golden hair reflected the lamplight. “That’s—why you came down here?”
Azalea shrugged.
“M-maybe you should—should write the King about it,” said Clover. “He might—know what to do.”
“Have you run mad?” said Bramble. “What would he care?”
Clover gave a half shrug and lowered her eyes to her hands.
“Come now, everyone,” said Azalea, straightening up. “We made an agreement. No talking about the King.”
The girls clasped their hands and kept their eyes down. It reminded Azalea of when she had returned to the palace that late December night, shivering, so soaked she dripped puddles on the rug. She didn’t tell the girls then. They could read it in her face. They had helped her into dry clothes and brushed and braided her wet hair, all without a sound.
Azalea didn’t say anything after that, either, because the words would fester and burn, searing anyone who heard them. So they blistered and raged inside her, curling into tightness in her throat. She hid it well in front of the girls. Tiny crescent scars marked her palms.
“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.”