Azalea looked over at the dance floor, where Bramble had made the younger girls sit on the floor, while she, Delphinium, and Eve leaped over them. The younger girls squealed uproariously whenever the skirt hems brushed their faces. Bramble was saying, “Don’t jump up, Ivy, you great idiot, do you want your head to get knocked off?” Azalea stifled a laugh, and the terrible, helpless feeling eased. A little.
“One day, my lady,” said Mr. Keeper, stepping aside and allowing her to join them, “I should hope I would be fortunate enough to see such a graceful, unearthly curtsy from you again.”
The girls were late to breakfast the next morning, and to lessons. When they arrived at the nook, their now-cold porridge sat on the table, and their teacher, Tutor Rhamsden, was there as well. He sat in his usual seat and was, in fact, asleep, leaning on his cane, upright but snoring.
He slept quite a lot. No one ever had the heart to wake him.
“Why is breakfast so early?” Bramble moaned, laying her head on the tablecloth. “Why are lessons so early?”
No one answered, for they all nodded in a doze. Four-year-old Jessamine curled up on her chair and buried her head in Azalea’s lap.
That night, however, after a long afternoon of mending the slippers, the girls were wide awake with excitement, passing through the silver forest. Mr. Keeper greeted them at the entrance, bowing them in and disappearing with a faint smile. Azalea was glad—she suddenly felt shy and nervous around him.
The girls discovered twelve delicate lace-and-satin fans waiting for them, and they gasped with how fine they were. Clover, who was good with fans, taught them how to snap it open with a flick of the wrist, how to throw it in the air and catch it, and how to flutter it just above the nose, shyly, demurely. The girls cheered for her.
“I’m only good…because—because I’m shy,” she said, blushing.
They returned through the fireplace to their room with visions of fan tatting rippling through their minds. The next night, they learned new waltz steps, how to flow up and down on the beats. The next night, jigs. And the night after, a morris dance, with silver-and-white satin sticks that had bells attached with ribbons.
No words could describe those warm summer nights, dancing at the pavilion. Euphoric, delightful, brilliant, all would fit. It was what Azalea felt when she saw the girls, beaming from learning a new step, or how to balance on just their toes, or when Azalea tucked them into bed, their cheeks flushed and smiling.
“Sometimes I wake up,” Flora said one morning, “and I wonder if it’s even real.”
“It feels like a dream,” Goldenrod agreed, sleepily.
Mornings came much too early, and after the girls had groggily dressed, they stumbled to breakfast late. They mended slippers over their porridge, or in the afternoons in the cool cellar. The slippers became more tattered each day, and Azalea had to back them with extra fabric from old tablecloths, because the satin frayed so. They couldn’t last much longer, Azalea knew, but she would sew her fingers raw to make them do. She had to immerse herself in the silver forest, in the dancing, if only for one more night.
And though she wouldn’t dare admit it to anyone, she wanted to see Mr. Keeper again.
He hardly ever spoke to her or any of them, other than to welcome, bow them in, and wish them a good night when they left, but the essence of him lingered. When Azalea spun, spotting her head as her skirts billowed around her, she could swear she glimpsed his midnight eyes watching through the lattice, or at the entrance, but when she turned about again, she saw only rosebuds. His sleek movements mesmerized her, and she wondered how he danced. She wished desperately to see it.
“Poor Mr. Pudding,” said Eve, one night in early August, at the pavilion. They had danced until their slippers had been worn to pieces, and now sat in a circle on the floor, exhausted. When they had come to the pavilion that night, streamers lay on the floor, and they spent the next several hours dancing among ribbons.
“He nearly started crying this morning,” Eve continued, “when we came late and wouldn’t eat breakfast, because it was cold.”
“Poo on Mr. Pudding!” said Delphinium, who was often cranky when she was tired. Azalea, on the other hand, helped the girls to their feet, nudging the younger ones awake and scooping a sleeping Lily into her arms.
“We have been staying out too late,” she said. “We’ll have to be more attentive.” She slipped her hand into her skirt pocket for Lord Bradford’s watch, to see the hour. Azalea kept the watch in her pocket every night, checking it from time to time, always taking the girls back before it grew too late. It was easy, however, to forget about the time when the pavilion spun around them. Azalea dug into her skirt pocket a littler harder, and found nothing but a thimble.
“Bramble, have you seen the watch?”
“Me? No.” Bramble yawned.
“Has anyone seen the watch?”