“It’s so awful we’re in mourning!” said Hollyhock, rubbing her fingers over an invitation’s knobbly seal.
“It doesn’t matter anyway.” Delphinium passed around the flower-scented invitation. “Azalea’s going to marry Fairweller.”
Time halted.
“Eve and I figured it out,” said Delphinium, barreling on. “No one would want a foreigner for king. Fairweller is Eathesburian and he’s the Prime Minister and he’s rich.”
The blood drained from Azalea’s face. Her mind revolted, and she imagined colorless Fairweller, his spiderlike arms clasped around her waist and his breath in her ear. She gagged.
“Oh, indeed,” said the King, giving the girls a start. He rubbed his bandaged hand by the rosebush ledge, frowning. “None of you shall be met with someone you are not fond of. That is the rule.”
The sick heaving in her stomach faded enough for Azalea to stammer out a “thank you” to her slate.
The next statement the King made was more to himself than to the girls:
“The question is, how to become acquainted with gentlemen while in mourning. Hmm.”
Azalea gathered the letters into a neat stack. Ivy limped to Azalea with the last invitation, her steps ungainly. The King looked up.
“Ivy,” he said. “What is wrong? Have you a sore foot?”
Ivy paled. She cast a desperate look at Azalea.
“I—I—I don’t know,” she squeaked.
“Come here. Let me see.”
“It’s all right,” said Azalea. “Sit down, Ivy.”
The King’s frown became pronounced as his eyes caught Azalea’s feet, nearly hidden by the chair legs. Azalea realized she was lifting her sore foot. She set it down, and winced.
“Hmm,” said the King. He strode to Ivy, took her under the arms, and lifted her onto the table. Ivy, who was only five, after all, began to whimper as he unlaced her boots and gently tugged them off.
The stockings came next, and the King frowned at her feet, blisters on her toes and ankles chafed red.
“It’s just, you know, boots,” said Delphinium.
“Off with your shoes,” said the King. “All of you. At once.”
Cries of protest followed; the King did not relent. While Tutor snored, the King lifted Jessamine to the table and pulled off her shoes, revealing tiny red feet. An examination of Kale produced the same.
Under the threat of sending for Sir John, the older girls slowly removed their boots, unlacing them and tenderly tugging. Delphinium’s feet had blisters at the toes and ankles, and Eve’s right foot was swollen. Bramble’s foot had bled into her stocking, but Azalea was surprised to see her own feet were the worst. Her toes had started to bleed again, giving her stockings a brownish red stain. Her left ankle was swollen.
“Oh, indeed!” said the King, examining their feet. “Indeed! You have all been dancing! Dancing, after I expressly forbade it! Even so!”
The girls’ faces blushed crimson, but they said nothing. A stubbornly quiet nothing. The King sucked in his cheeks, then exhaled.
“You know what mourning is,” he said. “You know what mourning means. I will have no more of this dancing. How could you treat your mother’s memory in such an appalling way?”
Azalea pressed her palm against the slate lying on the table, and pulled her thumbnail across it, trying to distract the hot, boiling words from reaching her mouth. It was Clover, however, who spoke for all of them, uncharacteristically brave.
“We can’t stop…dancing,” she said, in a voice as sweet as honey. “It…reminds us of—of Mother.”
The girls nodded eagerly. The King cringed, as though Clover’s words had burned.
“It won’t help anything,” he said brusquely. “It won’t do anything. Nothing will come from dancing.”
“But it does help,” said Clover. She kept her eyes down, lashes brushing her cheeks, but she pulled the courage to step forward. “Mother would—would dance at night, too. In the ballroom—and—and you were there, and you danced the Entwine, and—you caught her, and she kissed you. On the nose.” Clover blushed deeply. “I think it was the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen.”
She said it with fewer pauses than usual, as though she had recited it a hundredfold. Azalea pulled her hand away from the slate, thinking of Mother and the Entwine, the tricky dance with the sash. If Mother had gotten caught, it was only because she had let the King catch her.
The King backed up, taut, against the rosebush ledge, the dry thorny branches pressing into his back. His face had become severe.
“It helps to remember,” said Clover.
“We will not speak of your mother,” said the King. His voice was even, but harder and colder than frozen steel. “You are finished with your lessons. Go to your room.”
The words lashed. Clover cowered, swallowed, then pushed her way out of the nook, clutching her boots and limping. They could hear her choked weeping echoing down the hall.