Minister Fairweller.
He surveyed the scene, Azalea backed up against the tree trunk, grasping a spoon, and the girls huddled behind her, clutching their teacups, cowering away from Viscount Duquette.
After a long, awkward moment of silence, Fairweller turned to the Viscount.
“Who are you?” he said, in his cold, flat voice.
The Viscount, half a head shorter than Fairweller, sized up his fine dress and walking stick, and gave Fairweller a short bow, clicking his heels.
“Viscount of Anatolia, sirrah, knight of the fourth order and—”
“You are Viscount Duquette.”
Something in Fairweller’s tone made the Viscount twitch.
“He wants to mawy Cwover,” whispered Jessamine in a tiny, crystalline voice.
“So I have heard,” said Fairweller, unmoved. “Also, from what I have heard, Miss Clover does not care for the match.”
“Ah, never mind that,” said the Viscount with a wry smile. “We are men of the world, are we not? Ladies like her are easily bullied.”
Fairweller’s finger twitched against his walking stick.
“Minister, Clover’s gone, isn’t she?” Azalea bit her lip and pleaded to him with her eyes. Fairweller stared back at her, his iron eyes unreadable. Azalea’s heart fell. He wasn’t going to take her lead.
“Miss Clover,” said Minister Fairweller to the Viscount after a long moment, “is not here. She has gone to a speech with her father, in Werttemberg. I could set you up with a carriage, if you’d like.”
The girls’ mouths dropped open. Viscount Duquette did not see.
“Well!” he said, clicking his heels together. “It is nice to see that someone behaves like a gentleman around here!”
The girls found Clover about an hour later, hiding among the untrimmed unicorn and lion topiaries, weeping on a stone bench. They flocked to her, wrapped an extra shawl around her shoulders, and told her the story.
“Werttemberg, though,” said Eve. “That’s two countries away!”
Clover wept and laughed at the same time.
CHAPTER 17
“Can I not trust you for five minutes with a gentleman without scaring him away?” said the King, displeased when he found them later, playing spillikins in the entrance hall and decidedly Fairweller-less.
The girls smiled sheepishly and did not tell him about Viscount Duquette. That would render him murderous, and he had been in such an agreeable humor of late. He still lectured, naturally, when he caught the twins sliding down the banister, or when Kale spilled an inkwell on the dining room rug, or Hollyhock embroidered the curtains together. But he paid attention to them at dinner, too, and asked them how their day had passed. None of them supposed they had grown fond of this (they always felt so nervous around him), until one night the King was gone on R.B., and the girls had to have dinner without him.
It felt…empty.
“He saw us shivering, in the kitchen,” said Flora as they tied up slippers one early December night. “And he had Mr. Pudding build up the fire in the kitchen stove and the fire in the nook and put two extra scuttles by each!”
“And he always wants them to be well built!” said Goldenrod.
“And he says, when it is Christmas, we shan’t have any gentlemen come!”
“It will be a holiday! A real holiday!”
The girls beamed. A glimmer of excitement had sprung to life within them when the gardens had frosted, curling the leaves and coating the flower bushes, statues, and pathways white. They waited anxiously for snow and, with hopeful eyes, for something else: the end of mourning.
“It’s less than a month now,” said Eve as Azalea braided Hollyhock’s bright red hair. Her cheeks were rosy with excitement. She was becoming prettier every day, even with spectacles. “It’s hardly even three weeks,” she said.
“I can hardly, hardly wait!” said Hollyhock.
“We won’t need a gentleman to go out into the gardens!”
“We can just…go!”
“And we can wear color again!”
“And we can dance!”
“We already dance,” said Azalea, but she smiled as they hopped from one foot to another, bumping into their poufs and the round table and their beds, throwing pillows with excitement. That night, in keeping with the season, she taught them a Christmas jig. In this step, the lady put her hand to the gentleman’s, raised it to eye level, and they turned about each other. Clover played Azalea’s obliging partner, catching the gentleman’s steps perfectly.
“Break apart, turn around,” said Azalea, her skirts twisting with her. She winked at the girls, crowded in a black mass on the marble floor, turned to face Clover again—
—and found herself facing Keeper.
“Oh!” said Azalea.