“It’s beautiful,” Flora breathed.
The King finished hanging the brushes on the pegs, in order, coarse to soft, and turned to see what the fuss was about. His expression turned to ice when he saw Hollyhock’s freckled hand curled around the brooch. He held out his hand.
“Give it here,” he said. “It is not yours.”
Hollyhock clutched the brooch to her chest.
“I founnit in Mum’s satchel. Can we keep it? ’S black. I’ll share. I really will.”
“It belongs with your Mother’s things. Not with you, Miss Hollyhock.”
Azalea maneuvered so she was in front of Hollyhock. “Sir,” she said. “Why not? We’ll share it among ourselves; it won’t be breaking mourning.”
“That isn’t the point, Miss Azalea.”
“What if we just borrowed it? For the next six days? Just until mourning is over?”
“We’ll be careful with it,” said Eve.
“Oh, please, sir! Please!”
The younger girls jumped up and down, hands clasped in begging, and Ivy even dared to tug on the King’s suitcoat.
“Enough!” said the King, cutting them short with a brusque wave of his hand. “Enough. Six days, that is all. Six. Is that understood? I am doing this against my better judgment. Not a scratch, young ladies!”
“Bramble,” said Azalea that night, as they danced a quadrille. They danced in lines opposite each other, crossed and turned and traded places, the music a lively jaunt. She crossed diagonal, bending down to join hands with Jessamine, and stopped across from Bramble. “Bramble, do you remember calling the King Papa?”
Bramble crossed behind Azalea and backed up to her place.
“What?” she said.
“The King. He said we used to call him Papa.” Azalea walked with Flora up the line. “He seemed sure of it. And—” Azalea paused. “And I think—I think he wants us to call him Papa.”
The music ended, but the girls forgot to curtsy.
“He said that?” said Bramble.
“No,” said Azalea. “Not as such.”
“Puh-pah?” said Hollyhock. “Him?”
“It doesn’t really fit him,” said Eve. “Papa is more a storybook thing.”
“He is—trying,” said Clover.
Delphinium sat on the marble floor, stretching her foot out, her pink toe peeking through the torn seams.
“I don’t think he can be a Papa,” she said. “Not after everything. I still get angry.”
Azalea pulled off her black glove and considered the red fingernail prints in her palm. She sighed.
A clattering across the dance floor interrupted her thoughts—the brooch. Hollyhock had been fiddling and fumbling with it all night, unpinning it to polish it on her skirt hem, pinning it again. Now she had spun about with it in her hand, and had accidentally released it.
“Oh, Holli, honestly,” said Azalea, striding to pick it up, by the lattice. “If you can’t keep it pinned to your—”
A pair of black gloves scooped it up just as Azalea leaned down to take it.
Azalea straightened sharply. “Give it back!” she said.
Keeper, only a few inches from her, his dark form taking up her entire vision, rubbed his thumb over the smooth, curved surface of the brooch, and he lazily regarded Azalea, making no other movement.
“Keeper!”
He inhaled slowly, took Azalea’s outstretched hand—shudders went through her throat, he felt so solid—and pressed the brooch into her marked palm.
“I was only picking it up,” he said, quietly. His thumb rubbed a red nail mark on her hand. A smile crossed his lips. “Temper, temper.”
Azalea pulled her hand away, her ears hot, and gave the brooch back to Hollyhock. All the way through the silver forest and back up the passage, she wiped her hand on her skirts, trying to get rid of the silky feeling of Keeper’s thumb stroking her palm.
The next morning, Azalea awoke to a commotion. A quiet one, with whispering, the rustling of bedsheets and blankets. Hollyhock, Ivy, and the twins mussed their beds, lifting pillows with the blushing look of someone trying very hard not to look like they were blushing. Azalea groaned.
“Oh, Hollyhock,” she said. “Please don’t tell me you’ve lost what I think you’ve lost.”
Hollyhock burst into bawls.
“I—I—I didn’t mean to!” she cried. “I just lost it!”
All the girls, now awake from the ruckus, set to looking for the brooch. They shook out dresses, rummaged, folded, unfolded, smoothed, searched. Azalea took Hollyhock by the shoulders.
“You brought it back, didn’t you?” said Azalea. “After Keeper picked it up, you pinned it to your blouse?”
Hollyhock gulped and hiccupped.
“I don’t remember!” she said. “I put it in my pocket, I think!”
“Keeper!”
Azalea spat the word, the loudness deadened by the curtains and bedsheets. Everyone stopped rifling through the linens. Bramble gave a last shake to Hollyhock’s boots, and a spoon clattered onto the wood floor.