“Ah!” he said, without stopping to bow. “Good evening, Princess. So Her Highness feels inclined to grace me with her presence tonight. Come for a dance?”
Azalea kept her mouth shut and her feet planted on the bridge.
“Where are the rest of you?”
“It’s…Clover’s birthday tonight,” she managed to stammer.
“And the night before?”
Azalea dug her fingers into the silver weave.
“Come now,” said Keeper. “I am only curious. You have never missed dancing before.”
“The…King read them a story, and…they fell asleep.”
“How sweet.” Keeper leaned against the arched doorframe. Twined throughout his fingers was the scarlet embroidery thread. Azalea stared at it, the red burning green into her vision. “Especially since you all hate him so much. Oh, don’t flinch like that, my lady. You think I haven’t seen it in you?” Keeper’s long fingers wound around the thread, twisting it and pulling it into weblike shapes. “If it is any comfort, I hate your father as well.”
“You don’t even know him.”
“Do I have to? I hate him because he is the Wentworth General. I’ve thrived on that hate. Hate, in its own way, is a virtue.”
Azalea cast a furtive glance at the willow branches behind her. She scrunched the handkerchief even tighter in her hand. “Mr. Keeper,” she said. “Please. About Mother—you won’t…that is, if you could—could maybe cut—”
“Perhaps,” said Keeper, cutting her short. “Go back, and bring your sisters tomorrow. Do not miss another night. And then, we shall see. You have been looking?”
“I hardly have a choice.”
“No, you hardly do. Goosey.”
The needle, dangling from the end of the thread, flashed in the pale light. Azalea cowered against the swirled railing of the bridge.
“Go now. Bring them back tomorrow, and dance your little dances. You will not miss another night.” His voice was dangerously smooth.
Against the pale mist of the pavilion, Keeper held up the thread, a knitted web shape between his hands. In reticulated scarlet string, it read:
3 days.
“Masterful!” Mother was laughing, her bubbled laugh that put everything at ease. Her hair was askew, as always, the mussed look making her even more charming. “You’re better than me! Up, up, up. Very good! Ladies’ cloaks, in the library, gentlemen’s hats—”
“In the entrance hall. Yes, I remember.” Azalea smiled, too, and pushed herself to her feet, the crinolines and silks of her ballgown settling about her.
“Brilliant. The gentlemen will be mad for you. Dance with every single one and find out which one you like best.”
Even the milk-turning feeling from talking of her future gentleman didn’t feel so curdled, not when she was with Mother, who made everything better, like treacle in a pie.
“I wish you could come,” said Azalea.
“Your father will be there.”
Azalea shook her head sadly.
Perhaps it was because Azalea had broken from the real script of the dream, or that her eyes couldn’t quite meet Mother’s—even so, as she did, the flower-papered walls of Mother’s room faded and seeped away with the sound of freezing ice, to the dark pavilion, packed with masked dancers and black-thorned vines. Mother had tear streaks down her face. She tried to smile, but cringed with pain. Her lips had been sewn shut.
The dancers swept forward, their powdered wigs and dripping lace dresses pushing Azalea backward, throwing her off her feet.
She fell, her stomach twisting—
—and woke with a jolt, panting.
The early morning fire had died, and the room was cold. Shaking, Azalea slipped from her bed and added coal, unsteady from the dream. She tried to smother images of dancers pulling Mother away, her face marred—
“A dream,” Azalea echoed. “A dream…a dream…”
She still remembered the scent, baby ointment and cake.
The night before, she had somehow arrived back at the room through the shimmering curtain, trying to swallow the heaving within her stomach. The girls had come only minutes later, and still delighted with the ornaments they had crafted, they chattered on about embroidered holly and cinnamon-scented pinecones. Azalea pushed a smile as she helped undress them, then curled up in a ball on her bed, still in her clothes, wheezing in silent gasps until she had sunk into a fitful sleep.
Now, the image of Mother fresh in her mind, Azalea’s feet overrode her head, and, taking a shawl, she slipped out of the palace into the cold, frozen morning.
The graveyard tasted like icy mist, glowing blue in the dawn. Snow and frost covered every headstone, branch, and iron railing. It was like walking through a winter palace. Azalea pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders.