Page 57 of The Scarlet Ball

As she examined herself, I examined her, something strange in my chest. I’ve undressed plenty of women, both the giggling rush when we realize Oh, I’m like you! as well as the more deliberate shows I’ve done for others. I would not say that dressing someone held much pleasure before I did it for Mielle, but suddenly I wondered if there was something avid about the way she dressed me, as if she had found some pleasure that no one would suspect and therefore could keep secret and all to herself.

“This blouse was a very good choice,” she said, flicking a sleeve. “I would not have expected it from you.”

“You are ungrateful,” I said, stretching and opening my mouth in a yawn. “You might have said that you hardly recognized yourself in the mirror. You might have said what a fabulous job I did.”

“I hardly recognized myself in the mirror,” she said in a tone as dry as the desert. “What a fabulous job you have done.”

I rolled my eyes. “If that’s all the thanks I’m getting, I am going to sleep. Good night. Or good morning. Whichever.”

I fell onto the bed on my face, mostly as a joke, and then I yawned in earnest and my eyes closed without my willing it. I grunted when Mielle prodded me in the side.

“You can’t sleep in that dress or that face. Come on.”

I groaned climbing back to my feet, but she was Mielle again rather than that sad shivering naked thing, and all right, I’d get up for that.

As she had promised she would do, she cut the dress off of me, clipping the tiny stitches she had made without harming the fabric below it at all. When I was down to my corset, the knots in the laces were drawn so tight she had to cut those as well.

“We’re not supposed to wear them that tight, I’m sure of it,” I murmured, leaning my forehead briefly against her shoulder, and wonder of wonders, she allowed it before she pushed me upright again.

“But it’s beautiful when you do,” she said. She touched my flank where every wrinkle of my chemise was pressed into my skin, where the unbound flesh fair felt as if it billowed out in relief.

“Only when I do?”

“No.”

That was all she would give me, but before she let me go to bed, she sat me down at the vanity to remove the false face from my real one.

My eyes were half-closed, but then they went wide when I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror. For an instant, less than counting to one, my face wasn’t my face. Instead it was still the face of the Howards’ bastard, white and delicate-featured, her eyes drifted shut, her lips parted.

It only lasted for a moment, and then it was my own face glaring back at me, my brows together, my lips pressed tight with displeasure.

Unacceptable face, I thought, both for my features and for the scowl on it.

“What’s the matter?” Mielle asked, coming back with a sleeping chemise. I shook my head, standing to allow her to put it on me.

“That mirror likes its tricks,” I told her, echoing Mrs. Howard’s words to me all those weeks ago, but I wondered. This felt less like a trick than a warning, and that was the thought I took with me into a deep and mercifully dreamless sleep.

Thirteen

Mielle woke me around ten, which seemed grossly unfair, and before I was quite awake, told me that Mrs. Howard wished to see me.

“So she made it back? Well, she can come look all she likes.”

“She has sent word that she is at her ladies’ club. You must be properly turned out when you meet her.”

Mielle said it like a command, and I allowed her to bundle me into a respectable steel-gray morning dress, tight through the sleeves with a stiff collar and bands of black ribbon across the bodice of the jacket. The row of tiny copper buttons at my wrist and the single one at my throat flashed lazily in the late-morning light, discreet fire. When I inspected my reflection in the mirror, the effect with the neat black boots had a faintly military air.

“Are you sending a message of some kind?” I asked, and her hands stilled where they smoothed down the fall of my skirts.

“Of course not,” she said. “Who would I be sending it to?”

“Anyone who sees me,” I responded. I caught her wrist, waited until she looked at me.

“Are you well?” I asked. “After last night. She shouldn’t have done that to you.”

For a moment, I thought she would not answer me, and then she dropped her eyes.

“She’s allowed.”