Chapter Text
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A gallant bow. A disarming smile. A deep, unfamiliar voice asking, “Miss Sharma, may I be so bold as to claim your next dance?”
And just like that, Edwina Sharma dissolves into giggles.
“Edwina!” Kate scolds, straightening up from her perfectly sketched bow. She pulls back the hand she was holding out to her sister, crossing her arms across her nightgown instead. “I hope that is not how you intend to respond to the gentlemen in London.”
“If they sound like that it is!”
“I thought the voice was rather good actually.” Kate steps in closer, raising a roguish eyebrow as she tries again, murmuring, “Miss Sharma … meet me out on the terrace.”
“Unchaperoned?!” Edwina clutches her heart in mock distress. “Sir, I could not possibly!”
“Sir?” Kate scoffs, returning to her own voice. “For goodness sake, aim a little higher.”
“My lord, I–”
“Higher.”
“Your grace?”
“Better.”
“Ooh, what about – your Highness!”
“No,” Kate says firmly. “No, no, no.”
“Too high?” Edwina says, lapsing into giggles again. “You’re probably right. Although there was a prince on the marriage mart last year, or so I heard.”
“And I don’t doubt that you could catch a prince as easily as a pauper,” Kate says indulgently. And honestly too, for that matter. If there’s a man alive who doesn’t prefer Edwina above all others, she certainly hasn’t met him yet. “That’s not at all why I objected.”
“It’s my neck, isn’t it?” Edwina closes her hand lightly around her throat, tilting her head this way and that. “Go on, say it. It’s far too small to support the weight of the tiara.”
She suddenly drops her head over one shoulder, as if weighed down by some imaginary coronet.
“I think you’d look smashing in a tiara, actually,” Kate says, laughing as she cups Edwina’s cheeks and nudges her head back upright. “But then you look smashing in everything.”
It’s true. Even now, in a faded old nightdress, with her long hair falling loose and tangled around her shoulders, Edwina is still the prettiest girl that Kate has ever seen.
“You,” she says, releasing her with a fond pat on the cheek, “are going to break some hearts down in London, little sister.”
The trouble is, Kate is rather afraid that one of them will be hers.
She tries to steer her gaze away from the packed trunks waiting over Edwina’s shoulder, but it’s no use. They seem to follow her around, lurking in the corner of her eye no matter where she looks, a solid, immovable reminder that everything in their lives is about to change. For better or worse, for richer or poorer – most likely rather literally.
Once Edwina marries, which she’s sure to do, there’s a good chance that she will never set foot in this room again. And even if she does, even if by some miracle she marries someone who lives near enough to visit, things won’t ever be the same. Tonight is the last night they’ll ever practice their dance steps quite like this – swishing their nightgowns across the old creaking floorboards beneath the window, with the moon as their chandelier.
Tomorrow, the gowns will be real.
And Edwina will have other dance partners.
Impulsively, Kate pulls her into a tight, bone-crushing hug.
“I forbid you to marry a prince,” she says, her voice thick with all the tears she absolutely will not let herself cry. “Because then he’d take you away to some far flung castle on the continent where the post takes an age to reach you and I’d – I’d simply miss you far too much.’
“I’m sure I could spare you a tower or two,” Edwina jokes weakly, “as often as your husband allowed you a visit.” She clutches Kate a little tighter. “Which had better be very often indeed.”
Kate rolls her eyes over Edwina’s shoulder, glad she can’t be observed. “My husband,” she mutters. “Of course.”
Edwina grumbles a vaguely disapproving sound. “Oh, Kate,” she says softly, pulling back to peer up at her, her big brown eyes growing wide and round in that way that Kate can never quite resist. It always feels like she’s looking right into her soul and what’s worse, right now it feels like she doesn’t much like what she’s seeing. “You will … try, won’t you? When we get to London, I mean. This season is supposed to be for the both of us, you know.”
“Of course I’ll try,” Kate says, shame creeping along her spine at how easily the lie falls from her lips by now. “Of course I will.”
Edwina only smiles faintly, her eyes narrowing slightly.
“What?”
“I’m trying to decide if I believe you.”
Kate snorts a laugh, despite herself. “And?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I’ve been learning my dances, have I not?” Kate says, gesturing to the candlesticks arranged on the floor to stand in for the other two partners in their quartet. “Does that not count as trying?”
“I suppose so,” Edwina allows. She dips into a perfect curtsy, offering her hand. “Shall we try the cotillion again?”
“Better had,” Kate mutters, eyeing her candlestick partner ruefully. “I still cannot get the turns right.”
“You will,” Edwina says, cheerful as always.
She begins to move through the steps, each movement crisp and perfectly timed, while Kate counts her paces in her head and tries – unsuccessfully – not to look down at her feet. Her turns are still as clumsy as ever and the tune she hums to keep herself in time isn’t particularly tuneful at all, but even so, as she spins across her childhood bedroom with her sister’s hand clasped tightly in hers, Kate can’t shake the feeling that no London ballroom will ever quite compare.
Unless…
No, she tells herself, shutting her imagination down before it can run away with itself. Don’t be daft.
She is not going to be whisked off her feet by some handsome stranger. It’s far more likely that the gentlemen of the London ton will be old and snobbish and dreadfully, painfully dull.
And the ones that aren’t – well, they certainly won’t be looking her way.
“Anyway,” Edwina says the next time they come together, her speculative tone cutting into Kate’s slightly depressing train of thought, “perhaps we’re looking at this all wrong. Perhaps you won’t need to try at all.”
“I–” Distracted, Kate kicks over her candlestick. “Whatever do you mean?”
“I certainly don’t mean your dancing,” Edwina says, letting out the musical little laugh that never fails to make Kate smile, even when she’s laughing at her. “I mean courtship. Romance. Love. I think … when it’s right, it ought to be effortless. Don’t you?”
“I think,” Kate says carefully, “that that’s a rather optimistic outlook.”
Somehow Edwina even makes a shrug look graceful. “I’m rather an optimistic person. But I don’t mean to say that it would always be easy–”
“Loving me certainly wouldn’t be,” Kate mutters, joking and not really joking all at once.
“But worth it,” Edwina says sharply. “I should know. So I’ll thank you to stop putting yourself down, Kate. Any man in England would be lucky to have you.” She lifts her hands to her head, miming handing over a crown. “Or any prince from any country in the whole wide world for that matter!”
“Oh, Edwina.” Kate sighs, her lips curling into a small, fond smile. “You are so sweet.”
“And you’re too sharp,” Edwina says, softening her scolding with a grin. “But I suppose that’s my point really.”
“You have a point?” Kate teases, skipping out of the way of the smack that Edwina tries to give her.
“My point,” Edwina grinds out with exaggerated slowness, “is that the right gentleman won’t mind all your … prickly edges.”
“My prickly–”
“Or all your blasted interruptions...”
Kate laughs. “He sounds like a saint.”
Edwina rolls her eyes to the ceiling. “He’d have to be, wouldn’t he? To put up with you.” She takes Kate’s hand again, her amusement quickly fading into something else – something earnest and rather fierce. “But don’t you see? He’ll want to put up with you. He won’t want you to be someone you’re not–”
“Someone who knows how to dance, for instance.”
“Precisely,” Edwina says, humming a laugh as she moves out of the way of one of Kate’s wayward turns. “When you meet him, he’ll just want you to be ... you.”
“When?” Kate says, the question escaping before she can stop it. “Not if?”
“Yes.” Edwina’s tone brooks no further argument. No further discussion. “When.”
A half-forgotten ache unfurls in Kate’s chest – longing, she realises, missing yet another step as the feeling settles over her heart, heavy and strange and oddly sweet, in a way. It’s such a silly, childish idea – that there’s really someone out there in the world waiting just for her, without even knowing it. Someone who will look at her too long legs and her awkward, pointy elbows and her many, many opinions, and like her for them, not despite. Someone who won’t mind if she steps on his feet when they’re dancing.
If she was being sensible, she’d have to accept that such a person probably does not exist.
But then again, there’s nothing very sensible about dancing barefoot with an unlit candlestick for a partner and so just for now, just until the dance ends, Kate decides to let herself believe in silly, impossible things like falling in love.
“Very well,” she says quietly. “When.”
And with that, she promptly claps a hand over her mouth and bursts out laughing.
“What?” Edwina says, stuttering to a stop. “What’s so funny about that?”
“I just–” Kate stifles another giggle, amusement making her steps light, almost graceful for once. “I almost feel sorry for the poor chap, that’s all.” She grins wickedly, spinning into one perfectly flawless turn at long last. “He really won’t know what hit him.”
Edwina’s smile is just as wide. And just as wicked. “Ah, but neither will you, Kate.”
Kate scoffs. “We’ll see.”
“Yes,” Edwina says, with rather unladylike relish. “I rather think we will.”
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