Sommer Steppe - October 9, 1777.

  Not a single draft filtered through the bedchamber. It was a cozy fortress. A prison of pillows and rugs. Any cold spot that could be found was thoroughly dampened by the heat emanating from Lady Elmira Sommer’s grand fireplace. The only room in Sommer Steppe amply supplied with wood and coal as it was needed. They couldn’t risk her catching a chill.

  Lady Elmira shoved at her thick bedding, pushing it well below her waist with a frustrated squeal. She then grabbed the neckline of her nightgown to flutter it against her chest to allow fresh air to brush at her skin.

  “My lady, you really mustn’t do that,” Victoria chided her young mistress, not for the first time as she set aside the gloves she’d been embroidering on the windowsill.

  “I’m old enough to know when it’s too hot,” Lady Elmira complained. Victoria didn’t blame her. There was a fine line between pleasantly warm and insufferably stuffy. The doctor’s orders to keep her room as hot as possible seemed absolutely mad. Still, he must know what he was doing. Victoria would have a word with him later, once her lady retired for the evening to see if anything else could be done. For her part, she was almost equally as uncomfortable as her mistress.

  “I don’t wish to argue,” Victoria said, trying to make the best of the situation, “not tonight.” She was happy to be a lady’s maid, truly. She was not, however, fond of acting the part of a grown woman’s mother. Lady Elmira was far too old for a nanny. Victoria was constantly reminding her to act her age as politely and firmly as she could. She was the only person in the girl’s life who would even bother.

  “Victoria,” Lady Elmira protested, when Victoria stood up from her chair and quickly came to her side to rearrange the bedding once more.

  Exasperated, the lady’s maid firmly pressed thick blankets into her mistress’s sides, “please, my lady, do not make me the villain tonight.”

  “You make yourself the villain!” Lady Elmira snapped, banging her fists on her elegantly embroidered quilt. Even so, she did not make another attempt to push it away.

  “You are eighteen,” Victoria pointed out, “nearly nineteen. You would have had your debut this season, had you listened to Doctor Prattel. Now you are here in bed, and instead of enjoying the refreshments offered to lady’s maids at the ball, I am keeping you company. I hardly think I deserve this treatment.”

  Lady Elmira worried at her bottom lip, fingers twisting around the edge of her quilt.

  “You know that isn’t true. If I wasn’t sick, I’d still be stuck here,” she murmured, turning her head to look towards the shuttered bedroom windows, “I can’t even walk. Father would never let me go.”

  A pang of guilt stabbed at Victoria’s chest, “I wish you would stop claiming such things. His lordship cares for you very much and would like to see you happy, just as the rest of us would. Now,” she said, more gently, “if you can try to rest, I will remain here at your side. My lady, the sooner you are well, the sooner we can allow the room to cool. The sooner we can go outside and enjoy the gardens. Wouldn’t you like that?”

  Victoria left the bed and sat back down at the wooden chair she’d placed beside the grand window of Lady Elmira’s chambers, less than a few feet away.

  “By then,” Victoria continued, snatching up her embroidery, “these gloves will be done. Wouldn’t you like to wear them on our next visit to the city?” She smoothed her fingers over the delicate green linework she’d woven expertly into white. Fresh rose vines. She’d save the flowers for last. The thorns were almost real enough to prick skin. Victoria rather admired her own skill. Of course, it would never compare to her mother’s. It was difficult to bite back those bitter thoughts when they surfaced.

  “Yes,” Lady Elmira replied, then paused thoughtfully. She turned on her side with some effort to face Victoria, and reached out with one delicate hand, “I want them now, actually.”

  “They aren’t done.”

  “Well, let me see them.”

  “Not yet. You know the rule,” Victoria told her with a firm tone, though a soft smile played on her lips.

  “Victoria.”

  “No.”

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  “Victoria.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Victoria,” Lady Elmira drew out her name, fully reverting to the age of nine or maybe ten.

  Victoria lowered the gloves to her lap, attempting a very firm expression. It was hard to play the stalwart lady’s maid at all hours of the day. She was human too.

  “My lady,” she said, very calmly, “if I hand you these gloves, I will never touch them again. You will wear an unfinished work of art. You may very well spend the rest of your days longing to see what they may have become. My needle will never again touch this fabric. Are you prepared for that consequence?” She was being just a tad dramatic, but the exchange between had become a bit of a game now.

  Lady Elmira nodded resolutely “Yes,” she insisted, the fingers of her outstretched hand wiggling emphatically.

  “Truly?” Victoria asked.

  “Give!”

  Victoria tugged her needle and thread through one last loop on the gloves. As she reached towards the windowsill to snatch up a pair of scissors, she asked one more time, “are you sure? You wouldn’t like perhaps one or two more roses or vines, maybe beneath the wrist?” She hovered with the scissors in her hand, allowing her lady one final chance to change her mind and learn the virtue of patience.

  “Enough talk, I order you to tie it off and hand me my gift!” Lady Elmira commanded. She wiggled her fingers impatiently for emphasis.

  “Really, my lady,” Victoria said, feigning disappointment as she wrapped up the last knot and cleanly cut the thread. “You are incorrigible. I can’t say I recall one thing I’ve been able to properly finish for you. If Mrs. Pragajh allowed you in the kitchens, I worry you’d eat the eggs raw before she’s had the chance to so much as boil a pudding.”

  “I don’t like eggs, Victoria. Besides, these gloves are finished,” Lady Elmira replied haughtily. She snatched the gloves from Victoria’s grasp. “You just never know when to quit,” she added, “you don’t have my discerning eye.”

  Unable to formulate a response, Victoria chose to remain silent. She cast her gaze towards the window and peered into the dying light of the early evening. This was the absolute best view in the entire manor. The lady’s bedroom looked right out into the gardens. They may not have been as impressive as a larger estate, but were lovingly tended to and cared for. One couldn’t help but find joy in the sight. Beyond the gardens, she could see the estate’s sparse cobblestone path that hadn’t been properly covered in several years. At the very edge of that path, the gates of Sommer Steppe stood.

  If she squinted, she could make out a glimmering ember of the lanterns at the gates. Thomas, the stableboy, was likely standing there right now. Waiting for their master, Lord Albert Sommer. The Baron of Whitley. More and more these days, he kept later hours.

  “We should take a ride to the village together soon,” Lady Elmira remarked, wriggling her fingers in her new gloves. It was a good hour or so before she tired of admiring them. She gushed over how pretty the vines were, and how it would complement her eyes.

  “I have such lovely eyes, Victoria. All the ton will likely comment on them once I properly debut,” she said, batting her eyelashes and tugging at the fingers of her gloves.

  Though Victoria did not entirely disagree that her lady had lovely green eyes, she bemoaned the fact that very few of the girl’s etiquette lessons seemed to have been taken very well. Humility was not a virtue she had ever demonstrated. In Lady Elmira’s eyes, denying her own beauty was in fact the gravest sin.

  “Not to mention my honey blonde hair,” the lady added drowsily, nestling her head into her pillow after placing the gloves on a bedside table.

  “Honey blonde?” Victoria asked in a soft tone, standing up from her chair and straightening her ash gray skirt, “last week wasn’t it golden blonde? Did it change?” She approached the bed to grab the gloves and put them away properly.

  Lady Elmira closed her eyes, waving an arm, “no, I had some honey with my tea and realized that word was far more accurate. Honey blonde. Then there’s my alabaster skin, of course.” She stifled a yawn, “my dance card would have been too full to know where to begin if I hadn’t gotten sick.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Victoria agreed, smoothing out the quilt over Lady Elmira’s bed with her free hand, “you’d have been the cause of so many fights and broken hearts. Society is truly unfortunate today. Next season will be so much better.”

  There was no reply. She’d finally fallen asleep, and so Victoria could at the very least stretch her legs and fetch something to eat. It had been a long day. She walked over to Lady Elmira’s vanity on the wall opposite her bed and placed the gloves alongside an old, but ornate powder box. Perhaps tomorrow she would lace green ribbons in Lady Elmira’s hair to match her new gift.

  Giving the room one last glance over to make sure everything was in its proper place, Victoria pulled open the bedroom door and extinguished the handful of candles in the bedchamber that added to the glow of the fireplace. Best not to waste them.

  She silently closed the door behind her. Few candles had been lit in the hall sconces. They were rationing these days. One hardly noticed the tiny indulgences in life until they were gone. The cook, Mrs. Pragajh, who also handled the duties of a housekeeper, did what she could to ensure their nights were not entirely dark. Even so, late evenings always put Victoria’s mind on edge. She wasn’t at all superstitious, mind you, but it was hard not to at least entertain the idea of ghosts in a place like Sommer Steppe.

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