Aleatha smiled lazily at the mirror and allowed the nightdress to slip to the floor. The mirror was rapturous in its comments.
“You were looking for Paithan?” she reminded her sister. “He flew into his room like a bat from the deep, dressed in his lawn suit, and flew out. I think he’s gone to Lord Durndrun’s. I was invited, but I don’t know if I shall go or not. Paithan’s friends are such bores.”
“This family is falling apart!” Calandra pressed her hands together. “Father sending for a human priest! Paithan a common tramp, caring for nothing except roaming! You! You’ll end up pregnant and unwed and likely hang yourself like poor Lucillia.”
“Oh, hardly, Callie, dear,” said Aleatha, kicking aside the nightdress with her foot. “Hanging oneself takes such a lot of energy.” Admiring her slender body in the mirror, which admired it right back, she frowned, reached out and rang a bell made out of the shell of the egg of the carol bird. “Where is that maid of mine? Worry less about your family, Callie, and more about the servants. I never saw a lazier lot.”
“It’s my fault!” Calandra sighed and clasped her hands together tightly, pressing them against her lips. “I should have made Paithan go to school. I should have supervised you and not let you run wild. I should have stopped Father in this nonsense of his. But who would have run the business? It was sliding when I took it over! We would have been ruined! Ruined! If it had been left up to Father-”
The maid hurried into the room.
“Where have you been?” asked Aleatha sleepily.
“I’m sorry, mistress! I didn’t hear you ring.”
“Well, I did. But you should know when I want you. Lay out the blue. I’m staying home this darktime. No, don’t. Not the blue. The green with the moss roses. I think I’ll attend Lord Durndrun’s outing, after all. Something amusing might occur. If nothing else, I can at least torment the baron, who’s simply dying of love for me. Now, Callie, what’s this about a human priest? Is he good looking?”
Calandra gave a strangled sob and clenched her teeth over the handkerchief. Aleatha glanced at her. Accepting the flimsy robe the maid draped over her shoulders, Thea crossed the room to stand behind her sister. Aleatha was as tall as Calandra, but her figure was soft and curved where her sister’s was bony and angular. Masses of ashen hair framed Aleatha’s face and tumbled down her back and around her shoulders. The elfmaid never “dressed” her hair as was the style. Like the rest of Aleatha, her hair was always disheveled, always looked as it’she had just risen from her bed. She laid soft hands on her sister’s quivering shoulders.
‘The hour flower has closed its petals on those times, Callie. Keep longing uselessly for it to open again and you’ll soon be insane as Father, if Mother had lived, things might have been different”-Aleatha’s voice broke, she drew nearer her sister- “but she didn’t. And that’s that,” she added, with a shrug of her perfumed shoulders. “You did what you had to do, Callie. You couldn’t let us starve.”
“I suppose you’re right,” said Calandra briskly, recalling that the maid was in the room and not wanting their affairs discussed in the servant’s hall. She straightened her shoulders and smoothed out imaginary wrinkles from her stiff, starched skirts. “So you won’t be in to dinner?”
“No, I’ll tell the cook, if you like. Why don’t you come to Lord Durndrun’s, Sister?” Aleatha walked to the bed, where her maid was laving out silken undergarments. “Randolphus will be there. He’s never married, you know, Callie. You broke his heart.”
“Broke his purse is more like it,” said Calandra severely, looking at herself in the mirror, patting her hair where a few wisps had come undone, and stabbing the three lethal combs back into place. “He didn’t want me, he wanted the business,”
“Perhaps.” Aleatha paused in her dressing, the purple eyes going to the mirror and meeting the reflected eyes of her sister. “But he would have been company for you, Callie. You’re alone too much.”