Mabel glanced from one dress laid out for Hazel's consideration to another. Her sister's deliberations were taking entirely too much time, when in her mind, the decision was as clear as day.

The first dress was of an antique shade of white, with a golden ribbon worked through under the breast and a matching hem. Silk roses along the collar softened the line, cuddling to Hazel's swan-like neck.

The second gown, blue and shot through with silver thread, was borrowed from her wardrobe. It was as hopelessly uninteresting as the day she wore it to the ball.

No contest, but if Hazel was blind to the obvious, and with the wedding a mere day away, she had to rise to her sisterly duty. "Why ever don't you wear your pink gown? It's the prettiest of them all, and Mr. Aldington adored it at Chesterton's ball."

Hazel's gaze circled the room, before stopping on the dresses again. She swallowed once, twice, as if she were choking. "Please, don't mention the Chestertons, I beg you."

"This is unbearable." Mabel jumped from her window seat, newly out of patience with Hazel. "I am going to ask Mother to come here, because I am confounded and utterly useless."

"No!" Hazel exclaimed with so much vigour that Mabel froze on the spot. "Don't call for Mother."

"Hazel, you act as if I offered to push you out of the window." She was tempted, but she doubted Hazel had noticed it.

"Don't call Mother," Hazel repeated, as if their mother was some monster.

Mabel's mouth opened in protest, but Hazel paid no heed. She whirled away from the two contesting dresses to dive inside the wardrobe.

"There is nothing left inside it worthy of the occasion." Mabel frowned, suspecting that her fashionable sister already knew it and wanted something else. What could be hiding in their wardrobe? With a resigned sigh, she prepared to wait some more. She did little else all afternoon and all her life. And even after waiting so diligently, she'd missed what she wanted anyway. Everett was gone. Radcliffe was gone. Hazel was getting married. She was utterly alone.

Hazel emerged from her rummaging not with a dress, but with a lockbox. She unlocked it with a miniature key, attached by a pin to her belt. Inside the box was a diary. Hazel ripped a couple of pages out of it, taking a particular care that the rips would be unnoticeable. Then she touched the pages to the candle flame—still mystifyingly silent.

The flames leapt up greedily to consume paper and reached for Hazel's fingers.

"Hazel!"

Hazel startled, gingerly stuffed the burning paper into the chamber pot and stuck the burned finger into her mouth.

After this flurry of activity, she just stood there, watching the paper fall into ash.

"Hazel? Is something wrong?"

Hazel stared at the ashes as if it was the only thing in the world worth her attention. "Mabel, if a man is of exemplary behaviour, how do you suppose he should know if he is marrying a virginal bride?"

The weight in Mabel's stomach grew so heavy that she forgot to be ashamed of the subject. She shifted to dislodge it, but it squeezed air out of her. A bride who wasn't virginal. Merciful Heavens, not a bride. The bride. How could she? How could he?

"Hazel," she whispered, sick with premonition. "Hazel, what have you done?"

Tears glistened in Hazel's eyes before she buried her face in Mabel's shoulder.

Mabel ran her fingers through her sister's hair, waiting for sobs to subside. It didn't decrease her dread by an ounce. The sorry truth looked her in the face, but she didn't want to believe a single word Hazel breathed into her neck. This had to be a nightmare.

"I..." Hazel hiccuped and repeated 'I', then hiccuped again. Her voice pitched higher with a stubborn resolve to push past the obstruction. "That night Mr. Chesterton stayed... I went to see him... To make sure he didn't need anything—"

"Alone?" Mabel squealed a useless question. From all men in their parish, Everett was the most unsuitable candidate for a solitary visit. How could she? "What madness had possessed you?"

"I wouldn't have done it, if you didn't run out to see him every night," Hazel said bitterly, hiccups magically gone.

Mabel's jaw slacked. "You don't understand—"

Red splotches in Hazel's cheeks flashed brighter. "Oh, don't bother denying it! I've seen you, and I've seen him kiss you that morning!"

Everett kissed her that morning, yes. Right after he... How could he? She wanted to retch, but alas, her stomach was empty. Her hand flew to her mouth to stem off the dry heaving. Somehow Hazel put her on the defensive too.

"I didn't talk to him until that morning, I swear! I just went to watch him swim from a distance." Which was shameful behaviour, but sounded like a trifle thing now, next to Hazel's fall out of grace.

Hazel must have felt the same way, because she huffed like a smith's bellows before crying out, "Well, I didn't know that! I was too cowardly to follow you."

Not too cowardly to see a strange man alone. Mabel held the rebuke back, because Hazel hung her head, biting her lips. "I should have guessed that you are not so much of a fool as I am, but I didn't mean to do anything bad, I swear!"

"But you did." It wasn't a question. She knew it before Hazel even confessed that she ruined herself, that she... that he...

"Yes, I did do it." The fervour of that statement didn't last long. Next, Hazel was mumbling again, deflated. "He looked to be in pain, and so forlorn."

"Forlorn," Mabel repeated stupidly, for she didn't know the word. Forlorn. She couldn't imagine Everett forlorn. Infuriating, dastardly, and vile--yes. Absolutely vile! A cad. But forlorn? The epithet was more fitting for Radcliffe.

"Yes, forlorn." Anger flashed in Hazel's eyes. "I knew you wouldn't understand."

"You are mistaken." Mabel touched her sister's cold hand. She despised Everett, but she understood how dangerously alluring he was. The memory of his kiss revolted her, yet how he kissed! How he kissed...

Hazel shrugged, the fight leaving her again. "My heart went out to him, and I couldn't help but kiss him in consolation. He held me so tight to him, and whispered all those things... things you wouldn't believe, and that I cannot repeat without it falling flat."

What things? Mabel wondered, for she doubted that Everett confronted Hazel the way he did her.

"It was what I wanted to hear. What anyone wants to hear, Mabel! Then what cannot be mended had happened between us."

Nobody would conspire to hold her close and whisper sweet persuasions into her ear. She got but hasty leftovers, the afterthought of spent passions. Bitterness froze her, just like when she stood as a helpless spectator at the edge of the ballroom, watching Everett and Hazel dance in the glowing lights. Where she agonized over a single kiss, he must have kissed Hazel endlessly. A pang of shame went through her. She couldn't envy--envy!--Hazel her ruinous seduction. How could she? No honest woman wants that, the crumpled skirts, being plucked in the heat of the moment... But she just couldn't help it. She got hasty leftovers, the afterthoughts of spent passion. Men always loved someone like Hazel, bright and pretty.

She paced, wringing her hands. "Oh, Hazel, what should we do?!"

Hazel's rounded eyes wouldn't leave her face, egging her on.

"What should we say to Mr. Aldington?"

A little anguished cry was the only response, not that she expected one.

"And the wedding... Mother's heart would break! Oh, Lord, forgive us for our weak and sinful nature."

Hazel slumped against the wall. "Lord forgive us," she murmured barely audibly.

"Maybe I can ride to Miss Carter for advice. She must know what we should do—"

Hazel's back snapped straight and eyes flashed wildly with black fire. "No, Mabel," she snapped, "no, you little fool!"

Mabel startled amid her panicked rambling. "Well, you're awfully rude, my dear." And in no position to be rude.

Hazel had the grace to blush.

"Sorry," she muttered, but her heart wasn't in that apology. She went on with far more passion: "Mabel, Mabel, listen! I've kept your secret, so now you must promise to keep mine. It's only fair!"

Mabel blinked. "But even if I conceal it, whatever are you going to do? Surely, you cannot marry Mr. Aldington?"

"Surely, I can."

"It would be..." she stammered. What would it be?

"Improper?" Hazel supplied with a foxy smile. "Dishonest?"

She yanked the pristine white gown off the bed and lay it against her body. Save for the high colour from the tears, neither her face, nor her willowy figure looked different for being soiled by a man. The fabric flowed modestly all the way down to the ankles and didn't reveal the cleavage. Mabel would have thought a fallen woman... nevermind what she would have thought! She thought wrong. Hazel looked no different than she did before Mabel knew the damning truth.

"Even if Mr. Aldington isn't as perfect a gentleman as I hold him to be," Hazel continued thoughtfully, "he's not a merchant to run to the magistrates complaining that he'd been swindled with the spoiled goods."

"Hazel..." Mabel gasped. She had never heard her sister speak like that. She had never heard anyone speak like that. Pity for the unfortunate gentleman prickled her heart.

A dreamy smile played on Hazel's face, out of nowhere. "All the best ladies in London have lovers, like Lady Hamilton or Lady Lamb."

"They live from scandal to scandal, and we're not in London."

Hazel twirled before the mirror. "Pooh! We could have been. If Father wasn't so thrifty, we could have gone for at least one season. One season, Mabel, just one! That's all I begged for. But no, we couldn't."

Mabel frowned. "If this happened in London, the whole world would have known of your shame."

"It would never have happened in London." Hazel's face pinched. "I could have married someone of quality, an Earl or a Baronet! Alas, our parents' only ambition is to see me marry Mr. Aldington, and you marry Dr. Berkshire. Then our lives will be so very nice and so very boring."

Mabel wanted to object, but once Hazel mentioned Dr. Berkshire, a resentful sigh stifled all her arguments. There was a grain of truth in Hazel's words, perhaps more than a grain. But what Hazel did and what she was about to do, was abhorrent to her.

"What if there is a child?" she asked. "Hazel, what if there is a child?"

"A baby?" Hazel tilted her head to one shoulder, tightening the dress round her tiny waist. "I hope there will be, to remind me that I protested, even a little, against my dreary fate. A baby with black curls, that would be pretty."

"Did Mr. Chesteron give you these strange ideas?"

Hazel looked at her curiously. "Maybe he did, but do you think one can put an entirely new idea into someone's head, if it wasn't there already? I think not."

A dull ache built up behind Mabel's temples. "I wish you didn't tell me, Hazel, if you didn't want to tell anyone. Why did you just have to tell me?"

"Oh, but I had to tell someone! I had to! And for all your being a silly goose, I love nobody more than you." Hazel opened her arms and they leaned into each-other, mixing sobs. What else was there to do?

"And I wanted you to forgive me," Hazel sniffled. "I would die if you don't forgive me." Her pink nose twitched prettily. Even this was unfair.

"What is there for me to forgive?"

"You were always in love with him. And he wanted you, I truly think so. Or someone like you."

Mabel tossed her head. "Horse feathers."

"Men always want someone like you." Hazel extracted a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed Mabel's eyes. "Or at least interesting men do."

"I've just thought exactly the same about you. Perhaps, no matter how we are, we always think that men cannot love us."

Hazel squeezed her into another hug. "Perhaps it's true. Otherwise, why would they need so much persuasion to marry us?"

If it was true of Everett, it couldn't be true of everyone else. "I'd rather not believe it of all men."

Hazel chuckled wetly. "Don't you dare mention Aldington."

"I won't."

She also half-sniffled, half-chortled, then sobbed, then wept. Hazel wept with her. It was unfair that it hurt so much to lose her last illusions; she had so few left.

After a great deal of crying, Hazel lifted her face to drown Mabel in her gaze, pupils widened into ink puddles from tears. "You won't tell anyone, promise?"

They had the same eyes, Hazel and Edward and Hugh. She'd never told Papa about the boys skipping their lessons. And if Hazel looked at Mr. Aldington like that, he'd be lucky to remember anything between saying his vows and the end of the honeymoon. He would be much happier for it too, than for knowing the truth. In fact, everyone was always happier with the lies, while the truth upset a great deal of people.

Mabel slowly nodded, committing herself to lying in the Lord's church. Everything else seemed too cruel, and love was a cruel Mistress already. She would never love again she decided. Would never let anyone crush her heart, if there was a shard big enough left to break. Everett did too thorough a job out of it.