A Rose for Beauty

Chapter 1

Cover art: "The Soul of the Rose" by J. W. Waterhouse.

A Rose for Beauty

by Carolyn Lorelle

     Lydia Hartford sighed, fidgeting with the long string of pearls twisted to drape in a double row around her neck. The music from the manor drifted out over the lawn and into the gardens where she sat, along with the laughter and muffled conversation of the party-goers inside. She wondered how long it would be before her sisters found her this time. They seemed to think that it was a terrible disgrace if she was not constantly on display with them when they threw an event. Never mind that she did not enjoy the stuffy, lavish balls and extravagant dinners. No matter that no one even spoke to her except out of constrained politeness – or with an eye to securing her massive dowry. 

  She frowned at that unwelcome thought. Not one man at these affairs had ever truly looked at her and seen her for herself. When she was not being eyed like some valuable acquisition to be taken by clever maneuvering, she was either the daughter of a wealthy merchant who might be generous with his fortune and favor, or the younger sister of glittering young men and women who might do the same.

   Lydia sighed again, carefully tucking her feet up on the bench beside her and easing her body farther into the rose-covered alcove where she sat, hoping to delay discovery at least a little longer. Her brothers and sisters were terribly free with her father's money. They never had a whim but that it was satisfied, and generously, and they waved aside any mention of the expense.

   “What on earth can you be thinking of?” Anna had said just that morning, when Lydia had questioned her order that all the carefully arranged lilies be disposed of and replaced with new displays filled with orchids. “Money? How vulgar. Whatever it costs – and I care not – we simply cannot have lilies at our ball tonight. Elizabeth Strafford had lilies at her dinner-party yesterday and it just won't do to have the same flowers here. Now that would be vulgar!” She laughed, and swept off without so much as a backwards glance, leaving Lydia to hide her clenched fists in her skirts. Anna was seven years the elder of the two, and she wore the superiority of her status as eldest daughter like a coronet.

   Ordinarily, Lydia had to admit, she wouldn't have given much thought to the amount they were spending, either, but she had caught their father in a few unguarded moments, of late, and he seemed to have some great worry weighing on his mind. It made her feel unsettled. None of her brothers or sisters frequented the library, but Lydia often went to enjoy the solitude and read in the comfortable, just-this-side of shabby chairs that were tucked here and there about the stacks. It was one of her father's favorite places, too, and for as long as she could remember the two of them had met in the library now and again, both to discuss books and to read in companionable silence. Recently, though, whenever Lydia entered her father would excuse himself distractedly and exit as quickly as he could manage without being downright rude. Something had to be wrong.

   Looking about her cautiously, she decided that no one was going to discover her at present. Lydia began undoing the buttons on her right glove – it reached up to her bicep, and the kidskin wouldn't peel off unless she undid a few – until she could slip her arm out. Tucking it in her waistband to avoid losing it and having Anna scold her for ruining the ball, she reached her bare hand towards the climbing roses and pulled the head of one blossom off of its stem. She carried the rose furtively to the edge of an ornamental fishpond and bent to float it on the water before taking up a pinch of the soil nearby and tossing it in as well. She blew onto the still surface of the pond until it rippled, bobbing the rose up and down, and then she whispered.

  “Aperi!” Reveal it to me.

   The answer to her unvoiced question floated to her ears like the breeze sighing. “Wait.”