A Rose for Beauty

Chapter 2

   The news broke on a sunny day in late summer. Lydia thought later that the weather was completely inappropriate for the devastation that descended on them – you don't expect to have your entire life destroyed when birds are trilling in the bushes out the window, after all. Maybe on a gray day, with clouds and fog, it would have fit: or when a storm thrust the sun into blackness, complete with lightning, thunder, and pelting rain. Then they might almost have seen it coming.

   There were nothing but blue skies that day, though; Anna was having her wedding dress fitted for the third time. It had to be altered every time a new fashion swept through town, as Anna would stand for nothing less than the most current and modish gown for her wedding day. Lydia had been roped into attending every single one of the fitting sessions, somehow, as well as the appointments with the florists, the bakers, the musicians, the milliner, and many more details of planning than she would have thought necessary for something as fundamentally straightforward as a wedding ceremony. She couldn't tell if Anna truly wanted her present or just wished to increase the size of her audience.

   Clara was there as well, of course; she wouldn't miss it. As children, Lydia and Clara had been best friends - the two youngest children in a large family, they were playmates and companions since their infancy. When Clara reached about fifteen, however, that all changed. She turned away from her younger sister and started trying to emulate her elder, and she had been trying to live up to Anna ever since. No wonder, then, that Clara stood nearby, gushing over the new placement of ribbons and seams, while Lydia sat by the window, staring at the birds and the sun outside.

   “Lydia? Lydia!” Anna called. “Which of these laces look finer to you?”

   She sighed, giving the robins in the garden one last longing glance before rising from the window-seat and going to inspect the trims. Why did Anna insist on her participating this way? She obviously didn't appreciate her opinion. Anything Lydia favored, Anna rejected. She had started to wonder if she was actually doing it deliberately – if her sister thought she had such bad taste that she could be counted on to unerringly select the worst option.

   She dragged her feet a little as she went glumly over to the tray where Anna had laid out the three options. It was worse than she had feared, she realized. All three laces looked almost identical, and she felt certain it was a trap of some sort.

Anna looked at her expectantly, and Lydia extended her hand hesitantly to the lace in the middle.“This one?”

Anna blinked in polite surprise, her eyebrows arching in a graceful query. “That one?”

Just then the door opened with a hasty bang, and all three of them turned in surprise to see who had entered so loudly. It was Jenny, the housemaid, with flushed cheeks and her white cap awry on her dark curls.

Anna was the first to recover, masking her start with a cool demeanor. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Jenny,” Lydia said, concerned. “Whatever is the matter?”

“Oh, Miss,” she gasped, her face flushed. “It's the Master. He ordered me to come and fetch you. Most urgent, he said.”

Lydia was stunned and not a little intrigued to think that whatever the hubbub was, that it could have anything to do with her. “Me?”

Jenny shook her head, tucking a frazzled wisp of hair back into her cap. “All of you, Miss. Fetch Miss Hartford, Miss Clara, and Miss Lydia, he said, and bring them to the library. And if you don't mind my saying so, Miss, you'd best head there quick. John's been sent to find your brothers and there's all manner of to-do downstairs.”

The three girls looked at each other, momentarily paralyzed. As always, Anna moved first, snapping at the seamstress to get her out of her dress.

Clara turned to Lydia, her face pale. “Do you think something's happened to Father? You know he hasn't been himself lately.”