As was their habit, Misses Maybelle and Emily Vane slid out of their beds and into Miss Phoebe’s. Their afternoon had been tense and terrible, and nothing soothed a girl’s nerves quite like time with sisters most beloved.

Emily was the first to do so. After waiting anxiously for their shared lady’s maid to be quite finished with her—she was always last—she gathered up her night rail and scurried right across the hall. There, she declared, “I need help with my plait.”

Phoebe, halfway finished with her own, simply sighed in the way that sisters did when they wanted to pretend the thing they were asked to do was not as much of a pleasure as it really was. “Someday, you must do it on your own.”

Emily shook her head. Not tonight, she would not.

Maybelle joined them with her hair already finished, twirled up atop her head in a looping plait that kept her thick, mid-brown waves somewhat at bay.

“Ah,” she sighed, “last.”

Phoebe shrugged one shoulder, her fingers already twisting through Emily’s hair, while Maybelle tucked herself into the bed they would all inevitably share that night. “You know I had expected you both.”

“The servants gossip to Mama,” Maybelle returned. “I thought it was best to wait.”

“I did not,” Emily declared. After a pause, during which she decided she was finished with her hair before Phoebe actually was, she added in a softer tone, “I miss Sarah.”

Sarah was faster with plaits, for one. Her room was where they all typically hid, for another.

“She’s been gone for quite some time,” Maybelle soothed.

Well, that was true enough. There was the previous Lord Harrowby, and now the current Lord Harrowby. Emily wasn’t quite sure what she expected of her sister—a married woman, a widow, and now being courted again? Or engaged?

She sighed and sat heavily on the edge of the bed, then fell backwards atop Maybelle’s thighs. Sarah had always felt very, well, far from her, being her oldest sister and so much further along in her life. Her sister was on her way to a second husband, and she herself was not even out.

A hand settled on her forehead, and she swiftly looked up—only to find Maybelle’s ever-warm eyes on her. “We have all had a very long day, have we not?”

Phoebe slid under the covers beside Maybelle, scooting Emily out of the way with a gentle nudge of her foot that Emily would have called a kick had she been in less turmoiled spirits. “Not long enough. Had we given Lord Harrowby twenty-five instead of twenty-four hours…”

Emily huffed.

“We mustn’t put such stock in him,” Maybelle chided. “The last lord—”

“Did not look at Sarah like that.”

“—likely came from the very same conditions—”

“Which are not everything to a gentleman.”

“—and he did not endeavor to know us.”

Emily would have rathered listen to any conversation but this one. Sighing but receiving none of the attention she hoped to get from it, she sat up and crawled into bed on Maybelle’s other side.

“I like him,” she said. “He seems much gentler.”

“And handsomer,” Phoebe added. “The last one was rather…”

“Oh, don’t,” Maybelle sighed.

“Emaciated.”

“Frail.”

“Cold.”

“Brooding.”

“Distant.”

In a flash, Maybelle dragged the sheets up to cover all three of them, purposefully pressing them against her sisters’ mouths. “Yes, we all know the previous Lord Harrowby was a frigid excuse of a man who drained all light and life from our sister. He is gone. We do not speak ill of the dead. We also do not know the new Lord Harrowby.”

A pause.

Then, Phoebe said, “My first thought about him was that he is twice the man the last earl was—in size. Is that rather terrible?”

“Yes,” both Maybelle and Emily said at once.

They had each noticed that, though. It was absolutely not a thing one remarked upon, but in the confidence of sisters most beloved…

A thoughtful quiet settled over the girls. 

Emily was too young to awaken to certain feelings about the opposite sex—beyond whispers of wonders and a modicum of curiosity here or there. Certainly, she felt nothing for the stranger her sister had claimed would be their new brother-in-law, other than the fact that he seemed quite intent on saving all of them.

She did not dream of being saved, exactly. She did not dream of anything. Her life was as it was, and she did not know any different.

Even she could not deny the feeling of safety projected by the very large man who professed his care for them with actions, not words. Her own father never did such a thing in any meaningful way that she could recall.

Moreover, a tiny, fragile part of her she did not know existed until that afternoon only wanted…

Well, she wondered what a hug, a familial one, might feel like. She and her sisters embraced often. Her parents patted her head or held her elbow. But she thought of Lord Harrowby and all his stature, and she was alarmed by the instant thought that she wanted to fall against him and sob.

She rolled onto her side and reached over Maybelle to prod Phoebe. “Is all you have for him judgement?”

“Judgement? No, that was a compliment. He is both handsome and twice the man the late earl was.” Phoebe looked surprised. Then, curiously, she blushed and cleared her throat. “Perhaps the difference is what makes him so… I— Rather, he has a kindness about him.”

“Oh, please.”

“He does!” She insisted, but the color on her face drifted down her neck, too. Being older, Phoebe was quite voraciously aware of the broad strokes that made up the opposite sex. Emily had previously thought she only whispered to her, pointing out a gentleman’s stature or thighs or facial hair, to get a rise out of her.

But, oh, her sister was learning what she was attracted to.

Horrifying.

Emily hoped there was a long, long time before she ever faced that reality of womanhood.

In the face of not knowing what to say, anyone who knew Phoebe knew, she chose to instead say absolutely everything. “I only thought it was rather bold for a gentleman to be quite so large. He was imposing, standing near Father, was he not? One look at him, and— Well, I think anyone at all would have difficulty telling him no.”

Emily pursed her lips, filled her cheeks with air, and sighed. That time, Phoebe reached over to prod her, and she squirmed away. “I rather like men telling Father no.”

Maybelle made a noise in her quiet way, and she stared up at the eggshell-colored ceiling when she said, “I rather like how Sarah looks at him.”

Both Phoebe and Emily quieted, knowing Maybelle had more to say than just that, but also that she would not continue if she was interrupted.

“She loves him,” she concluded. “Truly. She never once looked at the late earl unless she had to, but Lord Harrowby… She looks because she is fond of doing so, because she is fond of him.”

Beneath the sheets, she found each of her sisters’ hands. Their fingers wound together and squeezed hard enough for their missing fourth. Deep down, they each hoped she felt it.

They each wanted that fondness for themselves, they knew, and they still held the hope that they would someday find it. For now, however, it was enough—more than enough—to tuck into bed with the knowledge that their sister loved and was loved.