Though I try to keep my spirits up, I’m not sure if I send Violet home with a smile. Some days just feel like weeks and it’s not even suppertime yet. At the least, I do send her home with a hug and more kind words of thanks.

Cyril is in the sitting room to save me from myself when I go through. Sunlight still falls through from the cold sky, three o’clock or so. It seems to darken with every minute around this time. These wintry days, it’s either overcast and cold, or sunny and icy cold, and today is the latter. Even dressed warmly as I am, I sit near to the fire.

Really, today was so great I shouldn’t be able to stop smiling, and yet I’m like this.

“How did things go?”

It’s a simple question, asked in Cyril’s voice that has a rumble to it despite not being the deepest of voices. A voice suited to poetry reading, I think, that thought amusing me in the mild way such thoughts do.

“Well. As near to perfect as I could ask for,” I say, my own voice quiet.

Poor Ellie, she had phones and such that could record her voice and play it back, always sounding different and weird—another thing to worry about. I don’t know how I sound. I’ve not been told I’m shrill, not been told anything, actually.

With that in mind, I ask, “How do I sound?”

“Tired,” he says.

Right, he’s not privy to my thoughts, is he? “What of my voice? How do I sound to listen to?”

He takes his time coming up with a reply; knowing him, he’s trying to think of a bird whose name rhymes with mine. Good luck.

“I suppose it’s pleasant enough. At neither extreme, it’s comfortably in the middle tending towards the higher end. The tones to it are usually gentle or teasing and always kind, very much like your mother and sister. I would say it suits you well.”

Thank you, aspiring author, very detailed. No wonder books are so long these days.

Joking aside, I appreciate he actually answered me rather than giving a non-answer like, “It’s nice.” A little high-pitched, always kind. A nice way to say childish, maybe.

“How do I sound?” he asks.

“Self-conscious,” I say.

An exaggerated sigh leaks over from where he sits. Oops, my bad. You started it, though, you know? Telling me I sound tired.

After a few seconds of silence, I start thinking of what to tell him, only to be interrupted by the arrival of Clarice. She stands in the doorway, a happy look to her when I look over. “Are we to show mother to the garden now?” she asks.

Oh, right, I forgot about that.

“Yes, before the sun sets,” I say, getting to my feet.

So we go gather our party, beginning a most noble adventure that takes us far and wide… to the sort of patio we have out the back. From there, it’s a short walk to the winter flower beds that are a little off the side.

“What are you all hiding from me?” my mother asks, one of many such questions she has asked along the way.

“We have nearly arrived, dear,” my father says, a hint of laughter to his voice, a smile when I look back at them. Maybe it’s not always her teasing him, or maybe he’s just enjoying this opportunity to reverse the roles.

And along the way, I’ve been wondering just how many flowers Julian brought with him. He made it sound like his mother would send a meadow, but they only came in the one carriage, so it can’t have been many. Coming to the flower beds now, I see that she was rather generous. By the mounds of disturbed dirt, it’s a patch of around five or six bulbs across and deep, say thirty total. Of them, a third are already flowering, peculiar in that there’s no leaves on them—just a stem and the pretty white flower drooping down, looking every bit like a faerie’s dress. I guess the others flower in spring and will make a nice display in a couple of months.

“Snowdrops?” my mother whispers behind me.

The way she says it is enough to make me smile—as if she’s lovingly calling me by my nickname. After a second, she steps past me and Clarice and goes to the edge of the flowerbed, elegantly folding her dress as she lowers herself. Ever so gently, she reaches out and touches a petal, running her finger along it as if she can’t believe it’s real.

“Reginae-olgae,” she mutters, a flair to what I imagine are Latin words.

Then her head turns, no doubt her gaze falling on the other mounds of disturbed dirt.

“More?” she asks.

No one says anything, and I glance around to see them looking expectantly at me, and I suppose that’s… nice of them. So very nice. I walk forward to join her, no doubt less elegant in my own dress-folding while I squat down. “Yes,” is all I say.

From here, I get to see the face she makes while no one else can—my little reward. It’s a lovely expression: a sweet smile, her glistening eyes. I’m almost jealous of the snowdrops.

“Oh thank you, they are just wonderful,” she says, finally taking her attention away from the flowers to hug me.

“Merry Yule,” I say softly.

With one last squeeze, she lets me go and then looks at me like she did the flowers. “Merry Yule, my little snowdrop,” she whispers.

The moment coming to an end, we stand up straight and the others come over to look at the flowers. Clarice loves how pretty they are, and Joshua also thinks they look like they could be tiny dresses, while Cyril tries to get close enough to sniff them. Some people say snowdrops smell like honey, but I’m not sure if this species does. (He doesn’t announce the smell, so I’m none the wiser.)

In this biting cold, we don’t dawdle for long and head back to the warmth of the manor. I think as we move. I don’t know why we didn’t already have snowdrops considering how much my mother loves them—why she didn’t ask for them, or why someone else didn’t think to get them. There is an aspect of plants being far from mind in winter months, simply something you don’t think about when you spend all day inside where the few plants are decorations that have blended into the background. Yet the head gardener must surely ask what flowers we want grown (maybe going through the butler).

Whatever the reason is, I guess there’s no sense in asking. If there was an actual reason, my father would have said and I would have told Julian not to bring the snowdrops, so it probably was just some silly oversight.

Although that walking gave me back some energy, I’m still rather tired. I excuse myself and go back to my room this time, looking for some quiet before supper. Guess I’ll have to ask Cyril how things went on his side of the tea party later.

The sun getting low, there’s little light in my room but for the fire staining the room in amber hues, crackling now and then. A pleasant twilight, a pleasant silence, a pleasant place to relax.

To keep from thinking, I end up sewing (as I always do). But it’s not long before I remember something Florence said, and then remember what Lottie gave me, and then I’m searching through my cupboard until I find what I’m looking for: the shawl.

I wrap it tightly around my shoulders and give it a light sniff, and the slight smell reminds me of Lottie and Gwen. Her baby blanket, huh? This was something important to Gwen, something that kept her warm, that brought her comfort. Lottie wouldn’t give it to me if I was just a nuisance, would she? She wouldn’t have knitted a scarf for me when she’d already left to live in Tuton.

Florence and Ellen, they wouldn’t let me call them by their first name if they didn’t enjoy the tea party, would they?

Thank you, Lottie. And Violet too. I know you tried to cheer me up, but I’m afraid I’m so used to being by myself that it’s hard for me to be cheered up by someone else, hard to trust other people’s compliments when I’m so sure of my own failures, but I’ll work on that. It’s silly of me to not give all your opinions the same weight. I’m sorry, and thank you.

I find Cyril after dinner and talk with him for a while. From what he says, Evan and Julian enjoyed themselves as well, and (of course) they all spoke a lot about me—he won’t tell me what exactly they said, only that it was positive. He doesn’t exactly come out and say it, but it sounds like they get on together. They’ll hopefully be friends when next term starts, actually spending time together and all that.

Wait, they’re not going to leave me all alone, are they? I’m just joking. It’s not like Evan’s going to move seats or Julian drop earth magic, Cyril will still be my cousin, so I won’t “lose” them even if they do become friends. I’d say the only change might be that Julian comes to embroidery club and that’s entirely fine by me.

Though, I wonder what Ms Berks would think about me bringing along another guy….

My mood improves by morning. Or rather, it returns to normal. With my head back in the right place, I appreciate Violet’s kind words better and, knowing that waiting only makes these things harder, I draft out a letter to her before breakfast to properly thank her for everything. Just having her over and chatting is reason enough for a letter of thanks, but she did so much more than that.

After breakfast, I take a detour. Joshua also being privy to the guys’ party, I ask him if he enjoyed it and if he liked Evan and Julian and a couple more things, but he mostly seems happy simply for being included. At his age, all “adults” are cool. Cyril has taken a liking to him, a brotherly bond starting to form I think, so I’m sure Joshua was treated well or else Cyril would have said something (at the time or to me afterwards).

To sum up Joshua’s thoughts, he can’t believe Evan doesn’t play rugby and that Julian is actually sixteen. I mean, um, he’s not wrong. That he doesn’t dislike them is good enough, I guess.

I finish the actual letter for Violet over the morning, as well as the thanks-for-coming letters for Florence and Ellen. (There’s a line in each thanking their brothers, but no letters of their own.) Those include reiterations that I would love to have them over again, either in this break or the next, and that they’re welcome to send me letters during the term—especially if there’s anything they wish to know about their brothers.

Then it’s lunchtime. My Sunday not one for rest, I’m accosted by Clarice once the meal finishes. We go to her bedroom rather than a more public room, which only raises my guard, and her too-sweet smile does nothing to reassure me.

There’s no way this could possibly go poorly for me, is there? None at all.