While my room isn’t that personalised (I’m at boarding school for half the year), Clarice’s is. It comes in lots of little flavours: a few books piled up here, empty makeup containers there, a couple of paintings leaning against the wall (one a street in Lundein, the other a watercolour of the pond here that she painted herself). The maids will tidy up, so I suppose they’ve been asked to leave these things alone. Then most of the furniture and linen and such are in her preferred colours rather than matching the general scheme of the manor.

“Is it Hastings you have your eye on?” she asks, taking me out of my mindless thoughts.

I giggle, softly shaking my head. “No. I told you, I’m not interested in anyone right now.” While she sat on her bed, I take the chair from the desk and turn it to face her.

“For someone who claims not to be a gardener, you’re sowing an awful lot of seeds,” she says, her smile wry.

“There must be a hole in my pocket and I’m on the way to feed the birds,” I reply flatly.

She titters, not making an effort to hide her mouth. “You know, I thought you might be sweet on Sussex for that time when you were young, which would make a marvellous story to tell your children.”

I don’t follow her—I don’t think I met Evan before this year?

Seeing my confusion, she rolls her eyes. “You expect me to believe you have forgotten?”

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.

“Your sixth birthday, the boy you rescued from the maze?”

I cover my mouth. “No, it wasn’t, was it?”

Only now she sees my shock does she believe me, bursting into laughter. Far from graceful, she snorts and hugs her stomach, face all scrunched up. “Oh, my, goodness,” she says between breaths. “You didn’t know?”

“I didn’t!”

She brings her hands up to rub her face, covering her eyes, which helps her calm down… until she looks between her fingers and sees me, bursting into another fit of giggles.

“It’s not that funny,” I say, knowing it really is.

“Ah, you are right. It’s not funny, so it must be fate,” she says.

That’s not exactly an improvement, but I’m sure she would just say, “I know,” if I told her that. But, seriously, what kind of coincidence is this. Does he know? He would’ve said, right? But this is Evan we’re talking about. He could barely say a word to me at the start, how would he have said something as embarrassing as, “Aren’t you the girl that rescued me from a maze ten years ago?” (And I would correct him that it was nearly eleven years ago.) Once we got to know each other, it would’ve been even harder to say, right? I told him not to fall in love with me, yet we’ve got this whole childhood connection cliché going on.

“Go on, won’t you marry him just so I can tell that story at the wedding?” Clarice asks, voice so sweet it’s rattling my teeth.

“No,” I say, and that’s that.

Clarice teases me a little more before letting me go, leaving me once more to my own devices. I want to spend some time thinking, so I return to my room, settling comfortably on the bed.

Not Evan, but Florence and Ellen.

I think I have a good handle on Florence. She’s rather straightforward, really. Overprotective of her big brother, but weak when confronted, and otherwise “normal”. She likes sweet things and flowers and animals, and she pretends to like reading, and she takes a certain pride in her appearance. While I wouldn’t call her talkative or chatty, she is comfortable in conversations and both asks and answers questions.

Ellen, on the other hand, is a bit strange—at least in my head. My initial impression was of someone who’s not all there. There’s plenty of girls who end up like that, being told that they should be seen and not heard and so on, so it’s not that I thought poorly of her for it. If anything, it worried me that I would struggle to involve her. That worry proved unfounded. She is difficult to converse with, but she’s happy to be asked questions. I was lucky that Florence warmed up to her and naturally included her when talking about school life.

It also seemed that Ellen quite likes reading. Every girl and lady you ask says she does and names a poetry book or a classic drama if you ask which book is her favourite, but it’s hard to forget what she said about the book she’s reading now, happy to have a heroine who reads and does maths. From what I know of Evan, I don’t think her family is at all negligent or the sort to train her into obedience.

In a way, she reminds me of me, someone who doesn’t quite fit. She didn’t mention any friends at school and was almost surprised when I actually spoke to her. I mean, is it as simple as she’s a dorky girl who isn’t overly shy? You know, like, she says odd things now and then and so people avoid talking to her, but she’s happy to be included in things even if she just listens….

Like me.

Rubbing my face, I put my thoughts aside for the moment and take a few deep breaths. My mind cleared, I go over to my desk and add another line to Florence’s letter. It’s not really fair of me to ask this of her, but I think they like each other, and she is Julian’s sister, and I… really can’t sit around and let someone else go through what I did. I don’t think Ellen is actually being bullied, but I’m sure she’s lonely. For me, that loneliness was worse than the bullying.

Well, don’t I just manage to depress myself day after day.

Going back to Ellen, I wonder if there’s anything I can do for her. Not in a saving sort of way, but as a friend. If she likes that book, what other ones might she like, what other books do I know that put the “hero” into “heroine”. Off the top of my head, it’s a depressingly short list. I would be better off changing a bunch of pronouns in a fantasy epic and giving her that. Oh wouldn’t she love it—a woman that swings swords and drinks alcohol and dances with scantily clad men and gets given a prince as a reward for saving the world from destruction.

I wonder how Gerald would feel if he was given away like that, huh?

Those silly thoughts and more get me through the quiet in the next few days, but there is plenty of time for Clarice to dress me up and Cyril to take me out for walks (when he’s not asking if we have certain books in our library). Joshua goes to visit a friend, which helps reassure me he is happy with boarding school. My father is busy as always. I think there’s a lot of paperwork to do with Yule at the moment, extra supplies and requests for days off (few of those you get and certainly unpaid) and stuff like that. My mother, well, she’s writing. She used to tell me they were letters to friends, but I wonder how true that is with what my father told me.

Between all of that, I keep myself in good spirits until the replies to my letters come. Violet will visit again on Sunday and can stay until Monday evening if she is permitted—like my father would say no to me. Florence might as well have taken a page out of an etiquette book, a flawless response, but it has a touch of warmth in places and she addressed the letter itself to “Lady Nora” and signed it “Lady Florence”. Such a good girl.

Then there’s Ellen’s letter. She has beautiful handwriting, not so much as a splodge of ink misplaced, and there’s an interesting if not unusual flair to her sentences. In other words, I don’t think she knows what she’s doing at all. Oh it starts with a formal “thank you for inviting me” bit, and then it derails, listing off the parts she enjoyed, and reiterating some of the things we spoke about, meandering from thought to thought with no thought to the layout. I can clearly hear her voice as I read it, and my own voice in my head keeps trying to keep her on topic.

That said, I do adore this letter, wonderful in its own way. Both girls are so sweet and unique and I’m glad I have these mementos from them.

Neither will come again this break, a little close to actual Yule now (the day itself less than a week away) and most people having plans to see family for the eleven days that follow; however, they both say they would like to visit in the next break. That’ll be “Easter” (it’s complicated).

With Ellen in mind, I end up using my spare time to read. Me and Clarice here, the library has its fair share of books for girls and I go through the first chapter or two of them, skim further if one seems interesting. Really, all it does is reinforce some of my anxieties. I know that, even in Ellie’s world, a lot of girls like to read, well, crap. They want stories where the heroine just has to look pretty and some guy comes along to save her and give her a happy ever after. There’s a lot where the heroine is bullied or otherwise an outcast, called ugly, and it turns out that actually she’s beautiful and the cool, popular guy chooses her. (Not a recent trope, is it, Cinderella?)

And I don’t want to speak poorly of the girls who read those kinds of books. It would be easy to say they’re dumb or vapid, and that would be missing the bigger picture, wouldn’t it? Because what I’m starting to see is that, in their own way, these books are telling me that I don’t have to change who I am to find someone who loves me.

Or rather, that I create the meaning I find in these stories.

It would be easy to say that there’s no way Cinderella and the prince fell in love so quickly and lived happily ever after, but we see so much of her good side, of her strengths and virtues, can’t we believe she did? That she took that seed of love and watered it and cared for it and nurtured it?

I’m reminded of my borrowed memories, attending a lecture and hanging on every word. It’s not what the author meant, but how it makes me feel, and I can influence how I feel.

Ellen, what does she want to feel?

Keeping a list as I go, I keep going through the books, looking for the good I can find. It’s only natural that I end up thinking about Snowdrop and the Seven Princes. Really, I still can’t think of what’s good about it. I suppose that, given the actual culture of this world, it is rather progressive? The idea that a woman could be intimate with several men and then be in a position to choose which she marries, I can only imagine what, say, Violet would think. Even Lottie would find such a thing scandalous, I’m sure.

It’s definitely not the book for Ellen.