“Is something the matter?” Lottie asks, my work finished.

Ah, I can’t hide my feelings. At least, not from her. “Len’s wedding,” I say, going on to explain the circumstances.

“Oh dear, that’s terrible,” she says, sounding sincere about it.

She doesn’t pick up that it’s more than just that worrying me. I guess she’s used to how honest I was as a child. However, it’s not that I don’t want to tell her. I just… don’t want to be told not to do it. If she told me not to, I probably would give up, so I don’t want to take the chance.

The first thing I do when I get back to school is write the letter. I carefully choose each word, wanting, needing this to be perfect. Once it’s done, I drop it off for posting, and that’s it. No taking it back. Next weekend, maybe the weekend after, I’ll resign. Hopefully, Neville can find a replacement for me quickly.

I’m going to miss everyone. Even if I am only a work friend to them, I really appreciate that I had the opportunity to get to know them, and I’ll never forget the time I spent there.

When I go to the lounge, it’s hard not to let that show, smiling while I’m on the verge of tears inside. But I’ve been practising feeling one thing and acting cheery. I’m not the little girl who goes quiet and sniffles, not now. Violet doesn’t seem to notice and that’s proof enough of my hard work this last month, right?

Monday brings anxiety. I don’t regret writing the letter, but it’s like there’s so many possibilities that my brain doesn’t have the space to imagine them all, my thoughts struggling to find room to breathe. A suffocation of the mind. All I can do is pretend I’m fine while being overly sensitive to my body, my heartbeat loud and hands cold and an incessant urge to fidget needs to be constantly suppressed. Just sitting through the lessons exhausts me, but I play it off as poor sleep when Evan picks up on my quiet mood at break.

The snowball of harmless lies.

Despite my mood, I’m looking forward to embroidery club, quickly getting to my feet when the bell rings out. I got into sewing in the first place because it kept me busy, too busy to think.

“Come on,” I say, hanging around Evan’s desk.

He looks up with a little smile. “Ms Berks won’t be there yet,” he says lightly.

Ah, he’s so innocent. If I ever want to know whether or not I’m smiling, all I have to do is look at him.

Backing up his words, he doesn’t rush to pack up his things and keeps his stride short through the somewhat busy corridor, and he keeps his “I told you so” to another little smile when we still get to the clubroom before Ms Berks. Indeed, even Cyril arrives before her and he’s usually the last.

While those two muddle through a conversation about cricket(?), I wonder if the club might be cancelled. A mandatory staff meeting? Illness? Couldn’t be bothered? Knowing her, it could well be any of those things. (I mean, I do think better of her these days than after first meeting her, but she still has an air of, um, nonchalance?)

Not exactly somewhere else I’d rather be, I keep waiting with these two. Some ten minutes passes before the door at the end of the corridor opens and—it’s a man. A footman, I should say. (At least, I think that title is also used for the bottom level manservants here). He’s carrying a heavy-looking box, so we shuffle over to let him pass and, as we do, Ms Berks appears.

“Good, you didn’t run off,” she says to us, hurriedly opening the door. Opened, she tells the footman, “On the table, if you would.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, except his accent makes it sound more like “mam”, a variant of mum. I mean, ma’am is supposed to rhyme with lamb, but he said it so quickly I can only think of it as mam. It’s a silly little thing, but it amuses me while we wait for him to drop off the box and leave.

We then go in and sit, Ms Berks opening up the box. Now I see it better, it’s more of a wooden crate lined with paperboard. No corrugated cardboard being pumped out of factories just yet. (When were cardboard boxes, like Ellie knew them, even invented?) From it, she takes out a fabric.

Right. It’s been a few weeks, hasn’t it? Has it? It has. I talked to her the first (school)day back. Well, the second.

Stop thinking about stupid things.

The fabrics, yes, that’s what I should be focusing on. She’s looking over the one she took out, no doubt checking for damage in transit. Blue. It takes a moment for the colour to settle in my eyes, quite the sheen to it and she’s constantly moving it, and, rather than the strong blue of a sapphire, it’s the pale blue (with a touch of green) of an aquamarine. As the name suggests, it’s a gemstone that’s like crystallised seawater, fairly transparent. The tint I chose with Ms Berks really seems to convey that.

Next from the box is something of a sister fabric to the first one, blue yet a deep shade, a touch of red to make it ever so slightly purple, and the texture is like velvet rather than glossy. If the other one is the sea, then this one is a dark night. I suppose that’s only natural as those were the descriptions I gave to her when we were mixing the colours.

The last two fabrics are somewhat more plain by comparison. One is a very earthy brown with a hopsack weave that, well, makes it look like a sack. The last one is white and with a plain weave. (Technically, a poplin weave, but it’s not noticeably different to me.)

These are the four that we settled on. Or rather, the four that I was most confident in. According to Ms Berks, less than four and it wouldn’t be worth ordering, more than four and it would be a waste if I didn’t finish them in time. It’s, um, five months or so until the end of the school year and I only have two hours of club a week. How much time did my last dresses take me?

“It looks like these have all arrived in good condition,” she says, more to herself than us. Well, the guys probably don’t care. I mean, Evan isn’t going to make a dress, is he?

Oh, but if we make something for Ellen to wear—

“What do you think? Are these what you had in mind?” Ms Berks asks, carefully folding them and placing them onto the table.

I break from my imagination (Ellen would look lovely in yellows, wouldn’t she?) to inspect the fabrics. Well, it’s not like I’d send them back now they’re here, so I’m kind of just staring at them and nodding. “Yes, these are raw dresses,” I think of saying, amusing myself with that silly phrasing. Raw dresses, some cooking required.

“They are perfect,” I say, more or less meaning it. Even if I wasn’t being polite, they do look perfect for the designs I made. “Thank you, miss.”

“Wonderful. I will have a mannequin delivered here for Friday, and I suppose we should have a rail to hang them on. A lockable box might be an idea to prevent accidental damage outside club hours,” she says, again her talking seemingly directed to herself by the end.

It’s nothing really for me to worry over. All I have to do is sew, right? I say that, the first step is measuring out—ah. “What size will the dresses be? Should we find some maids first, or….”

She shakes her head. “Just use your own sizes and we can always adjust the fit; it is more art than fashion, after all.” She pauses there, examining me with a rather measured look. “Yes, it’s best to start with something larger and trim it down.”

Is that really something you just said in front of Evan and Cyril? Oh god, I don’t know whether saying that about my waist or my bust is worse. Please don’t put ideas in their head. I mean, as much as I don’t want them thinking about those, I’d rather Cyril doesn’t try and get me to cut down on the amount of sweets I eat.

And when I look at Ms Berks, oh she knows exactly what she said, the audaciousness of her smirk only matched by the mirthful twinkle in her eyes. It’s as if she’s daring me to say something.

If we didn’t have company, maybe I would have found the courage.

“Is that so?” I say, perhaps a little timidly.

Her smirk turns wry, and I’m relieved to see that teasing smile pointed at the others as she turns to them. “Besides, wouldn’t my lords rather want to see my lady present her dresses herself?”

Oh my, I like this, the unexpected attack leaving Evan’s ears a rather bright red, and even Cyril is showing his discomfort, scowl pressed into a thin line, his cheeks puffing out from the tensed muscles. Just wonderful.

“Well?” she asks, moving her foot half a step closer to them, leaning forward.

“Y-yes, miss?” Evan says, never a more reluctant answer given.

“That is the correct answer,” she says, and she leaves behind a trail of light laughter on her walk over to her usual spot.

I guess she got jealous of having to listen to me tease him all the time.

Everything settling down now, I am glad for this. The fabrics, I mean. It’s a really good distraction for me. Something productive for me to focus on.

“What colour do you like most?” I ask Evan.

He almost flinches at the question, sharply inhaling and freezing up. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him like this. “Pardon?” he mumbles.

Smiling to myself, I swirl my finger, pointing at the fabrics. “What dress should I start with?”

“Oh, um, well,” he says, forgetting to hold his tongue as his brain catches up. “The blue one?”

“You don’t sound sure,” I say, unable to help myself.

He gathers himself somewhat, his nervous posture straightening up a bit. Looking past him, I catch Cyril rolling his eyes, and I’m sure some thought like, “Do they have to flirt in front of me?” is going through his head. As long as he keeps that thought to himself, I don’t mind. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t think Ms Berks was flirting when she teased them, or that obviously he isn’t flirting if he ever teases Evan over something. I’ve hesitated at times, but I’m not going to change who I am, not this part of me. There’s people who love me for who I am, and that’s enough for me.

“I’m not sure,” Evan says, breaking me from my angst.

And I giggle at his frankness. “I suppose I do like blue,” I say, my hand coming to rest on the aquamarine fabric.

For some reason, he frowns at that for a moment and then shakes his head. “Is it your favourite colour?”

“I was rather fond of pale blue as a child, a bit of a tomboy and all that”—Cyril snorts at the understatement—“yet I would say I prefer pink these days.”

It’s more of a practical reason, not keen on how my hair looks when I wear light blues. Pink just really does go well with blush and lipstick, especially since my skin has some colour to it and isn’t as pale as Eleanor’s (supposedly) was.

“I thought it might look nice since it almost matches your eyes,” he says unthinking, his embarrassment coming a second later.

Okay, Cyril, maybe he does flirt with me, but only a little.