“Not too tight,” Callie said.
It was the second time she had whispered the words.
Their meaning dawned.
“Callie?” Juliana said, meeting her sister-in-law’s guilty gaze in the mirror. Juliana tilted her head in a silent question, and Callie’s wide, lovely grin was all the answer that she needed.
Callie was with child.
Juliana leapt from her seat, joy bursting through her. “Maraviglioso!” She approached the other woman and pulled her into an enormous embrace. “No wonder we are shopping for more gowns!”
Their shared laughter attracted Mariana’s attention from behind the dressing screen. “What is maraviglioso?” She poked her blond head around the edge of the divider. “Why are you laughing?” She narrowed her gaze on Juliana. “Why are you crying?” She disappeared for a heartbeat, then hobbled out, clutching a length of half-pinned green satin to her, poor Valerie following behind. “What did I miss?” She pouted. “I always miss everything!”
Callie and Juliana laughed again at Mariana’s pique, then Juliana said, “Well, you’ll have to tell her.”
“Tell me what?”
Callie’s cheeks were on fire, and she was certainly wishing that they weren’t all in the middle of a fitting room with one of London’s best dressmakers standing a foot away.
Juliana could not stop herself. “It appears my brother has done his duty.”
“Juliana!” Callie whispered, scandalized.
“What? It is true!” Juliana said simply, with a little shrug.
Callie grinned. “You are just like him, you know.”
There were worse insults coming from a woman who madly loved the him in question.
Mariana was still catching up. “Done his—Oh! Oh, my! Oh, Callie!” She began to hop with excitement, and the long-suffering Valerie had to run for a handkerchief to protect the silk from Mariana’s tears.
Hebert quit the room—either to escape smothering in a wayward embrace or being caught in the emotional fray as the two sisters clutched each other and laughed and cried and laughed and chattered and cried and laughed.
Juliana smiled at the picture the Hartwell sisters made—now each so happily married and still so deeply connected to each other—even as she realized that there was no place for her in this moment of celebration. She did not begrudge them their happiness or their connection.
She simply wished that she, too, had such an unbridled, uncontested sense of belonging.
She slipped from the fitting room to the front room of the shop, where Madame Hebert had escaped moments earlier. The Frenchwoman was standing at the entrance to a small antechamber, blocking the view to another customer. Juliana headed for a wall of accents—buttons and ribbons, frills and laces. She ran her fingers along the haberdashery, brushing a smooth gold button here, a scalloped lace there, consumed with Callie’s news.
There would be two new additions to the family in the spring—Nick’s wife, Isabel, was also with child.
Her brothers had overcome their pasts and their fears of repeating the sins of their father, and they had taken that unfathomable leap—marrying for love. And now they had families. Mothers and fathers and children who would grow old in a happy, caring fold.
You’ve never in your life considered the future, have you? You’ve never imagined what came next?
Leighton’s words from the theatre echoed through her mind.
Juliana swallowed around a strange lump in her throat. She no longer had the luxury of thinking of her future. Her father had died, and she had been upended, shipped to England and delivered into a strange family and a stranger culture that would never accept her. There was no future for her in England. And it was easier—less painful—not to fool herself into imagining one.
But when she saw Callie and Mariana looking happily toward their idyllic futures, filled with love and children and family and friends, it was impossible not to envy them.
They had what she could never have. What she would never be offered.
Because they belonged here, in this aristocratic world where money and title and history and breeding all mattered more than anything else.
She lifted a long feather from a bowl, one that must have been dyed; she’d never seen such inky blackness in a plume so large. She could not imagine the bird that would produce such a thing. But as she ran her fingers through its softness, the feather caught the sunlight streaming into the shop, and she knew immediately that it was natural. It was stunning. In the bright afternoon light, the feather was not black at all. It was a shimmering mass of blues and purples and reds so dark that it merely gave the illusion of blackness. It was alive with color.
“Aigrette.”
The dressmaker’s word brought Juliana out of her reverie. “I beg your pardon?”
Madame Hebert raised a black brow. “So polite and British,” she said, continuing when Juliana gave her a half smile. “The feather you hold. It is from the egret.”
Juliana shook her head. “Egrets are white, I thought.”
“Not the black ones.”
Juliana looked down at the feather. “The colors are stunning.”
“The rarest of things are usually that way,” the dressmaker replied, lifting a large wooden frame filled with lace. “Excuse me. I have a duchess who requires an inspection of my lace.” The distaste in her tone surprised Juliana. Surely the Frenchwoman would not speak ill of Mariana in front of her . . .
“Perhaps if the French had moved more quickly, Napoleon would have won the war.” Disdain oozed across the shop, and Juliana turned quickly toward the voice.