"They must find suitors sooner than later, Mother," Ethen continued, his voice now carrying the gentle, unassailable authority of an eldest son. He pitched it louder, ensuring he had the floor. "You cannot expect them to remain tied to your apron strings for eternity."
He stepped fully into the front garden, the sun warming the shoulders of his worn wool coat as if anointing him an ally. "Think of it practically. Surely our dear Aunt Rosalind would be kindly disposed to share a small portion of her fortune, if only for a single night's transformation? For such a cause, I'd wager she might part with some lace or a bolt of satin put by." He offered a practical, brotherly smile. "And you needn't worry for the household. Charlotte and I would be more than happy to mind the little ones."
A new, indignant voice sliced down from above. "And who are you calling 'little' exactly?"
From the open window of the second-floor bedroom, Aria's face appeared, flushed with the acute offense of her fifteen years. She vanished instantly, and a moment later her loud, protesting footsteps pounded down the wooden staircase, a thunderous descent that shook the cottage's very bones.
At Ethen's words, a new, potent hope had been kindled, burning away the last of their mother's resistance. Seeing their brother standing there, Doria and Eden broke away from Mrs. Malling as one. In a flurry of skirts and renewed excitement, they rushed past her and out the door into the garden, descending upon Ethen with a torrent of grateful exclamations.
"Oh, Ethen, do you truly think so?"
"Aunt Rosalind's lavender satin! I've always thought it—"
Aria burst through the door then, elbowing between her older sisters to glare up at Ethen. "See? I'm nearly as tall as Eden now! Not so 'little,' am I?" She drew herself up to her full, still-unimpressive height, demanding recognition.
Left alone in the shadowed coolness of the entry hall, Mrs. Malling did not follow. A sigh, heavy with a lifetime of compromises and frayed dreams, escaped her. As she pressed a work-roughened hand to her brow, her gaze fell not on the sunlit commotion outside, but on Elowyn.
While the storm of debate had raged, her quiet daughter had moved with silent purpose. She had retrieved the forgotten basket of vegetables from where it had been abandoned, hooked it over her arm, settled her worn book more firmly under the other, and, without a single glance toward the conspiratorial gathering now hatching plans in the front garden, slipped out through the still-open gate. She turned onto the dusty lane, her nose already buried in her pages, a solitary figure retreating into a world of her own.
A soft, weary smile touched Mrs. Malling's lips as she watched Elowyn's retreating back. For a moment, there was only the gentle rustle of the beech tree and the diminishing sound of purposeful footsteps. Then, drawing a steadying breath that felt like the acceptance of a new burden, she turned her attention back to the scene in her sun-dappled front garden. There, her remaining children huddled around Ethen, their voices a fervent, rising murmur as they plotted their unlikely campaign for a night at the palace.