1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

G regory Hillmot had always been told that rearing girls was a far easier endeavour than bringing up boys. It was an idiom repeated so often that it was accepted as nearly universal truth in society, and Gregory himself believed it. When he had found himself the father of three young girls in short order, his mind had been full of all the joys of the feminine sort: hair in ribbons, delicate little voices learning to sing along to the pianoforte, all smiles and sugary sweetness. After all, girls were so much easier to keep in hand than boys.

As the girls grew, Gregory found himself very much of the opinion that the person who first propagated that particular lie should be soundly whipped.

He was a man with an ordered mind and a sense of strict discipline, relishing in order and regimental structure. As a colonel serving in His Majesty's army, Gregory had been quite at home in such a straight-lined setting. His wife had been serene, a lily-soft woman, who took everything in stride; where he had been all harsh angles and unyielding reason, Mrs Hillmot was delicate, nudging things into place with a gentle word or touch of her pale hand. They were a happy union of complete opposites who complemented each other in the best possible way.

The happy life that they had built for each other came crashing down in an instant: Mrs Hillmot, his beloved Jane, had sickened after the birth of their last daughter, and had never really recovered. She appeared to simply fade away, her skin becoming paler, her whole existence more gossamer. Then one day, she was gone, leaving Gregory with three young girls, and not a clue as to how to carry on.

A loud crash interrupted Gregory's reverie. He had not even been aware that he had slipped away into the past—it simply came over him as easily as falling asleep—as he stared out the window to the rolling hills beyond. He had been contemplating the merits of riding out, and then suddenly had been years away again.

Thin voices followed the crash, arguing in louder and louder pitches, the words indistinguishable. A fourth voice joined in, pleading and cajoling, weary to the point of breaking. Gregory remained where he was, insulated from the worst of it in his small library. He automatically stood at attention, back rigid and hands folded behind his back as he stared out of the window, distant from the cacophony of the rest of the house.

Another thud sounded from somewhere in the hall, accompanied shortly after by a stampede of feet. From just outside the library, Gregory could hear the poor, put-upon governess pleading for order and quiet.

"Please, girls! Your father is trying to—no, Sophia, don't pull Eliza's braid so! Florence, that is hardly behaviour becoming of a lady! Really, where did you even learn that gesture—no, I do not wish to see it again! Girls, really!"

Sighing, Gregory turned on the heel of one impeccably polished boot and made for the library door. He reached it just as something fell against it bodily, flavoured with the squeals of girls in the throes of a heated argument. Steeling himself, he pulled the heavy wooden door open suddenly, and in tumbled a pile of pinafores and ribbons, knees and elbows flying in every direction.

He could only stare for a moment. The governess was behind them, her starched white cap askew, her hair escaping its moorings as she frantically tried to wade into the melee and sort out the colonel's daughters. His daughters, meanwhile, were all engaged in some form of wrestling, each one locked onto the other by either limb or braid. As they tussled, they all squealed at each other to either let go, or insisting that they had ruined "it", whatever "it" was.

It was only when the pile of adorable miscreants had collided with Gregory's highly polished boots that they seemed aware of their surroundings. There was a lull in the chaos, and Gregory immediately took advantage of their momentary surprise.

"Desist!" he barked in a tone and volume he normally reserved for disobedient new recruits to his regiment.

Immediately, silence descended as the girls froze. The governess, too, became as still as a statue, her eyes wide. Sophia, the youngest, blinked up at her father, her head resting against his boots. Her face broke into a smile, her cheeks dimpling adorably.

"Hello, Papa!" she chirped into the silence, as if nothing were amiss.

Gregory stared down, sighed again, and then bent to begin pulling his daughters off each other. When they were all righted and assembled in a line from youngest to oldest, he resumed his military officer's posture. He stared down his nose at each of them until they individually dropped their heads, shuffling nervously.

"Now, before I hand out your due punishments for running roughshod all over your governess and behaving like a pack of wild dogs, have any of you anything to say for yourselves? Florence?" Gregory stood before his eldest daughter, who refused to meet his eyes, her jaw stubbornly tight. "Eliza?" The middle daughter, all awkward growth as she left childhood, studied her toes, then shook her head.

That left Sophia, the youngest and sometime baby of the family. Gregory had a difficult time with this one, as she most favoured his late wife with big brown eyes that always seemed ready to smile. "Sophia?"

"We were preparing a surprise for you," she blurted, much to the irritation of her sisters, which manifested in matching sighs and eye-rolls.

"Sophia!" Florence snapped, glaring down the line to the youngest.

"Florence," Gregory warned.

"Eliza started it!" Sophia interjected.

"Sophia!" Now it was Eliza's turn to bark at the youngest, who responded by letting her mouth fall into an unconvincing pout.

"Enough!" Gregory barked, feeling that they were precariously close to descending into another rout. Wearily, he pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger of his right hand. "And what was this surprise, then? Demonstrating your ability to act like a gang of common ruffians?" he demanded, turning a withering look upon all of them.

"We were going to put on a performance for you," Sophia supplied. "We thought you might like some amusement to cheer you."

Gregory let this sink in for a moment. He had no notion of how to reply to this revelation, having very little experience with young ladies. He was not sure that it was entirely proper, and it was certainly unlikely to offer any kind of real intellectual benefit to the girls. He glanced at the governess, who was busy trying to right her cap and apron.

"We've worked very hard on it," Eliza said into the silence, quietly but earnestly. "We wanted it to be like the theatre."

"Especially since some of us are not permitted to go," Florence added spikily. Gregory shot her a warning glance, and she folded her arms and looked off defiantly.

With Florence busy staring off into the middle distance with a petulant set to her chin, and Eliza studying the rug beneath her feet, it was down to Sophia to supply all the hopeful and pleading looks. To Gregory's discomfort, his youngest daughter seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of these; she stared up like a fawn at Gregory, blinking her large brown eyes slowly.

A formative point of his military training was to know when, against all odds and reason, he was defeated—Gregory had not risen to the rank of colonel by being foolhardy. Therefore, it was with a heavy sigh that he offered his daughters his hands.

"Very well," he said grudgingly, "it seems only right to see this performance that has caused so much furore in our house. Perhaps this will be a good time to see what you have learned from your governess," he added with a cool look to said governess, who paled a little.

All previous conflict forgotten, his daughters surrounded him, taking him by the hands and pulling him along toward the sitting room. They chattered the whole way there, which Gregory found impossible to actually follow. Resigned to his fate, Gregory took his appointed seat, noting that the rest of the furniture had been moved aside, save his own chair and one ostensibly for the governess.

The sitting room, not large to begin with, was cut in half by a series of blankets and other bedclothes thrown over a line strung across the room. The girls disappeared behind this improvised curtain, whispers and not-so-whispered jabs and whingeing leaking out occasionally. There was a distinct sound of scurrying, and then it was silent for a moment.

The governess, casting sidelong looks at Gregory, took her seat uneasily. The tension radiating from her was practically palpable, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. Gregory said nothing to her, folding his right leg over the other.

With some effort, one section of the homemade curtain was yanked aside, and little Sophia was thrust forward. She had painted cheeks and a little pink bow of a mouth, and on her head was a wilting flower crown that seemed to be held together mostly out of will. The rouged cheeks caused Gregory to stiffen. He glanced at the governess, who was busy patting her forehead with a small handkerchief.

"We would like to present the story of The Fox and the Maid, as written by the..." Sophia hesitated, her little brow furrowing as she struggled for words. "The illustrated—"

"Illustrious!" a voice hissed from behind the curtain.

"— Ill lustres Eliza Hillmot," Sophia concluded, adding a little bow. Obligingly, Gregory and the governess rewarded this little speech with a smattering of applause. Taking this as encouragement, Sophia took it upon herself to keep up a litany of bows, much to the growing irritation of the other two behind the curtain.

"Move, Sophia!" one of them said, not even bothering to whisper anymore. "We cannot go on if you do not get yourself off the stage."

"But they keep applauding!" Sophia protested. As if to prove her point, she bowed again.

The improvised curtain began to undulate then, as if hands were seeking purchase behind it at a frantic pace. One of the girls from "backstage", such as it was, found the split in the curtain before which Sophia was standing and thrust her hand forward. This disembodied hand flailed about for a moment, the fingers curled into determined little claws.

At last, it clutched the back of Sophia's dress, and yanked her backward forcefully. Therein followed a great deal of squealing, the unmistakable sounds of scuffling, all the while punctuated with half-yelled accusations of one or the other ruining the whole proceeding. The curtain was once again an ocean unto itself as it flapped and writhed from the chaos it was valiantly attempting to conceal.

"Girls, please," the governess tried, her voice tired and tentative. She half-rose from her chair, clearly unsure of what she ought to do. Gregory, firmly believing that a person's true mettle was revealed in times of crisis, kept his seat, waiting to see what she would do.

The governess' half-hearted attempts at restoring order were roundly ignored; as a result, the commotion from behind the curtain continued to crescendo. There was the sound of something breaking, and at last the much-abused curtain gave up its hold on the line it had been hung on. Sophia was caught under it, while the older two had hold of each other by the arms and hair, hurling accusations as to who was at fault the entire time.

The governess, at a loss for words, sat heavily back down in her chair and buried her face in her apron for a moment. Gregory, recognising a rout when he saw it, knew that there was no hope of her restoring order. He stood, preparing to wade into the fray.

The governess, sensing movement, looked up from her apron, her face tired. "I am dismissed, aren't I?" she asked bleakly.

"Very," Gregory agreed. He turned away, ready to begin seizing disorderly daughters and pry them apart.

From behind him, there was a barely audible, "Oh thank heavens."