Her mother looked away from her painting with a smile as bright as the spring sunshine, though it froze and her brows arched when she saw Lily’s uniform, complete with kerchief pinned over her hair. “I thought you weren’t working today, my love. That you and Ivy had both taken the morning off.”

She wasn’t. Not at the hospital, at least. But she’d known she might be stopped, so the uniform had seemed like her best option. Especially given the note that had arrived an hour ago. “I wasn’t, but Ara just sent word that they’re shorthanded and asked if I could come in.”

Those were, in fact, the words on the note that she’d left resting on the entryway table for her mother to find later. But Arabelle Denler, her friend and newly reinstated matron of their ward at Charing Cross Hospital, hadn’t been the one to pen them.

Mama sighed. “I suppose since Ivy will be leaving soon for her appointment, I shouldn’t bemoan the interruption to your time together. So long as you’re home at a reasonable hour, of course. Don’t forget we have guests tonight.”

As they did at least twice a week. Lily darted a glance at her little sister and found Ivy grinning at the magazine she held. “I won’t forget.”

“And invite Miss Denler and her fiancé to dine with us soon. The week after next, perhaps?”

“I will.” When she actually saw Ara. Though there was, she supposed, the possibility that she’d run into said fiancé today. She edged backward a step. “Well, I don’t want to distract you, Mama. I know you’re hoping to finish the central figure today while the light’s right. You’d better make the most of it before Ivy needs to keep her appointment.”

The mere mention of the painting underway urged her mother’s gaze back to the canvas, as it usually did. “Mm.”

Ivy’s eyes went wide at whatever she’d just seen in her magazine, and she flipped the page a bit too quickly. Quickly enough that it garnered their mother’s attention and made the lazy pug sleeping in the sunshine open one eyelid.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.” Poor, sweet Ivy. A flush stole into her cheeks, giving her away. Lily might be the one who inherited Euphemia Blackwell’s strawberry-blond hair, but Ivy, despite sharing their father’s brown locks, had a redhead’s propensity to blush.

Mama lifted one red-gold brow and held out her hand.

With a gusty sigh, Ivy flipped the page back to the one she’d clearly wanted to avoid talking about and held it up rather than relinquishing it to their mother’s paint-stained fingertips.