“It’s no use, Violetta,” her mother broke in. “She’s set against it! Why? Why, Charlotte!” Adelaide’s voice rose perilously near a shriek. “At the least you owe me an explanation, after all the work I’ve done. If you’d said four months ago you didn’t want this ball we could have discussed it rationally. But now you must tell me why you won’t attend the ball or I shall summon your father!”

Adelaide was sitting on the stool of the dressing table, her eyes fixed on Charlotte’s face. Violetta was staring at her equally intently from her other side. Charlotte felt as if she were being squeezed between two walls, as if she couldn’t breathe. She looked down at her lap. Her hands were twisting, one over the other, around and around. She felt hot and nauseated. From outside her window came the rhythmic pounding of workmen building a huge marquee in the garden, for the supper at her ball.

“All right, Mama,” she finally said.

“All right what!” snapped her mother.

“I’ll tell you why,” said Charlotte slowly. She couldn’t look up, so she steadily regarded her linked fingers. “I went to a ball in Kent,” she said, “secretly. It wasn’t Julia’s fault; I wanted to go too. It was a masked ball and I powdered my hair, so no one could recognize me.”

Violetta had gone very still next to her. Her mother was staring at her in fascinated horror. She was too dumbfounded to ask why Charlotte had broken all the rules she spent years drilling into each of her three daughters’ heads.

“And what happened?” Adelaide finally said, evenly, when the room had been silent for several minutes.

Charlotte raised her miserable eyes to her mother’s. “I met a man,” she said, her voice trembling. “I met a man and I went into the garden with him.”

Whatever was in Charlotte’s eyes made all the anger in Adelaide’s chest melt like snow. She whisked over to Charlotte’s side, tucked herself against the headboard, and pulled her daughter into her arms.

“It’s all right, darling,” she whispered, rubbing Charlotte’s arm and kissing the top of her head, just as she had when Charlotte was a little girl and stubbed her toe. Charlotte didn’t respond, but she didn’t pull away. A silky curtain of hair fell over her face as she leaned on her mother’s chest.

“But—what happened then?” Violetta asked. “What do you mean, you went into the garden? Did you let him kiss you? What was it like? Did you enjoy it?” She reached over and gave Charlotte’s hip a little poke.

Her mother gave her a look she had rarely seen before. “Be quiet, Violetta,” she said.