Myrtle’s mother looked to her devoted lady’s maid, Dorinda, who’d helped with Myrtle’s preparations that day. The young woman hurried over to the gold-painted French vanity and plucked a long box from the top.

Dorinda stopped before them.

“Thank you, my dear,” her mother said with her usual affection for the young woman, who’d been with her since before Myrtle’s birth.

Perplexed, Myrtle puzzled her brow as her mother removed the top and set it aside.

Reaching inside, the countess carefully lifted out—

Myrtle gasped.

The satin emerald cloak in her mother’s hands shimmered and gleamed with movement as the countess gave it a light snap.

“Lovely, is it not?” her mother murmured.

Incapable of anything more than a nod, Myrtle took in the article. The cloak was almost too beautiful to touch. Almost.

She stretched out a reverent hand and caressed the velvet-trimmed neck. And it was beyond lovely. Both the collar and hemline of the full-length cloak were trimmed with a garland of red roses and white amaryllis.

“The gloves, Dorinda,” her mother said, and the young woman immediately hastened over with a pair of delicate gloves, a perfect match to the cloak.

Myrtle shook her head. “But . . . how . . . when . . . ?”

“Come, my little star,” her mother chided, calling forth that endearment she’d bestowed upon Myrtle long ago and stopped using just before sending her off to boarding school. “Did you think I’d not have recalled your favorite color or your favorite time of year or holiday?” Her mother directed her gaze upon the cloak and smiled wistfully at the luxuriant article. “I’d imagined you wearing it on Christmas Day; I just never imagined it would also be your wedding day . . . or that you would leave me so quickly.” She murmured that last part more to herself.

Myrtle startled. Leave her so quickly . . . ? “I don’t understand,” she said softly, because she didn’t. Any of it.

This . . . the thoughtfulness of the cloak, or her mother’s melancholy.

“What?” her mother asked. “Did you think I forgot your love of Christmas, and that I’d not have a special gift just for you?” She grimaced. “Though I can certainly see—with the mishap in our departure and our inability to get to you once we realized our mistake because of the snow—why you should think this way.”

Only . . . it wasn’t just her being left alone. “You sent me away,” Myrtle said earnestly.

Her mother drew back. “You thought we sent you away because we didn’t want you about?”

“Didn’t you?” Myrtle asked, her voice steeped in all the confusion she felt.