Chatter and feminine laughter in three different tones filled the hallway. Were it anyone else giggling, she would have gone tense again, but Willa’s sisters she knew well. And knew that they deserved every lighthearted moment they could find or create. They’d lived hard lives, all of them, before the war had set their family of orphans on a different path.

Elinor was the first to enter, looking as though she stepped from an advert, in a smart suit and with perfectly coiffed hair. She held something in her hand that she brandished like a weapon, held aloft to rally the troops. “I bring curlers and wavers!”

Margot would have leapt from the chair if Willa weren’t holding her down. “No. Absolutely not. I only wanted you to trim it—and how did they even know?”

“I told Lukas to telephone them.” Willa narrowed her eyes at her. “Sit still and stop squirming like a child, Margot. You’re as bad as Jory. This isn’t about fashion—this is about blending in.”

“I fail to see—”

“She’s very right.” Rosemary edged over to the dressing table and set down a bag of her own. “Something we learned long ago: Look right, and you’ll draw less attention, not more. If you’re going to have short hair and you don’t want everyone ogling you for it, you have to style it like the other girls are doing.”

Margot groaned. She certainly hadn’t thought of this when she picked up those scissors, or she would have come up with a less bothersome way to snarl at the matron.

“We’ll put it in terms you can understand. That’s why we brought Lina along.” Elinor motioned to the auburn-haired completion of the trio. Evelina wasn’t a direct adoption into their family—she’d married their eldest brother, Barclay, two years ago. “She understands mathematics better than the rest of us.”

Evelina made a show of cracking her knuckles. “I’ve borrowed Fergus’s text so I can get my phraseology right. We’re talking about waves, Margot. So let’s think in terms of amplitude and altitude, all right?”

Elinor nodded and unfastened the bag she’d brought. “Now, you’re going to want to start with these clips. I’ll show you how, but for tonight we’re going to use one of those Marcel heated curling irons.”