Chapter 1
When the knock came on Rosie’s door, she was hovering by the handle expectantly and yanked the door open.
“Did you get them?” she hissed to Merida, who was standing in the hall with her hands clasped behind her back, looking innocent.
Her cousin slowly grinned, looking to the left and the right down the empty hall. “I did, and everyone else is at Aunt Felicity’s camera demonstration. We have at least an hour.”
Rosie felt a pang of guilt that they were blowing off Flick’s presentation, but she opened the door wider to usher her cousin inside.
Aunt Felicity was married to Uncle Griffin, the Duke of Peasgoode, their current host, and she was one of the world’s foremost experts on moving picture technology.
It would have been amazing to see her latest inventions…
But she was Bull’s mother, so he would be there to support her. Frankly, Rosie was doing her best to avoid him this Hogmanay.
Do not think about it.
Merida had glided into the small guest room Rosie was lucky enough to have to herself here at Peasgoode and spun about in the center. “Are you ready?”
Right. Focus on why they were sneaking about in the first place.
Rosie’s excited smile slowly bloomed. “I am beyond ready. I have been waiting for this for months.”
With a grin, her cousin pulled out a large pair of shears from behind her back and snick-snicked them twice. “Then let us welcome the twentieth century in style.”
With a deep breath, Rosie lifted her chin, straightened her shoulders, and nodded firmly. “As strong, independent women.”
Snick-snick. Merida smiled. “Strong independent women with shorter hair.”
Grinning, Rosie reached up and began plucking pins from the coiffure her mother’s maid had enforced this morning.
At school and when she was studying Rosie preferred a simple bun, something she could manage herself.
But Mother had suggested sharing the maid’s services while on this trip and Rosie, in a misguided attempt to impress a certain someone with her maturity, had agreed.
You are not to think of him, remember?
Oh, yes.
Bull had made it quite clear from his scowls that he wasn’t impressed by her, so mendacious golden turdbiscuits—as her father would say—to him.
On the very day of her arrival here at Peasgoode he’d been waiting with his mother and stepfather in the foyer to welcome the Hayle family, taken one look at Rosie, and abruptly turned away.
He’d been doing his best to avoid her since then, and she was obliging.
Furiously, but obliging.
“You do me first,” Merida commanded, settling herself on a stool near the cozy hearth and holding out the stolen item. “Just a few inches off the bottom, please.”
Rosie took the shears and stepped up behind her cousin, smoothing down her lovely red hair. “Are you certain? You have such magnificent hair.”
“It is a magnificent headache, is what it is.” Merida sent her a smirk over her shoulder. “Do you know how difficult it is to paint with this struggling octopus on my head? Mother despairs of ever knowing what to do with it. I want it gone—most of it.”
With a shrug, Rosie lined the shears up against her cousin’s back and got to work, snipping and checking the evenness of her lines.
Merida wasn’t technically a cousin by blood; her father had been Aunt Danielle’s—Rosie’s real aunt, her mother’s sister—first husband.
Aunt Danielle and Uncle Fawkes had adopted Merida, taking her to live at the cozy Hangcok Hill cottage where Fawkes had worked as a chemist. Although Merida was a few years older, the girls had grown up close, and Rosie had told her cousin everything. Everything.
“So…” Merida began nonchalantly. “Did you notice Bull glaring at us in the parlor this morning?”
Instead of admitting that she noticed everything the infuriating Bull did, Rosie hummed non-committedly. “How many inches did you say?”
“Just a few.” Merida held up her hand, her thumb and forefinger spread maybe three inches apart to show how much to cut. “It feels lighter already.”
Pretending preoccupation with her work, Rosie crouched behind her cousin and snip-snipped a few more times. “There. That is even. What do you think?”
Merida swished her head back and forth a few times. “It is perfect,” she sighed happily. “I wish I had the bollocks to cut it all off, but Mother would kill me.”
“Personally, I am glad you do not have bollocks.” Rosie winked as she helped her cousin off the stool. “It would make being best friends with you far more difficult.”
Her cousin snorted as she stood up. “Well, you know who has a nice set of bollocks—?”
“I swear, Merida, if you bring Bull up one more time…”
“What makes you think I was going to mention Bull’s bollocks?”
Rosie glared as she plopped herself down in the stool. “What? Nothing. Shut up. Just do me.”
“I know who you would like to do you—”
“What did I just say?” Rosie screeched, whirling around to smack her best friend on the hip even as her cheeks burned. “Cut my fooking hair already, you toad-spotted wankmuppet. A few inches.”
Merida snorted as she moved behind the stool. Snick snick. “I thought your father was trying to moderate his tongue these days?”
“When Beavis and I were younger, he did. I must be the only Duke’s daughter in Britain to grow up saying gooey poo-nuggets,” Rosie murmured fondly as her cousin began to trim her hair.
“But now my dear younger brother is off at school, learning how to be a gentleman, Da has slowly reverted to our favorite curses.”
“With no regard to his impressionable daughter?” Snip-snip. “Does he not realize what a soft and gentle soul you have? How mortally offended you would be to hear such language?”
“If I had pearls, I would clutch them,” Rosie deadpanned with a nod.
Just as her cousin blurted—“Do not—” and grabbed the back of Rosie’s head. Then, in a much smaller voice, she muttered, “Oops. Well. It could be worse.”
Not the word you want to hear in the middle of an inexpert haircut.
Dread pooling in her stomach, Rosie lifted her hand to the back of her head. “Oops?” she repeated, patting at the remains of her hair. “Did you just oops my haircut?”
“I doubt we can verb the word oops, cousin,” muttered Merida distractedly.
“I do not see why not.” Rosie twisted the remains of her hair between her thumb and forefinger as her heartbeat sped up. “You just verbed the word verb. Clearly you are not talented at maths, but I thought you could at least speak.”
Her cousin huffed. “I am sufficient at maths.”
“Clearly not! You cannot tell how many inches is a few. Meri, where in the duplicitous fookwomble did my hair go?”
“It is quite simple. When you nodded your head, I perhaps trimmed…a bit more than I had intended.” Merida’s smile looked weak as she peeked at Rosie’s frown. “It does not look bad.”
Is this what panic felt like? A medley of heat and chill, a pattering in her chest, a tightening of her lungs—“How does it look then?” Rosie’s voice was higher than usual as she frantically patted.
“Actually…” Merida pushed her hand out of the way as she considered. “It looks quite…chic, actually.”
“Shriek? What does that mean?” Oh yes, definitely panic. Rosie twisted on the stool, trying to see how much hair was on the floor. Oh spunknacious jibberfook. “Get me a mirror!”
“In a moment,” her cousin murmured, studying her work. “Let me even things out…”
Rosie held her breath as the shears schnick-schnicked too close to her ears, then around the back of her head. Oh, bungleshite, she could feel a breeze on the back of her neck! A breeze! That only happened when she was wearing her hair pinned up! What had Merida gotten her into?
But finally her cousin stepped back with a satisfied smile. “There.” She schnicked the shears once more for emphasis. “Finished. You look amazing, darling.”
Rosie bolted, throwing herself from the stool and rushing to the dressing table where the mirror stood. When she caught sight of her reflection she gasped and grabbed the edge of the table, twisting her head this way and that to study her new look in awe.
Chic. That’s what Merida had called her, and that’s how Rosie felt.
“I look…adorable,” she whispered.
Behind her, Merida chuckled. “You look arousing, Rosie. Liberated. Wild. A modern woman. Like I should start calling you Rose and buy you a bicycle and trousers.”
“Trousers,” Rosie whispered in awe, still staring at herself in the mirror.
“With pockets. Do you think women might one day hope for such a thing?” Her hand cautiously raised to run her fingers through the much-shorter hair at the back of her head.
Goodness, that was her nape—and it was open to the air!
“Nice, comfortable trousers with pockets, made of plaid wool that we might snuggle up on the sofa with a good book and a mug of cocoa and—”
“A platter of assorted cheeses?”
Rosie glanced at her cousin’s reflection, which shrugged.
“As long as we are dreaming of an ideal evening in front of the fire, I am including cheese.”
Fair enough.
Rosie straightened, then shook her head just to get a feel for the new length of her hair. “I love it. It looks fabulous. New. Grown-up.”
Her cousin had begun to brush the discarded hair into a heap. “And what will your parents say?”
“Who cares?” Rosie whirled to study herself in the mirror again, excitement bubbling. “As of midnight, it is officially the year nineteen hundred, Meri! The dawn of a new century, a new beginning! I am twenty-one years of age, my parents no longer control me—”
“Just you wait until they start discussing marriage contracts.”
Rosie stuck out her tongue.
Marriage contracts. Feckwobble.