19. Find the Flaw
Sprout nuzzled his head against Fern’s cheek just before the seventh bell tolled.
She didn’t open her eyes, wanting one more moment of peace before the day began in earnest—before Lina’s brush, Lady Blackwell’s lessons, Cassius’ cool instruction, the familiar ache of being arranged and corrected into something she wasn’t.
But when the bell’s last note faded, no knock came at the door.
Fern peeked around the room. Sprout already lifted his head, ears twitching toward the silence. By now Lina should have been there with her pins and ribbons and quiet hands. Instead, the room remained still.
Sprout slipped off the pillow and landed lightly beside her hip. Fern pushed herself upright, straining to listen.
Nothing.
No soft tread in the corridor. No rustle of skirts beyond the door. No muted knock followed by Lina’s careful voice asking permission to enter. Even the fire burned lower than it should have, the room carrying a faint coolness that told her no one had come to tend it.
A prickle worked its way down Fern’s spine.
She threw back the coverlet and looked toward the screen near the wardrobe.
No gown had been laid out. The washstand sat exactly as she’d left it the night before.
The wide-toothed brush Lina used on her hair remained untouched where it had been set aside for supper.
Fern left the bed and made her way to the sitting room. The constant chill beneath her feet no longer fazed her. Sprout circled once around her ankles, restless now, his ears pitched toward the door.
It was odd that Lina wasn’t there yet. Fern should have been well on her way to another morning of correction.
Another hour spent under Lady Blackwell’s eye with her shoulders pulled back, her chin adjusted, her silence measured.
But the suite was suspended, as though something in the Keep’s machinery failed to catch.
Find the flaw.
Cassius’ voice returned with irritating clarity. Her mouth tightened.
The Keep had a rhythm to it. Bell. Knock. Brush. Lesson. Meal. Watchfulness. Days were spent teaching her its order, pressing it into her body until she woke before footsteps reached her door. This wasn’t lateness. This was a break in pattern.
And in Blackwell Keep, breaks in pattern didn’t happen without reason—or so she assumed.
Fern crossed to the door and pressed her palm flat against the wood. Not a single vibration worked its way through the grain, letting her know there was nothing beyond.
“Stay close, little love,” she murmured to Sprout.
Then she drew back the bolt and opened the door to find Cassius Blackwell standing a few doors down from the suite, already dressed, already watching. Her grip tightened on the door until the latch bit into her palm.
The moment he saw her, he started toward the suite.
Fern stayed where she was, one hand still braced against the door as Sprout fluttered up to her shoulder. Cassius said nothing until he reached the threshold. Then he took the edge of the door from her hand and pulled it wider.
“Get dressed,” he said. “Lina won’t be coming.”
“Where is she?”
“Occupied.”
Fern frowned. “That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one you need.” He stepped into the sitting room and glanced once around the untouched suite, then gestured to her room. “Wear something you can move in.”
“Why?” Fern asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Because,” he said as he took a seat in the wingchair, “my mother has spent weeks teaching you how to compose yourself. Now I mean to see whether it survives pressure.”
His gaze flicked over her once, taking in the shift, the bare feet, the irritation she hadn’t managed to hide. “Not one of the gowns. Trousers. Boots.”
He checked his timepiece. “I’ll give you thirty minutes. Your breakfast will be waiting.”
Fern stared at him, irritated by how easily he’d upended the morning. Sprout chirped softly from the mantel.
“Must I dress you myself?” Cassius asked.
Fern huffed and turned back toward her room.
“Must I dress you myself?” Fern mocked to no one as she tore off her shift and rummaged through the wardrobe. “Demands. That’s all he does. Read this book by the fifth bell. Analyze these logs before dinner. Compose yourself. Bah.”
She shoved past the first row of gowns, pushing them aside with more force than necessary.
Silk, wool, embroidered hems—one after another—until she began pulling them free entirely, tossing them onto the bed in a growing heap.
Somewhere near the back, half-hidden behind the rest, her fingers caught on something heavier.
She tugged it free: worn leather, a familiar cut. Trousers. A tunic bundled in with them.
Of course.
Fern dragged them out and turned—then paused.
The bed was a mess. Fabric spilling over itself, sleeves tangled, hems dragging toward the floor. Lina would’ve had it all folded, sorted, restored before Fern even noticed the disorder.
Fern winced, then shook it off and reached for the trousers.
“Oh, this cannot be serious,” she muttered. The leather settled over her hips, and then she found the lacing—threaded up the back where she couldn’t see the damn thing.
She grabbed both cords, her fingers fumbling as she reached blindly behind herself.
One side pulled too tight. The other slipped loose entirely, the lace sliding free of one of the metal eyes.
Fern swore under her breath and tried again, twisting awkwardly as she fought to thread it back through and tie the whole mess off evenly.
By the time she stumbled toward the vanity, mildly breathless and thoroughly annoyed, she already knew it looked terrible. She twisted one way, then the other, trying to catch a better look at the back of the looking glass. The lacing sat uneven against her spine.
A loud creak sounded from the sitting room.
Fern braced both hands against the vanity and dropped her head with a sigh. Lina would have done this in ten seconds flat.
Fern straightened with another irritated breath and reached for the tunic draped across the bedpost. At least that required no lacing. She dragged it over her head, shoved her arms through the sleeves, then dropped heavily onto the edge of the bed to tug on her boots.
Sprout fluttered down from the wardrobe and landed beside her while she wrestled the second boot tight.
“Yes, yes,” she muttered when he chirped at her. “I know I look ridiculous.”
The faint, measured tapping of something against wood came through from the sitting room. Impatient without needing to say a word.
Fern shot a glare toward the door before crossing back to the vanity.
Her hair had become hopeless sometime during the struggle with the trousers and waking up.
Loose strands framed her face while the rest spilled unevenly down her back.
She gathered it quickly, fingers working faster than carefully, then twisted it up and forced pins into place wherever she could see in the looking glass.
The front looked acceptable.
The back—
Fern squinted at the reflection, trying unsuccessfully to angle the looking glass enough to see it properly. A section near the nape had already started slipping loose. She paused her ministrations as she heard the door to her suite open, muffled voices, then the door closed. Lina?
“Good enough,” she declared before she could keep picking at it.
She snatched up her coat, squared her shoulders, and headed back into the sitting room.
“Who was that?” Fern asked, eyeing the breakfast spread out on the sitting room table.
“Willem brought provisions.”
Cassius finally looked up from pouring tea—and stopped.
For one bewildering moment, he said nothing at all. Then a sharp, sudden laugh escaped him.
Cassius pressed the side of his hand briefly against his mouth as though catching himself too late, but another low laugh slipped free anyway, quieter this time, threaded with genuine amusement she had never heard from him before.
“You can’t leave this room like that,” he said.
Heat rushed into Fern’s face. “I dressed myself.”
“You most certainly did.”
She glared at him. “You said thirty minutes.”
“And in those thirty minutes,” he replied, still visibly fighting amusement, “you appear to have lost a war against your own clothing.”
Fern folded her arms tightly across her chest. “The lacing is backwards.”
“That is generally how back-lacing works.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you’re frustrated.” His mouth twitched again as he set his teacup aside and rose from the chair. “Turn around, Miss Silverbell.”
Fern blinked. “What?”
“The lacing,” he said patiently. “Turn around before you embarrass us both.”
“I can fix it.”
“I’m sure you can,” Cassius replied. “Eventually.”
Her glare sharpened. “You are insufferable.”
“So I’ve been told.” He made a spinning motion with his hand. “Now turn around.”
Fern debated refusing purely out of spite. Unfortunately, the back of her trousers felt as though they’d been secured by a drunkard. With an aggravated sound under her breath, she turned.
A shiver prickled across her arms as he drew closer. The humor faded from her irritation almost immediately.
Cassius gathered the loose cords, pulling the uneven tension from the lacing one section at a time.
The leather tightened properly against her back, snug but no longer threatening to twist sideways every time she moved.
Fern was suddenly aware of ridiculous things she should not have been aware of at all—how quiet the suite had become, the warmth of his hands through the fabric of her tunic, the faint scent of cedar and smoke clinging to his coat.
“You tied this like you were mad at it.”
“I was mad.”
“Apparently.”
Another firm tug, and finally the lacing settled correctly against her spine.
“There,” he said.
Cassius stepped back just enough for her to think the moment was over.
“And your hair.”
Fern immediately reached for the back of her head. “My hair is fine.”
A look crossed his face that made it very clear her hair was not fine.
Fern looked away before the heat in her face could betray her further. “I was in a hurry.”