Free Sinister Sentiments by K.C. Finn

resisted the sting that urged me to blink. Every muscle in my hands and fingers clenched hard at my skirts, waiting as I stared at myself in the grand mirror of my mother’s chamber. My mother sat beside me, clutching ribbons and pins that she threaded through her fingers repeatedly. I could hear her dainty toe tapping the polished floor beneath us.
    “Get on with it Constance,” she ordered.
    The maid obliged, her quivering hand coming closer to my brow. I remembered Mother’s warning and fought against the blink once more, the sight of the tiny paintbrush coming into my peripheral vision. Seconds later Constance made contact with an eyelash, and my eyelids came crashing down against one another. I squinted and lunged away from the brush. Mother pushed me back towards the maid with a bony hand.
    “Silly girl!” she said, slapping the back of my wrist. “You’ve got ink all over your cheek now!”
    We kept going until I had the hang of keeping still while Constance painted my lashes. I had heard of an invention that made the task of darkening them much easier, but Mother said it was the product of actresses. They were all harlots, of course, so that wouldn’t do for a lady of my standing, even if I hadn’t been a lady of standing for very long. New money meant new rules for us all to follow.
    “Don’t touch her hair!” Mother chided as Constance’s elbow brushed one of my dark curls. “I spent an age getting that hair just so!”
    She really had. It was styled in a tall mass of ringlets that was positively aristocratic. It wasn’t the current fashion of 1897, but it suited me well. Once my lashes were darkened, Constance ran the brush over my brows and then the look was complete. The dark hair complemented my pale skin and even made the mole on my cheek seem complimentary; it was the best job that Mother and the maid had ever made of me. Just in time for the night that would change my life.
    *
    Papa had bought the dress in New York, when he attended a conference of trade there. It was sent home to us in London, in an expensive black case that took all my strength to open. A gown in pale violet with dark underskirts and patterns like sprigs of lavender climbing up its corset. I had been dying to wear it, peeping into the case every day in anticipation of the ball it was being preserved for. Now that the time for the gown had come, it was almost too precious to put on. I quivered as I walked down the staircase of the reception hall, fearful that my pointed shoes would catch in its fine hem. A footman was waiting at the bottom of the stairs to greet me and my mother.
    “Mister Flint is absent tonight, milady?” he asked as Mother approached him.
    “Indeed,” she replied, “you may escort us into the main hall, boy.”
    I wanted to laugh at the lad’s agog expression, but Mother took her new society powers very seriously. After all the hard labour my father had gone through to elevate our standing, Mother knew exactly what we were entitled to and I didn’t dare do anything to jeopardise that. Especially not at the ball of the Duke of Blackfriars. The footman gave Mother a nod and stood between us, taking an arm each to guide us along the short corridor that led to the grand hall.
    The sound of music and gentle chatter caught my ear, an excitement warming my chest and threatening to flush my face. I took a few breaths to calm myself, catching the footman smiling at me from the corner of my eye. He must have only been my age, seventeen, or eighteen at the utmost. The feel of his strong arm, upon which my hand rested, made the heat within me spread further. I ignored him totally, as was proper, and he sulked away to the announcer, who would call our names as we entered the duke’s ball.
    “Mrs Arabella Flint, wife of Mr Oscar Flint, and their daughter Bedelia.”
    A few heads turned to appraise us, but not as many as Mother would have liked. She herded me to the very edge of the space where young people were