The House of Beardsley

Chapter Thirty-one

Beth swirled in her cream dress, with puffed sleeves, as always filled with ruffles and frills, but now also with white fabric flowers I made for her. She tied up her hair, now nearly shoulder length, with a ribbon, but left her face plain, so she still looked youthful like her usual self.

Clo changed the most out of all of us. Beth had brought a hair iron from our visit to the department store last time just for today. Beth had tried to curl her hair but failed, so Rhiannon took over, rolling them into tight ringlets before tying them up with a ribbon. When she was finished it bounced around her neck and all of us were awed by her skills.

"Have you done this before?" I asked. She raised her chin.

"I wasn't a lady's maid for nothing."

Clo's dress was off the shoulder and revealed her collarbones, and she looked lovely in it. It was not as puffy as Beth's but flared out beautifully at the bottom. She added a black ribbon on the neck as a choker and also wore long white gloves.

As for me, I kept my blue dress simple: it only had short, trumpet sleeves reaching my elbows, a modest neckline, and did not have a distinct silhouette, but I felt comfortable with it. Beth let down my hair and only tied a part of it back, letting the rest cascade down to my waist. They agreed it was best that way, so I left it at that. Clo put some color on my lips, and that was it.

Before we knew it, the valets came to to tell us to come to the party. They said it looked as though we matured.

"I still think it's frivolous, but it's Christmas Eve, so I'll let this go by," Mister Kupka said with a shake of his head. Rudy patted his shoulder.

"You look nice," Harper said to Clo, making Beth elbow me.

Clo narrowed her eyes at us, made sure we weren't laughing, then replied, "Thank you." I saw a corner of her lip curved upwards, though.

"Weren't the gowns slightly different?" Matheus recalled.

"Yes," Beth answered. "Shuyan added the flowers on my dress, ribbons to Rhiannon's gown, and cinched up the sides of Clo's skirt."

"How skillful," he commented. I thanked him.

As we walked down we could hear the noises, and I began to wrung at my hands.

"It sounds like there's an awful lot of people."

"There is, but don't worry," Clo said, "today is different. We aren't maids." She suddenly grabbed my hand, and as we walked down the stairs, she whispered to me,

"I'm sorry for what I said that day. But today is different. Today you can be an equal."

Clo remembered.

She let go of my hands and then we were downstairs.

The front hall was filled to the brim with people, all dressed up in beautiful colors, even men, but the ladies were an entirely different story.

They pranced about with trains, gloves up to their upper arms, hair in high coiffures, and glistened with their jewels and gold.

"I've never seen such a sight!" I turned to look at the girls and the valets. They looked just like me, eyes wide and mouths gaping.

"Nor I! I can't believe this is the same Beardsley manor I've worked in for twenty years," Rudy said.

"Well, I admit it's pretty grand myself," Phillip agreed.

"The masters are there!"

I looked at the pointing, and saw the masters.

Each of them wore a new waistcoat and perfectly tailored coat-jacket, hair styled and combed back, standing with their backs straight at the tree, like illustrations of a love interest in a romance novel.