The Key She Sewed Into Her Dress

There was a moment, small and telling, that she would remember long afterward.

A fashionable dressmaker had been brought to the estate to build Cosima a new wardrobe, and the woman, not knowing or not caring who was in earshot, had spoken about her task with open contempt — about the challenge of disguising a figure like Cosima’s, of finding fabrics dark and heavy enough to hide her.

It was the exact language Cosima had heard her whole life, the language that had taught her to fold herself small and dress in shadows and apologize for occupying space.

Caspian, passing in the hall, heard it.

He dismissed the woman on the spot, without raising his voice, and had her off the property within the hour.

It mattered more than the firing itself that he had not hesitated.