Page 6 of Mad Duke March

“Oh, very well!” Emily screeched. She stilled in the chair, staring at the wall of the sisters’ bedroom in the little cottage they’d rented for the duration of their stay in London. “But do be quick about it!”

“If I am quick about it, it shall be all wrong!” Harriet snapped back. As the second oldest sibling, she had trimmed Emily’s hair before. But this was different.

“It won’t be right no matter what you do,” Emily whimpered in defeat and squeezed her eyes shut. Her breath caught as she heard a crunching sound followed by a resounding snip. Emily stilled, not moving a muscle, not even breathing as her sister continued cutting her hair.

Crunch. Snip. Crunch. Snip.

Tears rolled down Emily’s cheeks, but she refused to make a sound.

And then the gentle, “All done.”

With shaking fingers, Emily raised a small mirror from her lap. She stared at it for a long moment not recognizing the person staring back. She quickly looked away from her red and puffy eyes toward the rough edges of her now short hair and an involuntary sob tore from her mouth. “I look hideous!”

Emily rarely lost her composure in front of her siblings. She needed to be strong for them. She needed to set a good example and be the one reassuring them.

But so many things had gone wrong in one morning that she had no capacity to hold all of that inside.

Hair, clothes, humiliation, ruination. Poverty!

Since the hair was the last straw that broke Emily’s composure, her hair would be the one thing she complained about.

Harriet’s skirts rustled as she took a step back. Her voice was small, hollow even. “I did my best.”

Tears fell freely, burning their path along Emily’s cheeks. “How am I supposed to get married looking like this?” Will I even get a chance to get married at all after this?

Silence.

Emily turned to look at Harriet, only to see her wringing her hands, her lower lip protruding and quivering, her dark brown eyes liquid, making her look as vulnerable and hurt as when Emily had chastised her when she was little. She was seventeen—an adult. But to Emily, she would always be a little child.

“I am sorry, Harry. I am not upset with you.” Emily wanted nothing more than to soothe her little sister. However, she was too dismayed to make a real effort, her emotions too raw to switch from hurt and bitterness to comfort and reassurance. She loved Harry, and it pained to see her hurt, but Harry’s beautiful chestnut hair tumbling down her shoulders only salted the wounds in her soul.

She raised the mirror back to her face and studied her brown locks of hair haphazardly pointing this way and that. “You did… well.” She swallowed. Her once long golden-brown locks, the ones she brushed every night and took pride in their glow in the light of candles, were now destroyed. In their place was something that looked disturbingly like a pile of hay. And Emily herself resembled a homeless mutt.

“I can’t marry Bernard like this!” Emily exclaimed as she hurled the mirror onto the bed. What she really meant was that Bernard was not going to marry her like that. He loved her golden-brown tresses and told her constantly they were her best feature.

Emily had never been beautiful. Not the way her sisters were. And deep in her heart, she liked that there was something about her that Bernard found exceptional.

“Finally, some good news,” Sophie said from behind her.

Emily turned toward her, heat creeping up her face. “Pardon me?”

“Sophie, not now!” Harriet tried to shoo their youngest sister away, but Sophie evaded her skillfully and danced farther into the room.

“It doesn’t look that bad,” she said, although her scrunched-up face proved her words a lie. She glanced from the locks on the floor back to Emily’s face before turning to Harriet. “Did you have to cut it this short?”

“I did my best.” Harry threw up her hands. “And you just said it didn’t look that bad!”

“It does not!” Sophie insisted, her freckled nose still wrinkled. “But it would look better longer.”

“If I could make it longer, why would I have cut it this short?” Harry’s voice trembled and her hands shook as she started collecting the hair off the floor.

“Oh, God, Harry, are you crying?” Sophie scoffed. “You are not the one marrying Bernard.”

“Sophie!” Harry exclaimed, in horror, but Emily couldn’t scrounge up an ounce of outrage anymore. She felt defeated. There was too much distress in her heart to argue.

Both her sisters harbored an open dislike of her fiancé. It wasn’t his fault, really. Bernard’s younger sister was Emily’s age, and he didn’t know how to interact with anyone younger. So, he either treated them as babies or avoided them altogether.

But the fact that Harry was now trying to silence Sophie instead of supporting her just underlined how terrible Emily must have looked.