About this story
You return grown, win one season to prove yourself, and reopen the shuttered drawing-room for a weekly Thursday evening, weighing whether Carlingford's oldest families or its overlooked talents deserve the invitations. By the first Thursday, lamplight reaches corners unused since your mother's illness, and Barbara Lake waits beside the piano when the doorbell brings in a stranger, Mr Cavendish, unannounced.
How it opens
At fifteen, you returned from school rehearsing how an only daughter should console her father.
NancyThe mourning room is ready, miss, though the doctor has kept to his library.
Dr MarjoribanksGrief does not improve by staging it, Lucilla, and neither does digestion.
He accepted one hurried kiss before asking whether your school trunk had remained packed.
Choose
Ask Nancy what duties your mother actually left unfinished.
Tell your father you can begin by presiding quietly at dinner.