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CHAPTER1

Emma

“We’re finally getting out of here!”

I have spent thirteen years at the Honourhall Home for Lost Ladies, an orphanage located at the very far north of Scotland. Louise spent fifteen. Henrietta has been here all eighteen. We are all incomparably excited to be leaving, though there is a little maudlin feeling lurking behind the relief.

We are waiting to be freed, because we can no longer be kept. We are grown women who have lived almost every day of our lives behind the stone walls that separate us from the outside world.

Most of us will have to fend for ourselves, but some of us will find husbands before we leave, at the Honourhall Ball. It is for this grand occasion we have been preparing ourselves for years.

We are not permitted to date, or have much interaction with the outside world, such as it is. The island we live on is small, and the people are few. Tomorrow, when the ball is over, we will be given tickets to the mainland, and references for several employers who have taken those who leave the orphanage on as secretaries and such.

The atmosphere in our little dormitory is electric. Everybody is wearing their finest. Everybody except Bea, who is sitting at the window, staring out of it with longing. She’s always been a little strange, and a lot distant.

Her long, dark hair hangs lank and unbrushed around her shoulders. She is wearing her work trousers and a long tunic over the top. Both of them are stained. She hasn’t even bathed.

We all grew up together. In the absence of mothers and fathers, we are sisters, siblings forming a family. That means we put up with the strangeness and the sadness we all have. It comes out in different ways for each of us. Some of us are always cheerful to an irritating degree, others of us are melancholy. And then there’s Bea.

She has been a lightning rod for trouble ever since I have known her, often deflecting trouble that would have found one or the other of us if not for her willingness to take blame and punishment alike.

The others roll their eyes when they look at her. They think she is just being difficult again. I guess I think the same thing.

“Why aren’t you getting dressed, Bea?” I try to encourage her to get ready. I wouldn’t want her to miss out on her future husband just because she wanted to throw a tantrum.

“There’s nothing to celebrate,” she says. “It’s not a ball. There’s not going to be any dancing.”

“Yes, there is. There’s going to be dancing, and cake, and drink.”

“It’s an auction. They’re going to put us up for sale. We’re going to pay for our care by being sold.”

Everybody groans. “Do you have to ruin everything, Bea?” Sasha calls out.

“Don’t listen to her,” Briony replies. “Let her show up like a freakish mess. Let her miss out on a man.”

“We’ve been fattened like pigs for years, and you girls can’t wait to go to the slaughter,” Bea shoots back.

I used to worry about her being bullied, but she’s always been able to defend herself. If it wasn’t for how paranoid she is, and how seriously she takes everything, she’d be one of my favorite sisters. I do worry about what will happen to her now that we are all over eighteen, and it is time for us to find ourselves new homes and new lives.

The matrons have made it clear that this ball is a great kindness, a single opportunity for us to go from the care of the orphanage to the care of a husband. Some of us will never have to worry about providing for ourselves in a world that does not look kindly on orphans.

Bea falls silent and the buzz of excitement returns. A dozen of us are about to go out and into the world. We will not have to wake up and clean tomorrow or spend the day doing darning for the local workers, or otherwise earn our keep according to the orphanage’s liking.

Since our early teens, we have been workhorses. They frame it as learning life skills, housekeeping, looking after the younger girls, cooking for the home, but it is really just drudgery. It will be different when we are married. I would happily cook and clean and tend children for a man who loved me.

I see Bea slip out of the room. She goes quietly, as if she does not want to be noticed. Worried, I go after her. I am about as pretty as I am going to get.

“What are you doing?” I stop her in the hall, where she is poised by the fire escape.

“I’m running away,” Bea says. “I’m not going to the ceremony.”

“But you must come to the ceremony! Running away is impossible. And what happens if you try is unthinkable.”

We look at each other in horror, both aghast at the choices we are making.

“You’re so close to getting out,” I say. “Just stay another night.”

“I told you in there. We are pigs, ripe for slaughter. That ball will be a bloodbath. I will not stay. You should come with me.”

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