Dove's Way by Linda Francis Lee

going to do it, and while she was at it, she planned to make a restorative tea of dandelions for Matthew, all before she went for her lessons on Boston. The underbutler’s hands should do remarkably better after a week using the salve, and no doubt Matthew could use a good cleansing herbal after what must have been a drunken binge, based on the disarray and reek of liquor in his study. If ever anyone could use a purifying tea, it was Matthew Hawthorne.
    Thankfully her brother generally went to work, and her mother and grandmother left the house daily for an assortment of meetings, luncheons, and who knew what all, making it possible for her to slip out of the house unnoticed.
    Wanting to look perfect for her first day of lessons, Finnea took extra care with her ablutions, pulling on one of the spectacular gowns she had found at the most wonderful little shop she had run across downtown. The store had been in a tiny corner of a cramped street, filled with clothes hanging from racks, and shoes all in a row. No measuring, no pinning. A person could simply buy what she liked on the spot, without waiting for a gown to be made. It was amazing.
    Just before she hurried down the grand staircase, she plucked out a few cherished photographs from her bag. She had thought about it last night as she drifted off to sleep, thought about how the photos from Africa might serve as some sort of peace offering to Nester.
    The house ran with a precision that both astounded and impressed her. She had learned in the short time she had been there that the Boston Herald was delivered to the Winslets’ palatial home on Commonwealth Avenue at five minutes past eight, at which time Bertram, the family butler, would take the folded pages to the pantry, where an aproned girl spent the next half hour ironing it into long flat sheets.
    At five minutes until nine, a line of serving maids would march up from the basement kitchen and set out the breakfast items. Eggs, ham, porridge, and freshly baked bread with a silver dish of butter. It was always the same; it never varied.
    Slowing her pace, Finnea strode to the elegantly decorated brocade-and-velvet-lined parlor and found her mother.
    Finnea stopped just outside the room as if peering through a looking glass into a foreign world, taking in the woman who sat so gracefully in a finely crafted wingback chair with a notch in the middle. Chippendale, her grandmother had called it. Finnea only knew that it was beautiful.
    As always, her mother’s gown was of a soft, subtle color, nearly blending in with the winter white of the seat cushion. Her skin was creamy, and her hair, barely brown, more like sand, was pulled up in an elegant twist at the back of her head.
    Just then Leticia turned, her sky-blue eyes finding Finnea in the doorway, and the woman smiled—a gentle mix of surprise and uncertainty, but pleasure and delight as well.
    Her mother. The one person she should confide in when she needed help in learning this world. Not Matthew, not some stranger.
    Finnea decided in a staggering rush of hope and love that it was foolish to have asked Matthew Hawthorne for help. It was time she told her mother the truth of her situation and gained her assistance. It was ridiculous to think that she couldn’t turn to the woman who had given birth to her for guidance.
    “Mama,” Finnea said, “you look lovely.”
    “Please dear, don’t call your mother ‘mama.’ It is so common.”
    Finnea turned with a start to find her grandmother standing behind her in the foyer. Disdain lay below the surface of the woman’s smile, barely hidden, like rocks unseen beneath a murky waterline, and a piercing thought leaped out at her.
    Was she willing to pay the price of fitting in with these people?
    Finnea shook the thought away. There was no price for fitting in, there was only reward, she told herself firmly. That reward was acceptance from her mother.
    But could she learn all she needed to know?
    Slowly Finnea turned back