Tuesday—November 24th, 2020

Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, lived a little girl and her widowed father in their huge, colorful castle.

Well... It wasn't that long ago. And it wasn't really a faraway kingdom. It only looked far away because you could barely see it through all the smog. And they didn't live in a castle, although Sophie would often pretend they did—it was the marvelous Penwood Hotel, with its great entrance hall, marble columns and the colorful walls that had been painted so to satisfy little Sophie's every whim without any thoughts about decorum or good taste. Still, Penwood's flamboyant decoration never damaged its reputation; it remained to date the only five star-hotel around those parts.

Sophie never met her mother but she had her father all to herself—and a more dedicated father you couldn't find. Sophie never felt like she had missed out on anything. She was the luckiest girl in the world.

Until Araminta Gunningworth, the fabulous New Yorker socialite, setting residence in the tons, came into their lives. That would always be reminded as the day everything started to fall apart in Sophie's life. Her father fell in love—and love was the hole in which he drowned.

At first, Sophie had been pleased when she had heard the news of his engagement. The housekeeper told her that the cook had said that the receptionist had said that her dad had proposed to Araminta, and that she'd come to live in Penwood with them, along with her two daughters, and they were near in age to Sophie. Sophie already had many friends—the waitresses, the bellboy, the caterer—but now she was getting sisters.

And so, one March afternoon, Sophie found herself waiting in the great reception hall along with her father and the assembled crew of the hotel, watching out the open door for the driver to pull up his car. The two young girls stepped out first. They had blonde hair and they wore matching black coats.

As they stepped aside, someone else came out of the car. Sophie's breath caught in her throat as she waited for her new mother to emerge. Her little fingers crossed and a single, "Please," whispered over her lips.

Please let her love me.

Araminta was the most beautiful woman Sophie had ever seen. Elegant down to her toes, with bright eyes, high cheekbones and thick locks of hair. She wore pearls around her neck and blood red lipstick on her mouth. She was beautiful, yes, and proud and elegant, true; but there was something terrifying about her. When Sophie got older, she started to realize it was the smile. Araminta knew to smile in a way entirely her own; a cold, disdainful smile that never, ever reached her eyes.

"You did not say your daughter was so beautiful, Arthur," Araminta purred when Sophie was introduced.

"Yes, thank you. She takes after her—" he stopped.

"Her mother?" Araminta supplied. "Just so." She took a turn around the hall, her eyes narrowing as he took in each one of the colored walls. "Rosamund and Posy have always shared a room," she said. "I can't have them in a confining space. You understand."

That was her chance, Sophie thought, to make Araminta love her. So before her father could speak, she said, "Oh, my suite's the biggest beside daddy's. Maybe they'd like to share it?"

Araminta raised a surprised eyebrow and Arthur Beckett looked proudly at his daughter. "What a wonderful idea," Araminta said. "What a good girl you are." But she somehow made 'good' not sound complimentary at all. "Girls, why don't you thank your new sister, uh?"

Sophie hazarded a smile in their direction. One of them smiled back and thanked Sophie, but the other one pointed her nose in the air and looked firmly away.

It only went downhill from there. If it was hard trying to make it work with Araminta and the girls when her father was there, it became nearly impossible when he passed away.

Araminta didn't even play the part of a heartbroken widow. She seemed glad, in fact, because now she could set out around Penwood changing whatever didn't please her, starting with the colorful walls Penwood was known for. Because Sophie's dad didn't leave a will, Araminta got everything—the hotel, the Beckett money and, to her dismay, Sophie. Araminta was in charge of everything now and she wanted to make damn sure Sophie understood that.

In time, Sophie learned how to act around Araminta and her daughters. If she served them well and made no sound, they were more likely to leave her alone. Of course they misused her. And by and by they considered Sophie less a sister than a servant. But all the work she had to do somehow helped her too, keeping her busy enough to forget about her grief and the dreams that would never come to be.

She tried to remember that she wasn't alone. She still had Mrs. Gibbons, the housekeeping supervisor, and the closest thing she had to a mother, and Miss Timmons, the cook, who always saved something warm and yummy for Sophie to eat before bed. Her father wasn't there, the hotel walls were now a boring shade of eggshell, but in Penwood she still had family in the form of everyone who worked there.

*

"Sophie! Sophieeeeeeee!"

As screeches went, it was enough to shatter glass. Or at least an eardrum.

"Coming, Rosamund I'm coming!" Sophie hurried up the main stairs, dodging some of the guests until she slipped on the steps and just barely managed to grab the bannister before landing on her bottom. She should have remembered that the stairs would be slick—she'd helped the downstairs maid wax them just that morning. "Be careful, everyone," she informed the guests. "It's slippery."

Then skidding to a halt in the doorway to a suite that had once long ago belonged to her, Sophie said, "You called?"

"My tea is cold."

Sophie tried to catch her breath. "Oh, Rosamund, why didn't you call room service? Mrs. Gibbons needs my help with room 405. Last night's guest left a mess in the sheets."

"Eww, that's disgusting," Rosamund sniffed. "Do you have to be gross all the time? And why are you complaining to me, Sophie Beckett? Get over yourself. Everybody's busy. I'm busy." She gestured to her bed which was covered with her plans for an art exhibition she'd been working on for the last month or so.

The What's in a name? was the most anticipated event of the season. Rosamund was selling it as a carnival-like atmosphere ball with an upscale mixture of VIPs, celebrities, art critics and collectors. The point was to strip people of their names and status for the night so they could show who they were outside of that. Posy, a big fan of Shakespeare, had come up with the original idea; but now that Rosamund had taken over, the whole thing was turning into something else entirely. She had gotten BCorp to sponsor the event and in exchange she'd be highlighting some of Benedict Bridgerton's best works. Except that, day by day, Rosamund was making more and more changes to the ballroom in a way that it was starting to look like more of a party than an exhibition.

"This," she pointed, "is due Monday. And different from what you do, Sophie, my work is important. So could you stop thinking about yourself for one second and do something selfless?"

"I'm sorry, Rosamund, but... that's not my job," Sophie reminded her.

Rosamund stared. "Your job is whatever I tell you."

That wasn't quite true but neither one of them was quite ready for this conversation. Sophie stretched her lips into what the nearly blind might call a smile and picked up the tea service. "Should I leave the biscuits?" she asked.

Rosamund gave her pretty head a shake. "I want fresh ones."

Shoulders slightly stooped from the weight of the overloaded tea service, Sophie exited the room, careful not to start grumbling until she'd safely reached the corridor.

"Sophie!" Posy was coming toward her. "Sophie, do you think this looks good on me?"

Sophie assessed Posy's dress. The cut wasn't quite right for her, who had never lost all of her baby fat, but the color did indeed bring out the best in her complexion. "It looks lovely," she replied with honesty.

Posy smiled as she reached out and plucked a sugared biscuit from the tray. "Mother has been an absolute terror all week about the masquerade. She wants me to look my best." Posy made a face. "Whatever that means. She thinks this business deal with BCorp might bring the two families together. She wants Rosamund to marry one of them. Not the painter, God forbid, but maybe the one who's returned from Europe? HG wrote about it."

"She did?" Sophie asked, shifting the tray to rest on her hip. "I haven't had a chance to read it yet."

"Yeah, you know, the usual stuff," Posy said with a wave of her hand. "Really, it can be quite humdrum, you know." Sophie tried to smile and failed. She'd like nothing more than to live a day of Posy's boring life. "There was a review of that piano concert, a bit about Mrs. Guelph, who's smitten with some girl from Sag, and a long piece about the Bridgertons. As per usual."

Sophie sighed. Reading What Everybody Sees But Nobody Talks About was her one true enjoyable pastime. Her father had left her with four novels and a fairytale book. The novels she'd re-read every now and then, but the fairytale book she hadn't touched since his death. It'd been their favorite and she couldn't bring herself to look at it. It hurt too much. What Everybody Sees But Nobody Talks About was a lot of fun for everybody, and for Sophie it was also a tantalizing glimpse into the world that might've been hers had her father not passed so prematurely.

"I won't keep you," Posy said suddenly, "but could you press my pink dress for tomorrow? I'm going on a picnic with some friends."

Sophie blinked her way out of her reverie and focused on Posy, who was reaching for the last biscuit on the tray. Sophie almost protested; she'd been hoping to snitch it for herself. Instead she nodded, mentally adding Posy's requests to her daily list of chores.

"I'll see you later then!" Biting down on that last biscuit, Posy turned and disappeared into her suite. And Sophie trudged down to the kitchen where she belonged.