"Tighten up a notch under my breasts. They must look fuller," Laura said.
                          
I glanced down at my breast, and my tiny-winy protruding stomach stared back at me. Maybe what my step-mother and step-sister said was true after all. I didn't have a body that was desired and that was why no man had ever asked for my hand in marriage, even though I was treading the last years, months, of the usual age the females marry at.
                          
Shaking my head, I focused on the task at hand. I pulled all the strings Laura asked of me, and when she was done forcing me to choke herself to her heart's desire, I tied her corset along with the multiple strings on the back of her navy gown.
                          
"How do I look?" Laura twirled in front of the mirror, scrutinizing herself.
                          
I put a smile on my face despite the efforts it took. "Like the wife of an Earl."
                          
"I'll probably appoint you as my handmaiden once I marry Lord Ellington."
                          
That idea caused me to glance at her warily. "I'll probably marry soon too."
                          
She stared at me for a moment before bursting out in laughter. I squirmed under her gaze, unsure of the funny part. Her laughter died almost as soon as it emerged and a dirty glare was directed my way. "You seriously think anybody would willingly marry you?"
                          
I tried not to let the harshness of her words pierce my heart. "Uh, yeah. Someone will." It was an assurance more to me than her.
                          
"Keep dreaming," she snorted, and even that was elegant. "Now get going and finish preparing the lunch. I can't have you ruin this opportunity for me."
                          
I exited her room, closing the door behind me. As I worked in the kitchen with Isabella, my step-mother, painstakingly barking orders at me, I couldn't help the sadness that began to run through me thicker than blood. Laura was going to have a husband at eighteen, a person to call her own. At twenty-one summers, the only thing I could call my own was a small pendant that my mother left me. It didn't hear and it didn't console, but I talked to it anyway.
                          
By the time Lord Ellington and his family arrived, and the sun took its spot high in the sky, I had finished cooking and cleaning the kitchen. I heard the incoherent voices from the living room as I busied myself with setting up the lunch table. I was used to conceal the sadness that overwhelmed my heart everytime I got introduced as a family maid, an orphan they adopted and sheltered, instead of a daughter of the family. I did the same today yet I still stared at my father with hopeful eyes to meet futile results. I told myself it was alright, that was how it always had been but by the end of the day, my chest felt hollow.
                          
Once again cleaning the kitchen after dinner, I dragged my aching feet to the attic which was given to me as my room. Before Mother died, my room used to be the one Laura lived in. Now it was a room I only visited to clean and to assist Laura whenever she needed me.
                          
"Esméralda thinks she'll marry soon."
                          
It was Laura's laugh that paused me before I passed her room. Isabella's voice soon followed. "Delusional punk. We're not about to ship her off to some man and actually pay for a maid."
                          
What?
                          
"What happened to the Chevalier who had asked for her hand?"
                          
I was told I never was asked for.
                          
"I told him she never bled. He isn't looking back."
                          
Isabella didn't. However they were, they couldn't do—they did.
                          
"A few months more and no man will ever look at her," said Laura, "no more problems."
                          
Why?