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Malta edged into the room, then, at a scowl from her father, hastened forward to stand before him. She bounced a curtsey at him and avoided her mother’s eyes as she announced, ‘The Summer Ball is past, now. We had to miss it, I understand that. But Harvest Offering is seventy-two days from now.’

‘And?’

‘I wish to go.’

Her father shook his head in exasperation. ‘You will go. You’ve gone since you were six. Everyone goes who is of a Trader family. Save those like me, who must sail. I doubt I shall return in time to attend. But you know you’ll go. Why do you bother me like this?’

Malta stole a glance at her mother’s disapproving face and then looked up earnestly at her father.

‘Mother said we might not go this year. Because of mourning Grandfather, you know.’ She took a deep breath.

‘And she said that even if we did go, I was still not old enough for a proper ballgown. Oh, Papa, I do not want to go to the Harvest Offering in a little girl’s frock.

Delo Trell, who is the same age as I, is wearing a ballgown this year. ’

‘Delo Trell is eleven months older than you.’ Keffria cut in.

She could feel the heat in her cheeks, that her daughter dared bring this to her father as if it were a grievance.

‘And if she attends the Harvest Offering in a gown, I shall be very surprised. I myself was not presented at the Offering as a woman until I was fifteen, nearly sixteen. And we are in mourning. Nothing is expected of us this year. It is not fitting!!…’

‘It could be a dark gown. Carissa Krev was at the Ball only two months after her own mother died.’

Keffria spoke firmly. ‘We will go only if your grandmother sees fit to go. I doubt that she will. And if we go, you will dress as is appropriate for a girl of your age.’

‘You dress me like a child!’ Malta cried out.

Her voice was tragic with pain. ‘I’m not a little girl any more.

Oh, Papa, she makes me wear my skirts half up my shin, with ruffles on the bottom, as if she fears I shall run and play through puddles.

And she makes me plait my hair as if I were seven, and puts bows on my collars and lets me wear only flowers, no jewellery and—’

‘Enough,’ Keffria warned her daughter, but to her surprise her husband laughed aloud.

‘Come here, Malta. No, wipe your tears and come here. So,’ he went on when his daughter had come close enough to be pulled onto his lap. He looked down into her face. ‘You think you are old enough to dress as a woman, now. Next you’ll be wanting young men to come calling.’

‘Papa, I’ll be thirteen by then,’ Malta began but he shushed her.

He looked over his daughter’s head at his wife. ‘If you all go,’ he began carefully, ‘would there be so much harm in letting her have a proper gown?’

‘She’s but a girl!’ Keffria protested in dismay.

‘Is she?’ Kyle asked. His voice was warm with pride.

‘Look at your daughter, Keffria. If she is a little girl, she’s a well-fleshed one.

My mother always said, “A boy is a man when he proves himself to be one, but a girl is a woman when she desires to be one.’” He stroked Malta’s plaited hair and the girl beamed up at him. She gave her mother a pleading look.

Keffria tried to conceal her shock that her husband would side with her daughter against her. ‘Kyle. Malta. It is simply not seemly.’

‘What is unseemly about it? What will it hurt? This year, next year, what difference does it make when she graduates to long skirts, so long as she wears them well and they look becoming on her?’

‘She is only twelve,’ Keffria said faintly.

‘Nearly thirteen.’ Malta sensed her advantage and pressed it. ‘Oh, please, Mama, say yes! Say I may go to the Offering and have a proper gown this year!’

‘No.’ Keffria was determined to stand her ground. ‘We shall go only if your grandmother does. Otherwise, it would be scandalous. On that I am firm.’

‘But if we do go?’ Malta wheedled. She turned to her father again. ‘Oh, Papa, say I may have a proper dress if Mama allows me to go to the Gathering.’

Kyle gave his daughter a hug. ‘It seems a fair compromise,’ he suggested to Keffria. To Malta he added, ‘You shall go to the Ball only if your grandmother does. And no teasing or nagging about it. But if she goes, then so you shall, and you shall have a proper gown.’

‘Oh, thank you, Papa,’ Malta breathed as if he had granted her a lifelong wish.

Something so like anger that it dizzied her coursed through Keffria’s blood.

‘And now, Malta, you may go. I wish to speak to your father. And as you believe you are old enough to dress like a woman, you shall show me you have the skills of one. Finish the embroidery that has been on your loom for three weeks now.’

‘But that will take me all day!’ Malta protested in anguish. ‘I wanted to call on Carissa, and see if she could go with me to Weaver Street, to look at cloth…’ Her voice dwindled off as she saw the look on her mother’s face. Without another word, she turned and scampered from the room.

As soon as she was out of sight, her father let out a burst of laughter.

There was nothing, Keffria thought, that he could have done that would have affronted her more.

But when he caught sight of her face, instead of realizing his error, he but laughed the louder.

‘If you could see your face,’ he managed at last. ‘So angry to have your daughter get around you! But what can I do about it? You know she has always been my pet. Besides. What harm, truly, can it do?’

‘It can attract to her an attention that she has not been taught to deal with as of yet. Kyle, when a woman goes to the Harvest Offering in her first ballgown, it is more than an extra length of cloth to her skirts. It is an announcement that she is presented to Bingtown as a woman of her family. And that says she is of a courtable age, that her family will consider offers for her hand.’

‘So?’ Kyle demanded uncomfortably. ‘We do not have to say yes.’

‘She will be invited to dance,’ Keffria went on inexorably.

‘Not by the boys her age, with whom she has danced before. For they will still be seen as boys. She will be seen as a young woman. She will be dancing with men, both young and old. Not only is she still an indifferent dancer, but she has not been taught the skills of conversing with men, nor how to deal with attentions that are… unwanted. She may invite improper advances without being aware she is allowing them. Worse, a nervous smile or a silly giggle may make it seem she is encouraging them. I wish you had spoken to me before you had allowed her this.’

In the blink of an eye, Kyle went from discomfort to irritation.

He stood abruptly, flinging his napkin to the table.

‘I see. Perhaps I should simply live aboard the ship, to avoid inconveniencing you while you determine the fate of our family! You seem to forget that Malta is my daughter as well as yours. If she is twelve and has not yet been taught dancing and manners, perhaps you should rebuke yourself for that! First you sent my son off to be a priest, now you behave as if I shall have no say in how my daughter is raised either.’

Keffria was already on her feet, grasping at his sleeve. ‘Kyle! Please! Come back, sit down. That is not what I meant. Of course I want you to help raise our children. It is simply that we must be careful with Malta’s reputation, if we want her to be seen as a properly-raised young woman.’

But Kyle was not to be appeased. ‘Then I suggest you see to her manners and her dancing lessons, instead of sending her off to work embroidery. As for me, I have a ship to attend to. And a young man to straighten out. And that through a decision I had no say in at all.’ He shook her off as if shooing away a fly and stormed from the room.

Keffria was left standing with her hand clutched over her mouth.

After a time, she sank slowly back into her chair.

She took a deep breath, and then lifted her hands to her throbbing temples.

Her eyes were scratchy with unshed tears.

So much tension, so many quarrels lately.

It seemed as if there was never a moment of peace in the house.

She longed suddenly to return to the days when her father was a healthy man, and he and Althea sailed while she and her mother stayed at home and cared for the house and children.

Then when Kyle had come into port, it had been like a holiday.

He had been the captain of the Daring in those days.

All had spoken well of him, how handsome, how dashing he looked.

During his days at home they had spent them either dallying late in their bedchamber or strolling arm in arm about Bingtown.

His sea-chest had always brimmed with prizes for her and the children, and he had made her always feel like a newly-wed bride.

Ever since he had taken over the Vivacia, he had become so serious.

And so, so… she tried to think of a word.

‘Grasping’ came to mind, but she rejected it.

He was simply a man in charge, she decided to herself.

And with her father’s death, he had extended that to everything; not just the family ship, but the household, the holdings, the children, and even, she thought woefully, her sister and her mother.