Dreams
Disclaimer: I disclaim it.

The door opened with a satisfying silence and Oscar's eye searched the interior of her eldest sister's bedroom. The light from inside set itself in a strip on her face, her hair and on the portrait in the corridor behind her.

She, Oscar, should be in bed by now. If Father were to see her up and about he would not be in the best of moods. He had already raged and fumed earlier on today, and if it hadn't been for Marguerite interfering, she would have had bruises to show for her behaviour. Just what was it that displeased him? Despite her tiredness, she suppressed a yawn. Hadn't Granny said it was time for bed well over an hour ago?

Instead, Oscar remained where she was, and watched her sister at her dressing table. Marguerite inspected her round face in the mirror as she brushed her hair slowly and hummed an old lullaby. Oscar could not move herself away. This creature that she remembered, viciously chasing young Oscar through the house, angrily shaking a short haired doll in her fist, had metamorphosed into a beautiful swan.

She did not really see her sisters after they were dismissed from the reading room, for they retired before her bedtime, and Mother would come to kiss them goodnight. Oscar would stay with Father, and he would ask her about her studies, her fencing, her horsemanship…And then Granny would announce that it was half past ten… Oscar made her breathing very quiet and very steady, like she used to do when she pretended she was asleep, and looked on.

Marguerite had put the brush down now, and reached behind her head, lifting her hair above her neck with her white hands. Her back straightened and she put on a haughty look. Then a smile. Playing with the features on her face she let out a little laugh.

"Mademoiselle Marguerite Louise Françoise de Jarjayes…Madame Marguerite Louise Françoise de La Rochejacquelein…Ah, but my name grows longer and longer!...Bonsoir, mon cher, I will say. And how was your day today? Don't you like the flowers I picked this morning? Or shall I tell you about the book I have been reading? Monsieur de La Rochejacquelein…how sweet you are…"

Oscar felt her fingers curl around the door, and she pushed it just a little bit wider. Now her sister had let her hair go, and leant on the dressing table, amid pins and trinket boxes, perfume bottles and paper dolls, jewellery cases and candles. She pouted into the mirror, arched her back and admired her reflection.

"Don't be such a drama artist, Margée. He may not like you so much if you pay this much attention to your reflection," she smiled and batted her eyelashes, "It is my wedding though. I think that stuffy Marguerite can be just a little silly, no?" and she laughed again.

All of this made Oscar unsure of what to think. Even though she knew that she was a girl, she could not quite comprehend what it would be like to grow into a woman, unable to imagine anything other than being a man. Marguerite would be seventeen next month. How lovely she looked, her mind full of nothing but her fiancé, a marriage that both families welcomed and that, she conjectured, Father had initiated. At that moment, Oscar knew that there would never be a Jarjayes daughter more beautiful than the one sat on the little stool in her white nightgown, playing with pearls. But her thoughts were quickly dispelled as she suddenly caught Marguerite looking at her. She gasped. Discovered!

"How long have you been standing there, Oscar?"

Oscar refused to speak, but could feel the blood burn her cheeks.

"It is awfully rude to stand outside people's doors and eavesdrop. You'll never know what you might hear."

Looking at the floor was getting her nowhere. Oscar stooped her shoulders and cast an apologetic look to her sister. The latter took a contemplative step back. Well, it wasn't quite a conversation, but something was getting through to that young one's head.

"I didn't mean to, Marguerite. But you looked so beautiful. I will miss you when you leave home."

"Oscar…"

And she bent down, and wrapped her long arms around her little sister's body and laid her head on Oscar's shoulder,

"Promise me you will come to visit me, Oscar. I will be so lonely without you, and Hortense, and Henriette and Louise and Emilie. I wish I could have played with you more, Oscar…"

Oscar swiped at her nose in the most unladylike manner she could adopt, having seen André do so after he fell into the coal heap in the cellars.

"You know, all this girl stuff…I'm not interested, really"

"And is that why you have been standing there looking at this 'stuff' for the past half an hour, no, chérie?"

Oscar did not answer. Girl things were so…trite!

"Maman will be coming soon. You had better not let her discover you out of bed and fully dressed, or she would think you and André were up to something again. And last time it made her worry so much."

"I will go in a little while. Only…"

Boys were not sung to. Boys were not given dolls to play with. Boys were not permitted to cry, or to come running to their mothers for comfort. All these things were not for boys.

But still.

And still…

"…Only will you please sing again? The lullaby? It has been a long time that I heard you sing."

"Quietly though, or we shall wake up the whole house."

Madame de Jarjayes peered into the bedroom, where her first child and her last child held hands, and a gentle voice sang an old berceuse that she herself heard from her own mother, that she sang to each of her six children, that she remembered so well. And when the song reached its end, so quietly, she kissed her eldest goodnight, and, so quietly, put her hand on her youngest's shoulder. And when Madame had left Oscar warm in her bed, when she, so quietly, left the room after fondly looking at her, Oscar dreamt of the lullaby music, and of her sister's happiness, and of her mother's goodnight kiss.