She paused.
"Eat the food, Petal. Wash your hair. The honey is for your skin — apply it before bed. I want you looking presentable by the end of the week, because Lord Lucien may be content to pay for conversation, but the other clients are watching, and a girl who receives triple-rate treatment must look like she deserves it, or the other girls will riot, and I do not have time for a riot."
She left.
Clara ate the food. Washed her hair. Applied the honey.
She hated herself for it.
The other girls noticed.
Of course they noticed. The Gilded Rose was a small world — a world of silk walls and locked doors and the particular, suffocating intimacy of women who lived in close quarters and survived by watching each other for weakness.
