Sisterly Affection | Rose & Anna
The rain had finally stopped.
Rose suspected that her father had long ago instructed that the house was to be closed up tightly at precisely a certain time in an attempt to prevent her from gallivanting around the grounds after the sun went down, as she was prone to do. If she wanted to be let inside, Clarence Calvert, himself, would be alerted. But rather than encouraging her to be inside earlier, it only meant that Rose would use a rather less ladylike way of getting back inside.
After years of practice, she could practically scale the side of the house that led up to her rooms with her eyes closed. There was a patch of old, twisted vines that crept up the house in that side that helped, but in more than one occasion, her weight had been too much for it and she almost fell. It was much easier to climb back up using the huge tree that grew outside of Anna’s rooms.
Rose loved that tree: it seemed like it had planted for just this purpose, with perfectly placed branches that made climbing up it feel more like walking up a set of stairs. It was much safer and easier, this way, but she only used it when she saw a light on in Anna's room, even though she knew that Anna always left the door to her balcony unlocked now, as she would much rather Rose use this route and wake her, then use the more dangerous one and get hurt.
Tonight, she climbed up the tree with ease and, opening the balcony doors, announced herself, “It’s only me!”
Anna was sitting at her vanity, brushing out her hair. She turned, immediately, at the sound of her sister but Rose had briefly caught her expression in the mirror beforehand. She'd never seen Anna look so forlorn. She looked as though she could have been crying.
To see Anna looking back at her now, Rose wondered if she saw that look, at all, for her sister looked as bright and happy to see her as always.
Still, Rose was worried and had been ever since Alexander Lambton had come into their lives. She couldn't even look to their own father, who loved Anna perhaps more than anyone else left on this earth, for protection. "Anna?" She asked, softly, "Are you alright?"
