“Poppycock!”
“Amy March! That mouth!” Jo tried to be scandalized, but in truth, it was always a bit thrilling when one of the other Marches cursed.
“You’re just scared.”
“I’m not!”
“Of course you are,” Amy scoffed. “You’ve had a bit of luck with your first book, and now you’re afraid you’ll do something wrong and spoil everything.” As usual, her sister had hit the nail on the head, or, as she was more likely to say, the head on the nail.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Jo could feel her temper rising with her voice. She reached to pull the nearest golden curl, but Amy squirmed away.
“Don’t wrestle me like I’m Laurie!” Amy howled. “And don’t be prickly, I’m just telling the truth!”
Could she be right? The little potato? Jo thought about it. She may just be right.
“Don’t be such a fraidy-cat,” Amy said, earnestly. “Give the people what they want, Jo. Give them the sequel they deserve! You owe it to your readers . . . not to mention the London West Enders.”
“Do I?”
“Of course you do!” The youngest sister was no longer listening. “As for me, in the sequel, make sure I marry a count! No—a prince!”
Jo couldn’t help but smile. Her little sister was nothing if not predictable. “Pierre, the Prince of Pickled Limes?”
“No! Christophe . . . the King of Cherries!” Amy shouted as Jo chased her around the chair.
The wooden door pushed open as Meg March followed their mother inside, trailed by Hannah, their loyal servant and, in many ways, a member of the family. Hannah had helped raise the March girls from infancy. Jo truly didn’t know how Mama Abba would have survived their father’s absence without her.
“What king?” Meg asked, pulling off her plain, round-brimmed bonnet. The splintering straw was shaped like a coal scuttle, Jo thought. Way too homely for their sister. Even if they could have afforded a ribbon or two, it was near impossible to get Meg to really enjoy anything.
Regardless, Meg was generally held to be the first great beauty of the March family, with her rich dark hair and doll-like porcelain complexion—perhaps even more fragile than a doll’s, like a teacup Jo might drop, or a silk stocking she might tear.
When Meg blushed, Amy said it looked like watercolor paints splashed across her cheeks. But Meg only looked delicate. In truth, Meg was as tough as any March sister, inside and out. She could beat Jo up the attic stairs and shinny up the old oak before Amy had reached the lowest branch. The rest was all feminine artifice and girlish manner—as per the style, and the society, of the day.
What a fat lot of rot, Jo thought.
Poor as the March family was, she didn’t know why her older sister bothered with feminine artifice at all. She herself certainly didn’t. Yet Meg did always seem to care what other people thought of her. And now Jo could not stand that her horrid little book had become a source of some awkwardness between them. But it had, because Jo had written that their neighbor Laurie’s otherwise unremarkable tutor, John Brooke, had proposed to Meg, and Meg had accepted him, when in truth they had never even exchanged a word with each other.
“What king? Why, the king I’m going to marry in Jo’s next book! The Cherry King!” Amy announced, even as she held up an orange.
“Amy! Those oranges were the last of the fruit basket the book man sent! I was saving them for the preserves!” Hannah scolded. “Now we’ve nothing to send to the picnic on Sunday.” Hannah sighed, but she drew her arms around Amy. “Next time, stick to the raisins, dearest.”
“You just wait for my wedding. All the preserves in the kingdom, Hannah. They’ll be yours—and you won’t have to can a one.” Amy winked wickedly.
“Lovely, my dearest. Are we invited to the wedding ceremony, then?” Mrs. March asked, draping her shawl over the little hook on the wall. “I’m not sure I have something suitable enough for the wedding of a proper king.”
“You’ll need Parisian silk,” Amy decided. “With the finest whalebone stitching, sewn right into the seam like a corset. It’s au currant,” she said.
Like the raisin. Jo smiled. She never corrected Amy anymore. The idiosyncrasies of Amy’s speech would surely give way to womanhood soon enough, and Jo found herself already missing them. Plus, they had been such great material in Little Women, First Part—which was what Mr. Niles had now taken to calling the first book, in hopes of pressuring her into the second.
Jo sighed.
“Au courant,” Meg corrected. She always corrected her sister, as the French tutor and governess that she was.
Amy ignored her, as the ungoverned student that she was. “And petticoats and puffed sleeves . . . opera gloves . . . and satin brocade slippers . . . and ribbons! Loads and loads of ribbons.”
“Don’t worry.” Meg smiled at their mother. “Jo will write you something lovely . . . but then make sure everyone knows your dress is borrowed.” She rolled her eyes at Jo. “I told you that Belle lent me her dress in secret!”
“Better borrowed than scorched!” Amy made a face at Jo.
If Amy had suffered the shame of the pickled limes, Meg had endured the shame of the borrowed dress, having scorched the back of her own—even though Jo had given herself that particular shame in the story and set it at Mrs. Gardiner’s party instead. Still, everyone who had been at the real Moffat ball knew which March girl that particular scorch mark had belonged to . . .
This is why I can’t write the sequel. Who knows what it would do to them? I’ve already wounded Meg’s pride by pairing her off with Laurie’s tutor when he’s never even said a word to her.
“Now, what fun would a dress be with no scorch marks?” A booming voice followed them inside, and the sound made everyone smile.
Jo pushed back her chair. “Exactly. That’s what makes it a story, you ninnies.”
Theodore Laurence—affectionately called Laurie—burst into the room, lighting the whole place up as he entered, just as he always did. Laurie was Jo’s best friend, their next-door neighbor, and, luckily for Jo, the sort who didn’t care too much for books—not even hers, not even when he appeared in them.
Quite the opposite; he insisted he’d never even read them.
Today, though, he carried inside an armful of paper envelopes, dropping a few at every step.
“Get out of my sight, you horrid boy!” Jo groaned. “Shoo! You’re banished. I can’t handle you and another one of your deliveries most foul.”
The Laurences lived across the road from the Marches—and routinely brought in their mail as a favor. Laurie took his duties as Jo’s postman with a great deal of mock seriousness, just as he did every new opportunity to tease her.