A Giving-Away Ceremony#
Anna did not witness the private conversation between Julien and her father.
That was as it should be.
She waited in Marc Lefevre’s sitting room with her hands folded in her lap and her back too straight to be comfortable, listening to the low murmur of male voices through the closed door and feeling each passing minute as a small tightening in her chest.
She already knew what she wanted. That was not the same as knowing what would be decided.
When the door opened, Julien stepped out first. Marc followed a moment later, composed as ever, though his eyes were softer than usual when they settled on her.
Anna rose at once.
“Sir?”
Marc gave a small nod.
“It is agreed.”
The words went through her so quickly she had to catch herself on posture alone. Relief came first. Then gratitude. Then the deeper, stranger sensation underneath both: that the shape of her future had just been made formal by two men discussing her over a closed door and that this, rather than humiliating her, had filled her with peace.
“Thank you, Sir,” she said.
She meant both of them.
Julien’s hand touched the middle of her back for only a second.
“Steady,” he murmured.
It helped.
Later that week she and Julien went to the Jade Garden to settle the details.
Anna chose it almost at once. The tea house sat north of Geneva, a western take on a formal Asian tea house, designed for functions just like hers. Gravel paths, dark wood, trimmed pines, water moving quietly over stone. It was beautiful without being showy. Ceremonial without becoming theatrical. A place where a woman could be transferred from one man’s care to another in perfect calm.
Julien watched her take it in.
“This one?”
“Yes, Sir.”
He looked over the pond, the curved bridge, the carved screens of the main room.
“It suits you.”
That pleased her absurdly.
They walked the path slowly because Anna’s clothes required it and because neither of them seemed in a hurry to leave. Julien asked practical questions. Guest count. Timing. Privacy. The room for tea afterward. Anna answered where she could and deferred where she should. Once or twice he settled a decision with a simple “we will do it that way,” and each time she felt the same deep easing she had come to associate with being competently directed.
The guest list remained small.
Marc, of course. A few people from Julien’s side. A few from hers. No one noisy. No one careless. The day did not want a crowd.
“Sonia,” Anna said, before she could overthink it.
Julien glanced at her.
“If she is back in time?”
“If she is back in time, Sir.”
He considered that without jealousy or irritation, which made Anna love him more.
“If you want her there, invite her.”
Anna lowered her eyes.
“Thank you, Sir.”
That part mattered more than she wanted to admit. Sonia had not approved of any of this. Sonia might never approve of any of it. But Anna wanted her there anyway, wanted her to see that this was not confusion anymore, not fever damage, not a phase that would pass if handled correctly. This was her life now. Chosen, even within the shape of what had been done to her. Especially there.
The dress took longer.
Lily received the news with exactly the right degree of pleasure, enough to feel warm, not enough to become vulgar.
“So,” she said, drawing out the word as she circled Anna with measuring eyes. “Now you need to be given away properly.”
Anna’s face warmed.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Lily pulled fabrics, sketched lines, laid options against Anna’s skin and stepped back to study the effect. The foundation, they all agreed, would remain strict. Corset. Controlled movement. Proper posture. The visible layers could be made softer, more ceremonial, but what mattered would still be there underneath: the architecture that held her where she belonged.
“Nothing too bridal in the old sense,” Lily said. “This is not innocence.”
No. It was not.
“And nothing too severe either,” Lily went on. “He is not acquiring furniture.”
Anna could not help smiling.
“No.”
What they arrived at was more elegant than girlish: a formal silhouette built over restraint, with Chinese details worked into the surface so the whole thing felt less like costume than like an evolved local ritual. Beautiful, but not free. Refined, but unmistakably dependent. Lily spoke of drape, line, and occasion. Anna heard all of that and also the quieter truth beneath it: Julien would be able to look at her and see, before anyone said a word, that she had come ready to be handed into his care.
That thought stayed with her all evening.
So did the language.
Giving away. Into his care. Julien Moreau’s Anna.
None of it frightened her anymore, not really. It made her restless, tender, and a little ashamed of how much she liked imagining the formal surrender of it: her father’s hand, Julien’s acceptance, the visible shift in how others would address her afterward, the tea she would pour, the first quiet private minutes after, when the ritual would be over and the reality would still remain.
That night, back in Julien’s apartment, she knelt beside his chair while he reviewed a seating note from the Jade Garden and made one or two final practical corrections. The domesticity of that nearly undid her more than the grander thoughts had.
“You are distracted again,” he said without looking up.
“Yes, Sir.”
He set the paper aside then and gave her his full attention.
“Anxious?”
Anna thought about it.
“Expectant, Sir.”
That made him smile.
“Good.”
The word moved through her with familiar force.
“It is still some weeks away,” he said. “You do not need to live in the future before it arrives.”
“No, Sir.”
“But you may look forward to it.”
The permission felt almost as intimate as touch.
“Yes, Sir.”
He reached out and touched her jaw lightly, two fingers under the line of it, not enough to move her, only enough to remind her that he could.
“I am looking forward to it too.”
Anna lowered her gaze because there was too much in her face to show safely.
That was the state she remained in after that: not completed, not yet formally transferred, but no longer in doubt. Waiting had become part of the pleasure. The ceremony was still ahead of her. Sonia was still away. Her life had settled into a new shape, and the last thing left was to stand still long enough to be given over publicly into the future she already inhabited in private.