the fifth bridgerton.

diamond of the first water.

"Mother please! Oh I beg of you, do not force me to do this. Can't I begin next season with Elloise?" Grace pleaded with her mother as they paced around Madame Delacroix's shop, picking up the last few items and preparing for the last seamstress session.

"No, Grace! That is my final answer. Complain all you wish to Anthony but please child, leave me be!" Her mother ushered her onto the dressing stand as Madame Delacroix began her work, sewing the last bits of lace on and altering the dress to perfection.

"Oh my! I look ghastly!" Grace gasped loudly as she turned to the mirror.

"Oh Grace! Hush, now!" Her mother lightly tapped her shoulder.

"My, my! What a look." Cressida Cowper and her mother had entered the shop, snickering at Grace.

"Oh, Cressida. New hat?" Grace rolled her eyes at her 'friend.'

"Do you like it? Mother says it really brings out my eyes." Cressida flipped a stray hair over her shoulder.

"Makes your head look smaller, almost a normal size." Grace turned back towards the mirror as Madame Delacroix lightly snickered in the background at the previous remark.

"Thankyou, Madame, but we must be going. I'll send over the payment when Anthony makes his rounds." Violet Bridgerton looped arms around her daughter, Grace Bridgerton's, arm as the walked out of the dress shop.

"My, I'm parched." Grace groaned as they entered their home.

"I'll go and make you some tea, ma'am?" One of the servants at the door asked Grace.

"No, please! I'll make it myself, thankyou anyway." Grace smiled as she skipped down the hallway to the kitchen. She always had a knack for not allowing the servants to do anything she could do herself for her. When she was a little girl, she went to the lengths of cleaning her own laundry and even her siblings, insisting she was perfectly capable of doing anything she wanted. She, in-fact, was not perfectly capable. She realised as she tumbled down the marble steps after dropping the large basket of soapy water, wrapped up in soaking laundry.

"Of course, ma'am." The maid nodded and smiled as the beaming girl.

"Then to bed!" Her mother sternly ordered her as Grace just smiled away.

Grace quickly did herself and her younger sister, Hyacinth, a snack and a drink. Quickly hopping up the steps, Grace found herself in front of her sisters door.

"Hyacinth, I have something for you!" Grace whispered, lightly rapping her knuckled on the wooden door.

"Come in!" Hyacinth whispered back from inside of the large room. Grace quietly opened the door and entered into the white and blue room.

"I have some new dresses, mother bought them for me and I think they are absolutely horrendous so I have to show you." Grace rolled her eyes and opened their shared wardrobe, connected by one door through Grace's room and another through Hyacinths, the wardrobe in the middle of both doors.

"Look! She insisted on a blue dress at first and I thought I might've fainted right there! Thankfully, I talked her down to either white or pink." Grace pretended to gag after she said the word 'blue.'

"Oh Grace, you're so very particular!" Hyacinth giggled at her older sisters dramatics.

"Is Colin at home? Oh I must go call on him! He has to see this catastrophe of a dress." Grace made her way towards the door but quickly stopped as she heard her mother knocking on the door.

"Coming!" Hyacinth called out as she shoved Grace into the wardrobe, plate of cookies and a jug of warm milk still in hand.

"It's an extremely long day tomorrow, please retire to bed. And you Grace! I can see your feet in the cracks of the door, child! You have to be looking absolutely fresh for tomorrow! The Queen will never name you the diamond if you have ghastly eye bags!" Her mother scolded her.