On the Inside

A velvet-gloved carnivalesque farce unfurls when Johnny—lips lacquered, spine corseted, bustle swelling like a rococo sail—glides into the marble-and-mirrored manor of Mr. Aldous Grimble, a paterfamilias whose jealousy crackles louder than the hearth he forever stokes. Tasked to shepherd three sequestered daughters—Rose the incandescent reader of dangerous French novels, Iris the pianistic anarchist, Dahlia the telescope-toting astronomer—our hero navigates corridors patrolled by bloodhound footmen, governesses armed with steel rulers, and a patriarch who counts chastity belts before breakfast. Each creaking door becomes a proscenium; every stolen glance a stanza in a clandestine sonnet. The masquerade thickens when Johnny’s own heart stumbles, thudding beneath whalebone, for the middle girl’s nocturne-laced laughter. Meanwhile, midnight séances, forged love letters, and a missing emerald brooch conspire to peel away the powdery façade, exposing raw skin, raw longing, raw terror that the noose of Victorian propriety might tighten into a hangman’s knot. By the time dawn’s gaslight pales, wigs lie trampled like fallen birds, engagement rings roll under chaises, and the old maid’s tenor voice—cracking—pleads for a forgiveness that sounds suspiciously like revolution.