“Yes,” he said, his lips barely parting. He licked them, clearly feeling they needed moistening, but the motion had the effect of making Ella lose her concentration on all else. She just kept thinking that his lips looked lovely, plump and ripe. “When you come back,” he said. “We can do what we were supposed to tonight.”
“Alright,” she said, glad that he had asked her back. Though she also felt a looming hesitation at what he wanted her to do, at the thought of what she was selling. Her psyche was torn at the moment. She wanted to see him again, and the prospect of what he proposed was almost intriguing to her now, rather than dread inducing. She still had lingering reservations. “I’ll come back, but I should be fair,” she said.
Ash raised an eyebrow and quirked his mouth into a rueful half smile. “Fair?” he said. “I’m not sure I follow.”
“It’s not fair for me to defer so long and you let me keep the money upfront,” she said. “It would be fair if I gave you half the money back.”
Ash shook his head. “I don’t want half the money back,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll get what I’ve paid for.” He perused her figure with lusty eyes, and something about it combined with what he said made Ella feel her reservations return.
Ella nodded her agreement, biting back a reiteration of her offer to return half the money. She realized he wanted her to keep it, which made her feel better. That meant he was generous. Still, she preferred not to be in people’s debts, and especially not this deep. “I should go,” she said and then slid off the other side of the bed. She was still holding the dress in front of her bosoms and decided to try to maneuver the sleeves onto her arms, but the sharp sting of the lash returned as she tried to pull the top of her dress back on.
“Let me help you,” Ash said. He walked over and pulled the front of the dress away from Ella’s bosoms. He stared at them as he held out the top of the dress for her to slide her arms in. She blushed at his stare but pushed her arms into the dress one by one. A dull wave of pain passed through her as she did so, but it was leagues less than her agony of earlier.
“Thank you,” Ella said softly.
“I’ll fasten the back,” he said, moving behind her. She felt him delicately close the folds of her dress.
As he fumbled with the tie at the neck, she said. “Don’t tie it. I’ll have trouble getting it off.”
Ash agreed and she turned to face him and say goodbye.
He shook his head and laughed.
She wondered if she had again done something wrong. Why was he laughing at her? “What?”
“Well, I was about to tell you that next time I would teach you the fine art of negotiation, as you really should never offer to give someone their money back,” he said with a grin. “Only now, you still look so desolate that I’m going to give you your way. If it will make you feel better, I’ll take half the money back?”
A smile crept across Ella’s face. “Really?” The prospect of being so far in his debt had overwhelmed her. Yes, she needed the money to get away from her stepmother, but she would have to flee quickly and without warning. She couldn’t do that if she owed him so much. Not that she intended to renege, but she preferred owing only small sums.
He walked over to the bag she’d set on the hook. He pulled it open and removed half of the King’s coins in it. Then he handed it to her.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Perhaps next time, you can explain to me the fine art of negotiation, as you seem to have gotten the deal you sought.”
Ella laughed. “I suppose I have,” she said, reaching out and touching his arm. “I think it all starts by being fair and letting the other side know that you only want what’s fair for both of you.”
He raised a hand to his chin and his eyes sparkled in the low light of the room. “That’s actually good advice.”
She nodded, and slid her hand off his arm. As she watched her hand fall away, a wave of sadness washed over her. She wanted to touch him again, and for some reason that frightened her. “I should go,” she said
Ash frowned. “Do you really have to go back to that place? Your mistress sounds awful. Perhaps I could find you a job here at the castle.”
Ella was shaking her head before he even finished. “I can’t leave her,” she said. “I told you, I have to stay.” She stopped, not sure what more she could say. She was bound to her stepmother. A girl of her age couldn’t leave, couldn’t marry without her mother’s approval. If Lady Kenna found out she had a job at the castle, she’d just demand all the money Ella earned from it and Ella would be in the same situation as now. “If I could leave for another job, I would. I can only leave her when I’m ready to never come back, and I don’t have the means for that right now.”
Ash nodded. He leaned in and whispered in her ear. “Then, go and be safe.”
Chapter 6
It had to be at least two in the morning. Ella hadn’t seen a clock, but she knew she’d stayed at the castle for enough time to actually do what she thought she’d be doing. Or at least as long as it would take to do that. She’d never actually done it herself, but Faye had. Faye’d had a much tougher life than Ella. When Faye left the orphanage to move to the boarding house, she’d technically been too young to do so, but the head of the orphanage had looked the other way. Faye had threatened to cut off his dangly if he came to her anymore in the wee hours. For Faye, the boarding house had been a relief and she’d been happy to take odd jobs. Sometimes she was a cook, other times a maid who cleaned rooms at the inn.
Faye was plump and plain but had a laugh that would rouse anyone from slumber and fill them with joy. It was infectious, her laugh. Faye, despite what she’d said earlier about being hopeless, or looking to Ella for hope, was remarkably resilient. She seemed to possess a talent for being in the right place at the right time to find out useful information. She had never parlayed that information into much in terms of money, but Ella could tell that things were just on the cusp for Faye. That one day, she would be brilliant at something. Ella had planned to return to Faye’s to change, but she had been so worried about being caught by Lady Kenna she just headed straight home to their little manor in the country.
Ella snuck back into her tiny tower chamber, gently laying the loose boards over the little door. In the dark, she climbed the stairs slowly and went up to her room. She undressed in the darkness, having nothing to light the candle with at the moment and knocked over a couple of items, for she hadn’t cleaned up after Lady Kenna had made the mess searching for the money. Ella managed to avoid tripping or making too much noise, before she found her bed and sat down. The bed was a good spot because she could get her bearings of the room from there. Gertrude, the woman who’d tended her wounds, had given Ella a small ceramic jar of the salve, telling her to apply some every day for three days. She took the jar and slid it beneath her bed. Then she tucked Bathilda’s dress under her pillow and lay face down on the straw mattress.
Ash’s words ran through Ella’s head. Why didn’t she leave this place? The prospect of leaving tempted her often. The prospect of walking out the door and never coming back was so alluring, like a carrot dangled before a horse. Only she knew she couldn’t just up and go to the next town over. She was sure she could find odd jobs to support herself. Ella didn’t mind working hard. She worked hard every day, probably harder than most people at jobs that paid. But she was certain that if she didn’t go far enough away, Lady Kenna would come searching for her and demand that Ella return, and the people in the town would make her. She was an unmarried daughter of Lady Kenna’s and as such, Lady Kenna had the right to direct Ella’s future.
That meant Lady Kenna was the only person who could arrange for Ella’s marriage. And if she did not marry, Ella was bound to stay and help Lady Kenna for at least another half-dozen years, until she was considered old enough to be on her own, or until she was married, which would put her under the care and custody of her husband. Sometimes, the difficulties of a woman’s life vexed Ella. Ye
t, there was nothing she could do about it. Especially since the simplest option, the one available to her peers — marriage — wasn’t available to Ella.
Lady Kenna would definitely marry off her own Bathilda and Marigold before trying to arrange a marriage for Ella, and even then she might not do it. And where could Ella go if she didn’t have the means to get far, far away — far enough away that Lady Kenna wouldn’t want to spend the family’s precious resources on searching for her.
But this money was a start. What was due to be paid was almost the amount Lady Kenna had stolen from Ella. It had taken six months of her carefully replicating plants on paper to earn the same amount of money that she could earn in just one night.
Ella looked out of her window at the moon. What a difference a day made. It seemed impossible that so much had changed. Ella had met a man. A man who had been kind to her when she thought all he wanted was sex. A man she’d intended to suffer through this experience with, solely so she could earn money. Yet she hadn’t suffered at all. He’d been kind and gentle and fixed her wounds.
Perhaps that was the hallmark of being a lowly cousin in a family of royalty. Perhaps it reminded you that we cannot all have the fortune of being born high. Or perhaps Ash was just kind.
“Ash,” she whispered, wanting to say it aloud. She knew it wasn’t his real name, no more than Cinders was her real name. But she liked that he’d chosen a name to go along with hers, that he’d wanted to be Ash to her Cinders.
She sighed and tried to figure out where to hide the money she’d been given. Lady Kenna had found Ella’s secret hiding place, so she couldn’t put the new money there. But where? Ella’s back hurt. It had felt much better after the salve had been applied, but the walk home had aggravated the cuts and now they tingled in a low scorch.
She decided Lady Kenna was happy to have beaten her and taken her money so she wouldn’t feel the need to do it again today. She sat up and put the money in the chest at the foot of her bed, sliding it beneath some of her mother’s old dresses that had been saved for her. In the morning, she would take the money to Faye. While she couldn’t trust anyone in this household, Ella knew she could trust Faye to keep the money and not take a single cent.
But she ought to give Faye something for keeping it safe from her wicked stepfamily. She’d offer her a third. If Ella could convince Ash to pay her for another two visits, she would have enough money to leave, even if she gave Faye a third. Maybe Faye would even come with her. They could pretend to be orphaned sisters who were starting anew after their parents died in a town far away.
Ella wondered what Ash would think of her plan. It was funny how often she’d thought of him since leaving. She shouldn’t, she realized. Even if he was kind, he was related to the royals and they could never be anything more than what they were going to be: a whore and her master. The harshness of that thought made her bristle. She was whoring herself. What would her father think? Ella was just nine when he died. The thought that he’d been dead now for as many years as she had known him startled her. Half her life had been with her father and half lived without. He was such a kind man. He wouldn’t want this for her, she knew, but she was desperate and running out of options. He’d wanted a mother for her, someone to love her and take care of her after he was gone. Only, he hadn’t gotten that. Maybe she shouldn’t care what he’d think of her plans to get away from Lady Kenna, and yet she found she did care.
Ella had gone to bed in the nude because Gertrude had said the salve had to breathe for it to work. It did feel better with nothing touching the wounds. Ella had considered asking Marigold to help her put on the salve in the morning. Ella couldn’t reach all the parts, nor could she see enough of her back to do it herself. The only problem with asking Marigold was that she would tell Lady Kenna, who would probably take the salve away just to make Ella suffer more.
She wasn’t sure why Lady Kenna hated her so much. She’d been so nice to Ella when she moved in. But the moment her father, Edward, died just two months after their wedding, Kenna had shown her true nature. She spoke with such venom towards Ella that she sometimes imagined the woman’s words would leap out like talons and slice into her.
No, Ella couldn’t get Marigold’s help, but she did need someone’s. She’d figure out some excuse to go to town, and she’d take the money with her and the salve for Faye to apply. That was her only option. Ella was tired. She was thinking too much when what she really needed was rest. She usually got to bed much earlier. She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 7
That had been different and completely unexpected, the prince thought, as he sat in his own room at the castle. The girl was breathtakingly beautiful. It was the kind of beauty that struck you on sight, but you couldn’t quite put your finger on it until you’d been in its presence for a while. Her face was simple and kind, and remarkably desirable. In fact, her entrancing eyes were a crystalline blue that reminded him of a lake nearby. He could imagine himself spending hours staring at her.
And then, the beating she’d taken. The welts on her back, the pain they must have caused. Yet, she didn’t complain about it. She soldiered on because she needed to get away from the woman who had beaten her so.
He chewed the nail on his thumb and sighed. He wished he could’ve convinced Cinders to stay and take a job at the castle. Though, if she’d taken a job here, she would find out who he was. After she’d called herself Cinders, he’d wondered if she actually knew. Wondered if his cousin Chandler had put her up to it. But the look on her face and the way that she treated him made it plain she didn’t know who he was.
Still, once she said her name, it had made it simple for him to give her a name. His real name, or at least a part of it: Ash. His parents called him Ashton, his middle name, on a regular basis, and Gertrude often called him that. Most people called him simply John, or your Highness. Your Royal Highness, if they were new to the castle and thought they’d be seen more favorably by using the longer title. They were mistaken, though, as he was never swayed by such blatant attempts to curry favor.
There was a knock on his bedroom door. It was soft, but he’d definitely heard it. Very odd, given the late hour. “Come,” he called out.
A moment later the door opened and Gertrude strode in, still in her nightgown, pale and fretful. He stared at her a moment, curious as to what she could want. “Close the door,” he said.
She looked nervously at him, then closed the door to his chamber. “Your Highness,” she said.
She stood there, her eyes cast down at the floor, and he wondered why she behaved this way. She was always friendly with him. She had been his favorite, the woman whose care he’d adored most. She’d been his nursemaid until he was 12, when his father said he was too old for one. She went to serve his uncle, a Duke, for seven years, before returning to the castle just a week ago to help oversee the household staff. She’d always called him John or Master Ashton before.
“Gertrude,” he said kindly. “You seem upset.”
She nodded. “Yes,” she said, the word coming out quickly. “It’s just,” she looked up at him and smiled the way she used to, a pleasant, matronly smile of proud adoration. “It’s just that you were always such a kind boy, and I haven’t seen you in so long. I just wanted to remind you that even though you’ve spent the summer with your cousins, that you should remember who you are, what your heart tells you.”
And then it all came together in his mind. His cousins, Chandler and Leith, had different sensibilities. Yes, he’d learned a thing or two from them. The idea of getting peasant women for pleasurable dalliances, that had all come from his cousins. Chandler was wild and wanton and particularly enjoyed the company of a woman. Although Leith still dabbled, he was less involved in such things, now that he was scheduled to be married in just three months. Chandler, on the other hand, had no such restrictions and had perhaps grown even wilder. Ashton had even tried one or two of Chandler’s more lewd suggestions, involving ropes, w
hips and hot candle wax while lying with a women. While interesting, Ashton had avoided some of the darker things Chandler had suggested. Some of it seemed cruel, despite Chandler’s protestations that the women adored it. Ashton sighed as a wave of sadness hit him that Gertrude would think so little of him. “I didn’t put those welts on her,” he said.
She looked deep into his eyes and let out a relieved breath. “Of course you didn’t, Ashton,” she said. “You asked for me to bring the salve because she needed help.”
He nodded. “I did,” he said. “I appreciate you bringing it. And, I appreciate your discretion in this matter.” He straightened his shoulders, and in a firm tone that he hoped seemed commanding, said: “You’ll tell no one why I summoned you tonight.”
“Of course not,” she said, and it was he who felt relief that she had agreed so easily. She’d always been in charge of him when he was younger, so he’d had a pang of worry that she wouldn’t acquiesce to his directions now.
Gertrude curtsied as if she intended to leave him, but then as she rose to a full standing position again, she asked tentatively, “How did you happen to come upon such a hapless girl?”
He half smiled. She was still as nosey as ever, still as bold as ever. No other servant would have dared to ask him about the girl, or tried to set him on a truer path than his cousins. No one but Gertrude. “That’s my business,” he said.
“Of course, Highness,” she said.
“By the way, what is in that salve? It seemed to work wonders for her.”
“Oh, sire,” she said. “Do you remember what I told you was in it when you were a child and fell in those brambles?”
His mind recalled that day sharply, the pain of the fall and the thorns tearing into him was seared deeply into his memory. He looked at her and said, “You told me it was fairy magic.”
Cinders & Ash: A Cinderella Story (Passion-Filled Fairy Tales Book 3) Page 4
