They fit exactly. I held my feet out for Char to see.
“Stand up.”
“They’ll crack for certain if I do.” I could barely stay seated because of the command.
“Perhaps not.”
I stood. I took a step. The slippers bent with me. I turned to Char in wonder.
Then I was aware again of the sounds of the orchestra far below. I took a gliding step. I twirled.
He bowed. “The young lady must not dance alone.”
I had danced only at school with other pupils or our mistresses for partners.
He put his hand on my waist, and my heart began to pound, a rougher rhythm than the music. I held my skirt. Our free hands met. His felt warm and comforting and unsettling and bewildering—all at once.
Then we were off, Char naming each dance: a gavotte, a slow sarabande, a courante, an allemande.
We danced as long as the orchestra played. Once, between dances, he asked if I wanted to return to the celebration. “Won’t they be looking for you?”
“Perhaps.” Hattie and Olive would wonder where I was. Father and Mum Olga wouldn’t care. But I couldn’t go back. Lucinda might still be there. “Do you want to?”
“No. I only came to see you.” He added, “To be sure you arrived home safely.”
“Quite safely. Sir Stephan guarded me well, and the giants took excellent care of me. Did you catch more ogres?”
“szah, suSS fyng mOOng psySSahbuSS.” (“Yes, and they were delicious.”)
I laughed. His accent was atrocious.
He shrugged ruefully. “They laughed too and never listened to me. Bertram was the best; they obeyed him half the time.”
The music started again, a stately pavane. We could still talk while performing the steps.
“A fairy gave my father and my new mother an unusual gift.” I described it. “What do you think of such a present?”
“I shouldn’t like to be under a spell to love someone.”
Thinking of Father’s scheme to marry me off, I said, “Sometimes people are forced into wedlock. If they must marry, perhaps it’s better if they must love.”
He frowned. “Do you think so? I don’t.”
I spoke without considering. “It doesn’t matter for you. You can marry anyone.”
“And you cannot?”
I blushed, furious with myself for almost giving the curse away. “I suppose I can,” I muttered. “We’re both too young to marry, in any case.”
“Are we?” He grinned. “I’m older than you are.”
“I am then,” I said defiantly. “And the fairy’s gift was horrid. I would hate to have to love someone.”
“I agree. Love shouldn’t be dictated.”
“Nothing should be dictated!” An idiotic remark to a future king, but I was thinking of Lucinda.
He answered seriously. “As little as possible.”
When the orchestra finished, we sat together on the bench and watched the sky darken slowly.
Sometimes we talked, and sometimes we were silent. He told me more about hunting for ogres. Then he said he was leaving again in two days to spend a year in the court of Ayortha.
“A year!” I knew that the future rulers of Ayortha and Kyrria always spent long periods in each other’s courts. The practice had preserved peace for two hundred years. But why now?
He smiled at my dismay. “Father says it’s time. I’ll write to you. You shall know all my doings. Will you write to me in return?”
“Yes, but I’ll have no doings, or few. I shall invent, and you’ll have to decide what is real.”
The noise of horses and carriage wheels reached us from below, signifying the end of the celebration. I went to a window and looked down. Father and Mum Olga were saying farewell to their guests while Hattie and Olive stood by. Lucinda was at Mum Olga’s side.
“The fairy’s still here,” I said. “Standing at the bride’s side.”
Char joined me. “Perhaps she means to monitor the effects of her gift.”
“Would she? Do you think so?”
“I don’t know.” He saw my face. “I can tell her to go. She would hardly like a prince for an enemy.”
“Don’t!” A prince would trouble Lucinda not a whit, and a squirrel prince would trouble her even less. “Let’s just watch.”
After several more guests departed, Lucinda kissed Father and Mum Olga on the forehead. Then she raised her arms and lifted her head to the twilight sky. For a terrifying moment I thought she saw me. But no, she just smiled her dazzling smile—and vanished.
Char gasped.
I sighed, a long release.
“We’d better go down,” I said. “Soon they’ll look for me in earnest.”
There was just enough light to see by. In a few minutes we stood on the landing above the hall.
“No one is here,” Char said. “You need resist temptation no longer.”
“Only if you slide too.”
“I’ll go first so I can catch you at the bottom.” He flew down so incautiously that I suspected him of years of practice in his own castle.
It was my turn. The ride was a dream, longer and steeper than the rail at home. The hall rose to meet me, and Char was there. He caught me and spun me around.
“Again!” he cried.
We raced up. Behind me he said, “Wait till you try the banister at home.”
His home! When would I do that?
“Here I go.” He was off.
I followed. I was almost to the bottom when the door opened. I sailed into Char’s arms observed by the stunned faces of Father and my new family.
Char couldn’t see them and twirled me as before, until he got halfway round. Then he set me gently on the floor and bowed at Father and Mum Olga, his buttonless doublet flapping. He was laughing so hard he couldn’t speak.
Father grinned. Mum Olga smiled uncertainly. Olive wore her puzzled frown. Hattie glowered.
I used their distraction to conceal the glass slippers in the folds of my skirt.
“Thank you for the honor of your presence,” Father said, giving Char time to collect himself.
But not time enough. “You have …” Burst of laughter. “… my best wishes for your felicity …” Laughter. “which is assured....” Peals of laughter. “Forgive me. I’m not laughing …” Laughter. “… at you. Please understand …” He trailed off.
Father chuckled. I laughed helplessly, holding the stair rail for support. I couldn’t help it, although I knew Hattie would make me pay.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
After a final awkward bow, Char left us.
“You’ve made another conquest, Ella,” Father said.
“The prince wouldn’t—” Hattie began.
I interrupted. “I haven’t made any conquests. Your mushrooms made the other one. Besides, soon Ch—the prince leaves to spend a year in Ayortha.”
“My darling, must we remain in this drafty hall?” Mum Olga extended her lower lip in an absurd pout.
“Sweetness, you’re cold! We’ll go at once.” Father draped his cloak over Mum Olga’s shoulders.
In the coach I was wedged between Hattie and Olive—uncomfortable, but warmed by their bulk. Across from me, Mum Olga turned eagerly to Father.
“Before, it would have been wrong to ask, but now I may, dearest. How rich are we?”
“Why, just as rich as we were before. Silly goose, did you think weddings caused our coffers to grow?” He put his arm around her shoulder.
“No, dear.” She pouted again. “I only wanted to know.”
“Now you do.”
“I may be just a silly goose, but I don’t know. I mean, I know how much I have, but I don’t know what we have.”
Father faced her and put both hands on her shoulders. “My love, you must be brave.”
I braced myself.
“I came to you a poor man, with only myself to offer. I hoped it would be enough.”
She touched his cheek. “You are just enough
for me.” Then his words reached her. “Poor? What do you mean poor? Poor is sometimes a figure of speech. Do you mean poor?”
“From my ruin, I salvaged my clothes and Ella’s. Little more.”
“Mama!” Hattie cried. “I warned you. What will we tell people? I knew Ella—”
She was drowned out by Mum Olga’s wails. “Yooou didn’t looove meee. Yooou deceeeived meee, myyy looove!”
He drew her against him. She sobbed into his cloak.
“Are we poor?” Olive asked, her voice rising in panic. “Is our money gone? Will we starve?”
“Hush, Olive,” Hattie said. “We’re not poor. Ella is poor. We must pity her. But—”
She was interrupted. Mum Olga had stopped crying and pushed herself out of Father’s arms. She reached across the coach and pawed at me, ripping my reticule from my waist.
“What’s in here?” She dumped its contents on her lap. “Coins? Jewels?”
Only a comb and a handkerchief, but she examined the comb. “Silver filigree. I’ll keep it.” She tossed the purse back at me and then lunged again. The carriage lurched while she clamped onto my bracelet and attempted to pull it off my arm. I tried to push her away, but she held fast.
Father pulled her off me and held her hands in his. “Olga,” he said, “we love each other. What else matters? Besides, when I travel again, I’ll earn back all I lost and more.”
She paid no attention. “I will not have that pauper live like a lady in my house. She can earn her keep.”
“Olga, my heart, I expect Ella to be treated with respect,” Father said. “She is not to be a servant in her own home. Do you understand, my sweet?”
Mum Olga nodded, but she sent me a look of pure venom.
“Mama, I’d hoped when we were richer we could—”
A footman opened the carriage door. We had arrived at my new home.
My trunk was carried through shadowy hallways to a guest room that was richly furnished but oppressively dark. The chambermaid lit three lamps, which illuminated but did not lighten the effect. She turned down the bedclothes and left me.
I wished Mandy could come in to say good night, but she wouldn’t arrive from our old home until the next day. I was alone with my fears. What would happen to me here? How would Mum Olga punish me for Father’s deception? And how soon would Hattie resume her tyranny over me?
I didn’t have long to wait for Hattie. She issued her first order the next day. She gave it when one of the menservants announced that Char had come calling. He’d come to see me, but she told me to keep to my room while she entertained him.
“You’ll only be in my way, dear.”
“He wants me. You’d be in my way.”
“Go to your room, Ella.” She patted Mother’s necklace. “The prince belongs to me too.”
In my room, I banged on the floor, hoping Char would come to investigate the noise. But the walls and floors were too thick for him to hear me.
Afterward she said, “At first he may have wanted to see you, but I won him over. When he bid me good-bye, he said our conversation would stay in his memory forever.”
He came the next day too, and I was again confined to my room.
I passed half the time of his visit standing at my door, trying to force myself to emerge from the room and from the curse. The other half I spent at the window, watching for him. When he left, he glanced back for a final view of our manor. I started to wave, but he turned away.
An entry from his journal appeared in my magic book the night he left for Ayortha. He had seen me.
Ella is avoiding me. Twice I visited her house, only to be told she was out calling. On both days her stepsister Hattie said Ella would return shortly, so I waited for hours, but she never came.
When I gave up yesterday, I looked back for a last glimpse of her manor, since I couldn’t have a last glimpse of her. But there she was, standing at an upstairs window.
I should have returned immediately and insisted on seeing her, but I was too confused. Why was she there? Was she hiding from me? Was she angry? If she was, she should have come into the drawing room and told me. I thought her forthright enough to do so.
I resolved to visit again in the evening and demand to see her. But when I got home, Mother had a surprise family party waiting to bid me farewell and I couldn’t leave. This morning I would have gone too, but Father was impatient to be off, and there was no delaying him.
Perhaps she’s embarrassed about sliding down the stair rail and blames me for encouraging her. Perhaps her father and his new wife were displeased.
I had wanted to tell her about the afternoon I spent flying down the stair rails at home, never noticing the gradual shredding of my breeches.
That would have made her laugh. She makes me laugh so easily, I always wish to return the favor.
Instead, I had to listen while Hattie chattered endlessly. I don’t know how she managed to pour the words out while smiling so hard, revealing the largest teeth I’ve ever seen. She must be excellent at cracking nuts. This is unkind of me. Her teeth are on the large side, nothing exceptional.
The younger stepsister, Olive, said little, but the little was astonishing. She wanted to know whether people had to give me their wealth if I told them to. When I asked her why I’d want to take my subjects’ money, she was surprised. “To become richer,” she said as though stating the obvious.
All this I endured while Ella hid. And now I won’t see her again for a year.
I had to write to him. If he thought I was angry, he might never write to me. But how could I explain my behavior?
The guest room I occupied was supplied with writing paper, ink, and a pen. I trimmed the pen, then found I didn’t know how to begin. I could call him “Char” quite easily, but writing it was another matter. “Dear Char” looked disrespectful on the page. “Dear Prince Charmont” or “Dear Highness” seemed too formal. And how would I conclude? “Yours truly” and “Sincerely” seemed stiff, while “Your friend” seemed childish.
Omitting the salutation, I began. It would be addressed to him, so there should be no mistake.
I have been confined to my room. I saw you come to visit and saw you leave. I waved, but you must not have seen. Father is vexed with me. It has nothing to do with you. He was insulted that I left the wedding early.
Two more days remain to my sentence. Now that you are gone and I can no longer hope to tell you good-bye, it is not so terrible. I hope you will still write to me, and not only about Ayortha. I have many questions, most of them impertinent. When you were a boy, did you study with other children, or did you have tutors all to yourself? I suppose you were equally wonderful at all your subjects—but were you? Who took care of you when you were small? When did you discover you were a prince and would someday be king? What did the knowledge mean to you?
If my questions offend, please do not answer any of them.
I went on to tell him about my years before Mother died, games with Mother and Mandy, the taste of Tonic, listening to fairy stories. I omitted only the most important facts: Lucinda’s gift and that Mandy was a fairy.
Then I promised,
In my next letter, I shall tell more about finishing school and the elves and Areida, my Ayorthaian friend. If you write quickly, I shall also send Mandy’s and my recipe for roly-poly pudding. (Cooking is another of my accomplishments, although not taught at finishing school.) You may try the recipe and astound your hosts.
If you do write, pray do not address the letters to me or mark them to show that you are the correspondent. Direct your letters to Mandy. She’ll see that I get them.
You are shocked that I have proposed a subterfuge. My only hope is that one who flies down a stair rail as beautifully as you do can overcome his scruples in this matter.
As my Ayorthaian friend would say, “Adumma ubensu enusse onsordo!” Or, please write soon.
I closed with, “Your impatient friend, Ella.” Somehow, the adjective made the rest less childish.
I went back to the beginning and added “Dear Char” as the salutation.
But how was I to address the letter? I had no idea where he was staying.
In the end, I directed it to the royal family in Ayortha and prayed it fell into helpful hands.
Now, I could only wait for a reply. In the meanwhile, what would I have to endure from my stepfamily?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Three days after Char left, Father went too, off to be a merchant again. Before leaving, he spoke to me privately in the small parlor he had converted into his study.
“I leave at noon,” he said. “Thank heaven the fairy left me my will and my reason so that I can leave, although I shall long for my Olga every moment I’m gone. What a gift! If I could take this knife”—he touched the scabbard at his waist—“and carve out the part of my heart that belongs to my wife, I should do it.”
He would never hurt himself. “Why must I stay with them?” I asked.
“Where else can you go? You fled finishing school, and you’ll be in better society here than you would find with me. Including me. Don’t run off again.”
“You are better society than they are,” I said. It was true: There was a little honesty in Father but none at all in Hattie or Mum Olga.
“This is praise indeed. Come, tell your father good-bye.”
“Farewell.”
“I shall miss you, child.” He kissed my forehead. “I prefer to love my wife from afar. I shall not soon return.”
“I don’t care.”
But I found that I did.
As soon as Father’s carriage disappeared from view, Mum Olga swallowed her tears and directed a manservant to transfer my belongings to a room in the servants’ wing.
With a tiny window and no fireplace, it was more cell than room, just large enough for a pallet on the floor and a small wardrobe. It was cold now in late November. In winter it would be a chamber of ice.
After my things were moved, Mum Olga sent for me. Hattie and Olive were with her in the rear parlor that faced the garden. I took a seat near the door.
“You are not to sit in the presence of your betters, Ella.”
I didn’t move.
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