Layla
Page 23
"Did you have a good time yesterday?" LaShebah fluffed my pillows as I got dressed. "You didn't get cold, did you?"
I chuckled lightly as I pulled on my stockings. "Not exactly."
"Oh, good. Then I sent enough extras." She finished and set the pillows in a neat row.
"Actually," I started. "We didn't use the extras."
She looked at me, baffled.
"Snowy Falls had melted."
I watched her brow crease and her arms sling to her hips. Her smile slowly faded. "Oh. It must have been this appalling summer we had. And with all the rain!" She clacked her tongue thoughtfully. "I wish I had known. You could have worn something lighter!"
I stifled a giggle. "We were fine." I kept my mouth half closed.
"I will tell your father to have Surianna freeze it up again," LaShebah said. Surianna controlled the weather in Tentaleigh.
"No!" I said frantically. "It will freeze up on its own. And anyway, it is so perfect the way it is. Oh, LaShebah! We watched the sun set from behind the waterfall."
She folded a blanket and placed it at the end of the bed. "Behind it? How did you manage to climb with your heavy skirts?" She looked surprised.
"Oh, you know? I am accustomed to hard work now, and I, uh?" I trailed off, not wanting to give the fact away that we took off our heavy skirts.
A manservant entered the room. "Princess Layla, your father, his Excellency King Duryea III awaits your presence in his study." So formal. Could he not have just simply said, "Princess, your father wants you. He's in his office"? Even excluding the 'princess' part would be nice. The servants' way of speech made absolutely no sense to me.
I slipped out of the room. Hopefully LaShebah would forget her curiosity before she saw me again. I did not want to see the kind of fit she would throw if she only knew the truth!
I skipped flippantly down the hall. What did he want? Maybe a special request. Uh-oh. What had I done? Maybe it wasn't something I did, but something he wanted to give me. Most likely not. I held my breath and knocked on the door to the study.
"Come in." His gruff voice boomed from inside.
Timidly I pushed open the door and let myself in. The old floor boards creaked under my feet. "You wanted to see me?" I tried not to sound nervous.
He looked up, and for a second his eyes seemed far away, out of focus. "Oh. Yes, I did." He pushed his chair from his desk. "As becoming your present age, I have arranged a new bedroom for you. The nursery you live in now?"
I shut out his words. I did not want a new room! I loved my present one! "It's not a nursery!" I fumed, clenching my fists and biting my lip.
He didn't look the least bit concerned. "No matter. You still need a new one. Sixteen is a year of change."
His words were so meaningless! They almost seemed rehearsed!
"Do not defy me, daughter. It is about privacy. You need to be farther away from the stairs, where traffic is common."
Not the staircase! Oh, my beloved spiral staircase. I squeezed my eyes shut. Why? My only guess was that when we had visitors, guests, he did not want them anywhere near me. My head threatened an angry outburst.
"Rolphene!" Father stopped a passing manservant.
The manservant bowed deeply, but said nothing.
"Would you please show the princess to her new room?"
The servant got a far-away look in his eyes, then nodded. As I followed him, his eyes purposely avoided mine. He was a young manservant, probably in his twenties, with light brown hair and thin stubble. His eyes were such a pale blue that it was haunting.
"Is there something I do not know?" I asked subtly.
He turned and stared bluntly. "No your highness."
Fake drama bit at my earlobes. There was something I did not know. And I had to find out. I followed the manservant very closely, almost at his heels. We ventured far from the staircase, the opposite direction of my real room. Up another set of stairs, although hardly like the grand, gilded, marbled ones I cherished all my life. My new flights of steps were gray and disturbing, and the corridor surrounding was so cold and narrow that I could hardly breathe. When we reached the top, a dirty man with a black, metal box hurried past us with a brief tip his hat. A locksmith.
"Gaday, princess." A short-lived, curt, and meaningless greeting. His eyes also avoided mine.
Then we stepped into an even colder room. It was lifeless, colorless, and numb. Not a cranny of cheeriness was hidden anywhere.
"Your father wishes you to move in tonight, and he also wants you to know there is to be a ball held in your honor, tonight also." The manservant jerkily walked backward out of the room, then vanished from sight.
It was then I decided I would spend one night in the new dungeon, but no more. In the morning I would renegotiate and return to my old room. Tonight I would let everyone believe I had surrendered to Fathers wishes, yielded to his cruelty. I needed a night to plan.
I fled to my old room, where I found LaShebah laying out my gown for tonight. There was a noticeably vast emptiness in her eyes.
"There you are, love." Her words were limp. "I have been waiting for you!" She walked towards me with a strange smile. "I made you another new gown!"
Lying on the bed was a silver dress with a scoop neck and a tapered waist. The sleeves looked as if they fit snugly, and then would dip down past my fingers in a flare. It was magnificent, but it reminded me of cold, gray stone.
"It's beautiful, though," I sighed. My fingers grazed over the diamonds that ran across the top. Then I noticed that a slit ran all the way down the sleeves, sewn together in places with light leather, exposing skin when worn. Interesting. Most definitely something I would wear.