Soot and Slipper

by Kate Stradling

  Her levity subsided. “What do you mean?”

  He extended his white-gloved hand. “We cannot occupy the bird’s-eye view forever. Come dance with me.” The invitation in his sparkling eyes beckoned her, but she tamped down her soaring heart.

  “I don’t dance. I only meant to watch.”

  “I’ll lead you. No one will spare us a second glance in that crush.”

  Wistfully she checked the floor below. Florelle and Aurielle swirled among the throng, each partnered with a lord in an extravagant costume, while their mother flirted with a demonic monstrosity along the edge of the ballroom.

  Even if they recognized her, surely they wouldn’t begrudge her dancing with a lowly domino.

  Hesitantly she placed her hand in his. Warmth spread up her arm as he guided her to the balcony stairs. Guests lined the lower steps, conversing. The pair wove a threaded path through them to the density of bodies on the ballroom floor. The popinjay prince called for a spinner, and the musicians picked up their pace. Before she could breathe, Sir Pip looped an arm around her waist and careened them together into the lively, bouncing dance.

  Sheer and utter joy tumbled from her lips. They were gliding, flying as the music circled in a rising cadence. She closed her eyes and tipped back her head, relishing in the thrill of the moment. She and her domino spun together like two cinders carried upward on a gust of smoke.

  The song ended, and the prince called for a nizzarda. Their steps shifted to the energetic dance. She laughed and pranced and swung in Pip’s arms, and all the while he smiled at her from behind his porcelain mask.

  The set ended all too soon. Breathless, she joined the rest of the company in a roar of applause. On the opposite side of the ballroom, the prince in his feathered mutton sleeves raised his hands and called for a more sedate minuet.

  Her domino tugged her toward an open pavilion, and she willingly left the crush behind.

  “You do dance,” he said when his voice could be heard above the din.

  “Only country dances,” she replied, her smile still in full force. “You’re lucky I didn’t trample your feet.”

  “You’re light as a feather. I doubt I’d have felt it.”

  “My slippers are made of glass. You’d be lucky to escape with only a bruise.”

  He peered down, impressed, for a glimpse of the obsidian shoes beneath her voluminous skirts. “Those can’t be comfortable.”

  “They are,” said Eugenie, beaming. “I feel like I’m walking on a cloud.”

  “So do I, but it’s not because of my shoes.”

  Though the crowd thinned around them, he kept his fingers intertwined with hers until shyly she drew back her hand. He didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he took no offense.

  “Are you thirsty?” he asked. “The air is closer down here than in the balcony, and I think I might die for lack of refreshment.”

  A glass of cold water sounded like heaven, but another concern trumped this desire. “How will you drink anything in such a mask?” she asked, her eyes sparkling with mirth.

  “I’ll take it off, of course.”

  Her brows arched. “Is that allowed?”

  “Oh, I won’t do it here where everyone can see. I’ll stand in a corner where no one pays me any attention. No one looks twice at a mere domino, as you so aptly said.”

  Her delight mirrored his own. Together they traced a path back to the refreshments on an outside concourse. Not a drop of water graced the food-laden tables, but the palace had provided wine and a frothy, sparkly punch. Sir Pip poured a cup of the latter and offered it to her.

  “Is it…?” She bit her lower lip. Marielle always cautioned her girls against imbibing, that such an act could impair a lady’s faculties and thus lead to her disgrace.

  “Nothing strong,” he said, reading her concern, “only fruit juice and cream blended together.”

  She accepted the delicate cup and sniffed at its contents. The sweet smell matched Pip’s description. “How do you know that’s all?”

  He poured himself a glass, holding the ladle high so that a pink stream flowed from its edge to the cup. “It’s a popular drink among the upper-class ladies. I heard the queen has guards stationed to watch the tables so no one can embellish on it. The wine’s not strong either. No one wants any sullen drunks in their company tonight.”

  Eugenie huffed a laugh into her cup, grateful she hadn’t been swallowing at that precise moment. The sweet flavor of the punch filled her senses on the first long sip—truly the signature taste of a wonderful party.

  “You have me at an advantage,” said Pip, holding his full glass.

  “I beg your pardon. I thought you meant to abandon me so you could remove your mask.”

  “Why should I abandon you? Or perhaps you’re ready to abandon me. You can, though I shall lament that moment and every one thereafter.”

  “You are absurd,” she said with a laugh. “Where is your secretive corner, then, that we can retreat?”

  Again his eyes crinkled. He tipped his head and led the way along the wall toward the broad gardens. In a shadowed alcove sat a small table and two chairs with full view of the mingling crowds. Pip set down his cup at one place and pulled the chair opposite for Eugenie. She sank to it, her curious eyes upon him.

  He crossed around to the other side of the table, his back to the crowds and his face obscured by the darkness around them. When he reached toward his mask, he paused.

  “Promise you won’t laugh?”

  Her inability to meet this demand trembled on her lips, but she nodded. Did he have some disfigurement that required the full mask? His form beneath the cape was normal enough, and his energy in dancing had proven at least an average physique. Perhaps he was a spry old man, with wrinkles patterned across his skin.

  He didn’t sound old.

  He unfastened the mask. Her breath caught in her throat as he pulled it aside to reveal—

  A second half-mask beneath.

  She burst into a peal of mirth. This was, perhaps, the greatest joke of the night.

  4

  Embers Alight

  “I had to plan for all my options,” said Sir Pip, and he took a modest sip of his punch while Eugenie recovered her wits. Just when she had the laughter under control, his grinning face started her into another bout.

  Tears formed at the corners of her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”

  “You didn’t expect such genius from a lowly domino. I know. Sir Pip has triumphantly surprised his Cinderella.”

  She liked the casual possessive that he spoke. She liked his face, too, what she could see of it: an elegant jaw and a charming smile. His eyes were brown, and they were so pleasant and expressive that she might stare into them captivated for hours.

  But Marielle’s voice spoke a warning in her ears, of how important it was for a lady never to form quick attachments. A gentleman’s temperament could appear pleasant one evening and cruel the following day. He might pretend good fortune when he was a wastrel and a spendthrift. His true character could be more of a ruse than the full mask that hid a half-one.

  Ruthlessly she thrust the warnings aside. This was a masquerade. No one was who they pretended to be, not even her. For one night she could ignore such worries and enjoy the moment. She wasn’t likely to see him ever again.

  They ate a light supper together and laughed over absurd subjects. From their vantage point, they observed the other guests, costumes from the mundane to the fantastic. Eugenie, enraptured, noted all the embellishments and variable patterns that she could, mentally cataloguing and dissecting their constructs.

  When they finished their meal and people-watching, Pip hid his full mask beneath a flowering shrub and asked her to dance with him again. “I’ll come back for it later in the night,” he said when she expressed her concern. “No one will find it, and if they do, it’s not much for me to procure another one.”

  They spun upon the ballroom floor, traded partners, and returned to
one another. They visited the card tables for a quick rubber of whist, which they lost spectacularly. “Better keep to the dance,” Pip said with a wink, and she laughingly agreed.

  Her spirit exulted in the energy of the fete, in the joy of participating in everything. When the clock chimed eleven-thirty, her heart was full to its brim.

  Sir Pip saw her glance toward the majestic timepiece. Though his smile faded, he led her from the crush of rollicking dancers toward the palace courtyard, where the carriages awaited their guests.

  “Will you come to another masquerade?” he asked, a note of wistfulness in his voice.

  Eugenie peeked at him from the corners of her eyes, her view partially obscured by the edges of her mask. Rather than give the hard negative she ought, she said, “Thank you so much for tonight. It was wonderful, more so than I expected.” Her heart fluttered with regret that she could not stay longer. A scant few hours had filled her soul and left it strangely empty at the same time.

  “The pleasure was wholly mine, Milady,” said Pip, and he bowed low over her black-gloved hand. As he straightened again, their eyes locked. Longing, anticipation, delight all jittered within her.

  Why did she have to go? Oh, yes, the fairy. Her beautiful gown would melt away, and then her charming companion would see her in her threadbare work dress, with a tattered apron and her hair tied up in a lanky tail instead of lovely ringlets.

  She’d rather not face his inevitable disappointment.

  Sir Pip’s voice lowered to an intimate hush. “I wonder—and I recognize my impertinence in this…”

  “Hmm?” Eugenie prompted.

  A smile touched the corners of his lips. He paused but then pressed forward. “If I kissed you, would I come away with ashes on my mask?”

  A flock of butterflies converged upon her heart. Memories—she could take memories alone from this wonderful night. Even if she never saw him again, she would have a lovely memory to cherish. She tempered her answer to sound light, airy, careless.

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  His brows arched, proof of his uncertainty in making such a bold request. He glanced self-consciously behind them, checking that no one noticed them on the shadowed courtyard stairs. The guards at the doors had moved inward to observe the party. The liverymen below huddled in groups playing cards and throwing dice. No one paid the dark-clad pair a second glance.

  Pip leaned in. His mouth brushed against hers, almost reverential. Sunshine blossomed within her at the contact. She slid light fingers against his jaw and answered the kiss in kind. He deepened it, pulling her close, but the noses of their half-masks caught and obstructed any further connection. They parted on a mutual laugh, like two children tangled in a happy game.

  “It has been a pleasure, Sir Pip,” she said, cradling his face in her hands. “And no ashes whatsoever on your cheeks.”

  He closed his fingers around hers, his warmth traveling through their gloves. “I might as well go home too. This party is over for me as soon as you leave.”

  She delighted in the compliment but deflected it all the same. “Nonsense. There are a hundred more girls in there for you to kiss. I trust you to make a full night of it, since I cannot.”

  His expression immediately sobered. “I would never—”

  The clock chimed the quarter-hour. “I’m late,” Eugenie said, drawing back. At the base of the stairs, her vine-and-shadow carriage awaited, the frog-horses pawing the ground in restless compulsion.

  “Cinderella—” her domino began as she stepped away.

  “Goodnight, Sir Pip,” she said, a brilliant smile fixed upon her face. “May good fortune smile upon you!”

  She hurried down the steps, to where the shadowed footman held her carriage door. Gingerly she climbed inside, and only when she settled back into the cushions did she allow herself a final glance. The carriage lurched into motion. Her domino stood frozen halfway up the stairs, forlorn as he watched her leave.

  Tears tumbled down her cheeks from beneath her mask. She wiped them quickly away, forcing a smile in their stead. “How lucky I have been,” she said as his figure blended into the shadows and the staircase moved beyond her line of sight.

  All she’d wanted was one evening at a party. She’d fallen in love instead. Certainly it was fleeting, doomed to end as soon as it began, but she guarded the precious moments jealously close to her heart.

  Marielle would scold if she ever found out. A lady didn’t kiss a gentlemen the first evening she met him, and certainly not a gentleman whose real name she didn’t even know.

  But perhaps Pip wasn’t a gentleman at all. Perhaps he was a servant who had come to play among his masters, or a tradesman, or a highwayman. Perhaps he was an impoverished nobleman forced to wait until his majority to come into his rightful inheritance. They might have everything in common, or nothing at all.

  She laughed, caught halfway between elation and despair.

  “Fairy mischief indeed,” she said with a tearful smile. How could this new attachment be so dear and so painful at the same time? Such exquisite opposition squeezed her heart as though it were a sponge.

  The mischief magnified a mile from home. The midnight hour struck and the glamour upon her carriage and costume melted into fairy dust, as forewarned. She tumbled from phantom cushions to the dirt road, though the de-transformation cradled her to the very end. She picked herself up amid half a dozen displaced pond frogs. With a chuckle, she gathered the creatures into her apron and completed her journey home.

  She passed through the fence posts at long last. A patchwork of stars behind the manor house highlighted its looming silhouette. She deposited the frogs in their pond and started toward the front door.

  “I warned you it would end at midnight,” said the fairy’s disembodied voice.

  “I know,” said Eugenie. “Thank you very much.”

  “You had a good time?”

  “Oh, yes. It was wonderful.”

  “Of course it was. I only do wonderful things.”

  She allowed a breathy laugh and hurried inside, wary of betraying more than necessary to the supernatural creature. Within the front room, she stoked a fire from the banked coals in the grate and curled up with a blanket. The evening played upon her thoughts like a dream, culminating in that blissful moment on the stairs.

  “A pox on half-masks,” Eugenie murmured as she drifted off to sleep. Her domino’s face swam before her, his eyes earnest and his mouth curved in a smile. For all they had shared, she might not recognize him in a public place. She’d recognize his voice, though, of that she was sure.

  Providing that a night’s rest didn’t fade her memories like it did all of her other dreams, into oblivion.

  5

  Slow Burn

  “I want a pink dress.”

  Eugenie looked up from the patterns strewn across her workroom table.

  Florelle plopped into the chair just within the door, her hooked nose pulled upward in a sneer. “There were so many colorful dresses last night, and I was stuck in boring gold.”

  “Your costume was beautiful,” said Eugenie, mystified. The sun, moon, and stars had held their own place among the masqueraders. No one would have guessed that an impoverished nobleman’s daughter had created them instead of a proper seamstress.

  “It was boring,” said Florelle with a peevish scowl. “You would know if you had seen what everyone else wore. I want pink, something exotic and wonderful.”

  A smile tugged at Eugenie’s mouth. “Like a flamingo?”

  Florelle, over-sensitive about her gangly neck, glowered.

  “A rose, then?” Eugenie asked, quickly covering her mistake. “Do you have a pink dress to donate? I can’t make three costumes from nothing in only a week.”

  “Can you make a rose?” her stepsister asked, suspicious.

  “Probably. I’d need a lot of ribbon.”

  A clatter sounded from the hall. Aurielle hung upon the door jamb, half-frantic. “If she’s
going as a rose, I want to be one too!”

  “No, Aurie!” Florelle leapt from her chair, furious.

  “Why should you get the prettiest flower?”

  “You look terrible in pink! And we can’t both be the same thing, you unimaginative cow!”

  Aurielle gasped like an injured thespian.

  “Girls, girls!” Marielle appeared, pushing herself between the pair before they could tear each other’s hair out. “What on earth has triggered such an unladylike scene?”

  Aurielle flung an accusing finger at her stepsister. “It’s Eugenie’s fault! She’s going to make Florelle a prettier costume than mine, again!”

  Astonished, Eugenie opened her mouth to defend herself. Florelle interjected before a single word could leave her lips.

  “You think the sun was a better costume than the moon? I felt like a brazen idiot all night long while you were dancing in your silvery best! And everyone said that Mother’s was the most beautiful costume of the night.”

  Marielle, in the midst of keeping her girls separate, fought a rising blush.

  “Not everyone,” said Aurielle, oblivious to her mother’s pleasure. “There was that girl who disappeared. Everyone called her the Queen of the Night, and her costume was so beautiful that I wanted to cry. She put us all to shame.”

  “She only danced with a domino until they disappeared together,” said Florelle in utter scorn. “What’s the use of having a beautiful costume if you’re going to duck out early?”

  Eugenie’s breath caught in her throat, her body frozen lest she draw anyone’s attention. They had noticed her? Even though she kept to the common crowds? Surely they wouldn’t begrudge her if they knew the truth.

  “Now, girls,” said Marielle, shaking off her delicate fingertips as though expelling dust. “There’s no sense in fixating on an obvious commoner.”

  “Her costume wasn’t common,” said Florelle.