“Quite stolen your thunder, hasn’t she?” Poppy’s partner practically shouted in her ear. “You’re pretty enough, no need to scratch her eyes out!”
“Excuse me?” Poppy gave him a cold look.
“Have to ask her for a dance myself,” her partner went on, oblivious. “Quite the looker, quite the looker.”
Poppy stared at him in disbelief. This really went beyond boorish, she thought. Good manners dictated that a man not admire another woman in front of his current dance partner. And his voice had been loud enough for half the room to hear!
“Why don’t you ask her to dance right now?” Poppy snapped.
She finally freed herself from the duke’s grasp and stalked off the dance floor. She looked over her shoulder just once, briefly, and saw her partner doing just as she had suggested—walking straight through the rest of the dancers on his way to Ellen without so much as a glance back at Poppy.
Her faced burned, and she peeked at the bystanders nearest her to see who else was witnessing her shame. But no one was even looking in her direction. They were all fixated on Ellen, Christian, and the duke as he attempted to interrupt the dance and take Ellen’s hand away from the prince.
To Poppy’s great satisfaction, Christian handed over Ellen with only a moment of reluctance. Then he immediately sought out Poppy. He had a bemused look on his face, however.
“An unusual girl,” he muttered as he reached Poppy’s side.
“Very,” Poppy said curtly, and straightened Christian’s jacket for him. She saw that he was wearing the watch ribbon she had knit for him, and she warmed slightly. “I don’t want to tell tales, if she wants to be incognito, but I will venture that she’s done something she’s going to regret to get that gown.”
“If you’re going to keep dropping mysterious hints …,” Christian said with a warning in his voice.
“You’ll do what?” Poppy asked archly. Then she made a face. “But truly,” she said hesitantly. “I’m worried. I have … experience with what happens when you make bargains you shouldn’t… in order to get what you want.”
“Even more mysterious,” Christian said.
“Well, I—” Poppy hesitated again, uncertain.
If she told Christian the details of her family’s story, what would he say? And would it help matters? The more she watched Ellen in her fabulous gown, covered with a queen’s ransom in jewels, the more she was certain that something was about to go terribly wrong.
“There’s something you should know. I—that is, my mother—,” Poppy began, but Christian stopped her.
“Here comes Marianne, Roger, Dickon, and Lady Margaret.” He pointed over her shoulder. “And Marianne looks to be in deep dudgeon, as the Bretoners say.”
Poppy turned and saw that it was true. Dickon and Lady Margaret just looked confused, but Marianne was indeed in deep dudgeon while Roger Thwaite’s handsome face was creased with concern. Poppy sighed, half with relief and half with regret. She wasn’t about to spill the story of her mother’s mistake in front of such an audience, which felt simultaneously like a reprieve and a disappointment.
“Please promise you’ll continue your story later,” Christian said in an undertone as they were joined by their friends.
“We’ll see,” Poppy said.
“Poppy knows who she is,” Marianne was saying. “Don’t you, Poppy?”
Lady Margaret squinted at the drunken duke and his mesmerizing dance partner. “But Marianne, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I would recognize anyone Poppy had been introduced to, and I have no idea who that young woman is. I’m quite put out that she managed to copy Poppy’s gown, but other than that … Will you look at those slippers? How breathtaking!”
Lady Margaret applauded with the rest of the company as the dance came to an end and Ellen breathlessly curtsied to her partner. Already the girl’s eyes were searching the crowd for Christian. But, Poppy noticed, they stopped for a moment on Roger Thwaite before skipping on to the prince. Roger, for his part, couldn’t take his gaze from Ellen. But rather than the avid expression that everyone else in the room seemed to be giving her, he had a look of mixed longing and unease.
“Roger,” Poppy said quietly, putting a hand on his arm. “Do you know her?”
The older Thwaite brother looked down at her, his brows knit tightly together. “Yes,” he said simply. “Do you?”
Poppy drew him aside before saying, “She’s our maid. But Marianne and Lady Margaret don’t recognize her—I almost didn’t myself. Something is very wrong here.”
“Your maid?” Roger’s mouth turned down even farther. “Poor Eleanora!” His eyes sought out the girl whose hand had just been claimed by another partner before she could reach her clear goal: Christian. “I had no idea … after her mother’s death she just disappeared!”
“You knew her before?” Poppy stared at Roger, and watched him swallow as his eyes followed Ellen around the room.
“We were very close as children,” he said after a long pause.
Feeling awkward, Poppy clenched her fists in the edges of her stole. Clearly Roger still cared for his childhood friend. And, just as clearly, whatever glamour Ellen had placed over the rest of the assembly did not extend to him.
She wondered what resistence to magic Roger had, that he could see her clearly. Poppy had been so nervous about attending the royal gala—not that she would have ever let anyone know—that she had taken extra precautions. Rather than her usual silk garters, she had fastened her stockings with garters she had made from virgin wool. They had been knit with silver needles that had been blessed by her family’s bishop, and then she had boiled the garters with nightshade and basil. They itched terribly but she hoped they would protect her from harm and permit her to see through any enchantments. And they had.
“How is it you recognized her?” Roger had torn his eyes from Ellen.
“I’m wearing protective … garments,” Poppy said. She had been on the verge of saying “garters,” and it was a measure of how much propriety she had learned from Lady Margaret that she bit her tongue just in time.
“I was given one by a Far Eastern magician,” Roger said gravely. He patted the breast of his shirt, and Poppy could vaguely see the outline of a small lump there. “A bone from some strange beast that has been rubbed with sacred oils and hung on a raw silk cord.”
“I should like to see that sometime,” Poppy said, thinking that it sounded much more comfortable than her own protective talismans. “But we really must find out where Ellen—Eleanora, that is—got her gown.
“You know somewhat of my family’s curse,” she went on, fighting back her still fresh hurt over finding Christian, Dickon, and Roger gossiping about her over tea. “So you know how making a deal with a magical being can turn on you.”
“Indeed,” Roger said. “But perhaps here is not the place. I don’t think Eleanora will answer any of our questions, at least not tonight. She pretended not to know me, and looked most distressed when I questioned her. I do not think that she is under magical constraint not to answer, merely that she prefers to be Lady Ella here and now.”
“Let’s hope so,” Poppy said fervently. “I for one would like to ask her some questions, and get some straight responses out of her.”
Roger looked surprised, and Poppy gave a tight laugh. “Let me guess: your friend Eleanora was so sweet-natured, and would never have hidden a secret from you?” She didn’t even wait for his confirming nod. “Well, Ellen is of a different temperament.” But then Poppy did pause, remembering her own ordeal, and grimaced. She didn’t exactly feel pity toward Ellen-Eleanora, but she felt more charitable. “Or it may just be too painful for her to speak to you.”
“But why? She seems to speak to Christian freely enough.” Once more, Roger looked toward the girl who was again dancing with the prince in her gown of red roses on white silk.
Poppy, too, was looking at them. Her hands were clenched so hard in the edges of her stol
e that the silk squeaked. Christian was looking down at “Lady Ella” with a dazed expression.
“That, as you Bretoners say, is part and parcel of what we need to discover,” Poppy said.
Midnight
When the enormous clock at the far end of the ballroom struck half past eleven, Ellen felt a wave of relief wash over her. She hadn’t thought it would be so: the gala would last until dawn, and hearing that her godmother expected her to be home by midnight had been a disappointment.
But then the glass had been melted onto her feet.
Despite the tingling lotion that her godmother’s maid had slathered over them, the heat of the molten glass had been shocking. Just the sight of that glowing, smoking stuff coating her white skin had made her dizzy.
“Courage,” her godmother had said, a broad smile on her plump face. “Courage.” And with delicate golden instruments her godmother had shaped the glass into an elaborate pair of high-heeled dancing slippers.
“You must return to me by midnight,” her godmother had told her. “My power in the outside world fades once night begins the turn toward dawn.”
And so as soon as the Bretoner reel she had been dancing with Prince Christian ended, Ellen curtsied to the prince and bid him good evening. It was quarter to twelve now, but if she hurried she wouldn’t be too late.
“But wait—why?” Prince Christian reached out to reclaim her hands. As the evening had worn on, he had become more and more enthralled by her.
A pleased thrill ran through Ellen, and she hoped that people were watching. Rather than grinning in triumph, as she would have liked to, she kept to her godmother’s advice to remain aloof and mysterious.
“I must go,” she said, trying to make her voice light and caressing. “But perhaps there will be another ball, and another opportunity to dance …” She slipped her fingers free of his grasp and turned away.
Smiling what she hoped was an enigmatic smile, Ellen walked through the crowd and through the grand arched entrance of the palace ballroom. The crowd parted before her, making her escape dramatic and also quite fast.
Which was good, because as the clock ticked closer to midnight, something was happening to her shoes.
Down the palace steps, into the waiting carriage—a strange thing like a large round basket woven of gold, and pulled by an excess of horses. The mute coachman cracked his whip urgently, and the dozen white horses shot forward. Sensing his passenger’s discomfort—or needing to get back to his mistress with just as much urgency—the coachman used his long whip to clear the road, while the horses with their crashing hooves and shrill whinnies made the noise that their driver could not.
Sitting back on the white silk cushions, Ellen flexed her feet and groaned. The shoes were first hot, then cold, and tremors ran up her legs. The pliable glass was stiffening, and she reached down to take the shoes off but couldn’t. Her feet cramped, and she whimpered.
An eternity later, but what was surely only minutes considering that Seadown House was just a few streets away, they reached the stable yard behind the manor. A bonfire had already been lit by a mute groom who was waiting nearby to toss a bucket of water on it.
The horses ran into the steam and soggy ash, and Ellen squeaked as the ground dropped away beneath them. The wheels of the carriage struck the glass floor of her godmother’s palace with a crash, and she fell off the seat.
Her godmother rushed forward, clucking her tongue. “Cutting it fine, cutting it fine!” Her tone was both playful and scolding. “I hope this means that you were enjoying yourself, my lovely.”
“Yes,” Ellen said tremulously as a pair of footmen helped her out. “But the shoes!”
“Of course, my darling!”
Her godmother pulled out a small golden hammer and rapped it sharply on first one shoe, then the other. The pliable glass had grown quite hard as midnight came, and now the beautiful ruby-colored slippers shattered into a million tiny shards. Ellen’s feet no longer tingled, instead they seemed numb and cold, and her godmother had to help her step out of the circle of broken glass.
Then the silent servants rushed forward to divest the girl of gown and jewels. They jerked her housemaid uniform over her head and sent her back through the ashes into the garden without even fastening it.
Ellen didn’t have time to say good-bye to her godmother, or thank her, before she staggered into the manor, dazed and half-dressed, to see that it was now two minutes past midnight. Her feet were still icy cold and she carried her underclothes, stockings, and shoes jumbled together in her arms. She had just enough time to put herself back together before the Seadowns arrived home, full of questions about Lady Ella.
Confused
Was her father an earl?”
“I don’t know, Your Majesty,” Christian said.
“A duke? A knight?”
“Honestly, King Rupert, I don’t know. She wouldn’t say. No family name, and not a hint of where I had met her before.”
“Odd.” King Rupert steepled his fingers.
“Very, Your Majesty,” Christian said with a sigh. He and the king had been through this many times already, and it was only noon.
“But you seemed quite taken with her,” King Rupert stated for the hundredth time.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Christian said, and then shook himself a little.
Why had he said that? Lady Ella was certainly pretty, but more than a little strange, in his opinion. And not the good kind of strange, like Poppy. Yet the first thing he had done that morning was to ask Queen Edith if she knew Lady Ella’s family. That was what had started the endless round of questions by King Rupert. Christian could predict what was coming next.
“Bretoner? You’re certain?” King Rupert leaned over his desk eagerly.
This was the most important question to the king, and he would never be satisfied until they had tracked down Lady Ella and had her write out her lineage to the twelfth generation, Christian was sure.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Christian said. “She had no accent and she said that she lived in Castleraugh. I believe that both Pop—Princess Poppy, that is—and Roger Thwaite know her.”
“The princess wouldn’t know: she isn’t Bretoner,” King Rupert said dismissively.
“True, however—,” Christian began, but the king was off and running.
“We must make sure that this girl comes to our masked ball,” King Rupert said, turning to gaze out the window at the royal gardens, face set with thought. “Everyone who was invited to the gala has also been invited to the masquerade, so that shouldn’t be a problem. The difficulty will be recognizing her.” He put his hands behind his back, eyes narrowed.
Christian wondered if he should just slip out. Or excuse himself and go. He wanted to visit Seadown House and talk to Poppy, though he could not remember why. Had he been planning on asking her about Lady Ella? No, that didn’t seem right. He could always ask Roger Thwaite about that. Still, he would probably remember when he got there.
Just as Christian got to his feet, a footman knocked at the door and then entered carrying a silver tray.
“What’s this?” King Rupert turned away from his window, irritated, and caught Christian in the act of escaping.
The footman, who valued his job too much to show any sign of surprise at the prince’s guilty, frozen stance, merely presented the tray. “Today’s correspondence, Your Majesty,” the man said blandly.
One of the letters, a small creamy envelope with a blue seal on it, made the king turn to Christian. The prince, for his part, was wondering if he dared slip out of the room with the footman when the servant was dismissed.
“Seadowns are throwing a ball next week,” King Rupert said. He grunted. “Trying to marry off that princess, do y’suppose?”
“It’s Marianne’s birthday,” Christian said. He wondered if Lady Ella would be there. The Seadowns didn’t seem to know her, but Poppy did.
“Oh yes,” King Rupert said, and shrugged. “Should probably make an appea
rance. Send Edith and the girls at the least. You, too, I suppose. The Thwaites are already planning the marriage feast for the younger son and Lady Marianne, but no harm in trying if this Lady Ella proves unsuitable.” The king was already turning back to the window, his mind elsewhere.
Christian beat a hasty retreat.
He also had an invitation to Marianne’s ball waiting in his room, along with letters from his parents and sisters, and one, oddly, that came from Westfalin. The envelope was creased and water-stained, and the writing nearly illegible. He stuck it in his pocket to read later, pulled on his riding boots, and went to pay a call on the Seadowns.
He had hardly ridden out of the palace gates before he was hailed by Roger and Dickon Thwaite, who both looked rather grim. Christian reined in to meet them, curiosity over their dire expressions winning out over disappointment at the distraction.
“What’s happened? You look like you’ve had some bad news,” Christian said.
“I say, Christian,” Dickon said, shaking his head in puzzlement. “Did Lady Ella seem cursed to you? I thought she was charming, but Roger’s gotten it into his head that she’s under some sort of enchantment.”
“An enchantment?” Alarm spread through Christian. “We must help her! Quickly, the palace has weapons we can use!”
“Capital! We’ll need swords and pistols!” Dickon looked eagerly at his older brother, who was staring at both of them with consternation. “Coming, Roger?”
“You’re both acting like idiots,” Roger said, almost musingly. “This is perhaps part of it…”
“Part of what?” Christian steadied his horse with one hand. Why were they all sitting on horses in the middle of the street? Had they been on their way to the park? He turned his horse in that direction and the brothers flanked him, their horses moving at an easy walk. He felt his belt for a pistol, then couldn’t remember why he would be armed.
“I believe that Lady Ella is under an enchantment,” Roger explained. “And I think it’s spreading. The two of you are not behaving as you normally would, even around a beautiful young woman.” He shot a sly glance at Christian, then at Dickon. “Especially considering that both your attentions should be elsewhere.”