“You cannot truly think all this is as magical as it appears,” I said to her. I rarely concern myself about the fate of strangers to our court, but for some reason I felt an urge to open her eyes to things as they really were.
“It cannot possibly be as magical as it seems to me right now” she murmured dreamily. “So many things seem to lose their magic when one gets to know it. But do not tell me. Just for one evening, I shall imagine this is truly a fairytale.”
“Ah, escapism,” I said. I was not one to close my eyes to reality.
She looked me suddenly in the eyes. “I do not think you know from what I do escape.”
***
Our conversation was abruptly interrupted when I felt a tug at my arm.
“Do come and rescue me, Anastasia.” It was my brother. I glanced from Vasilisa to him.
“I have told all those awful, giggling girls that I was to take a turn about the room with you.” He displayed a grin that hinted of mischief. “You cannot refuse to take me out of their clutches.”
“Dmitriv, dearest, you cannot possibly assume I haven’t noticed all the apparently wearisome attention lavished on you.” I gave him a sharp look. “But I am excessively diverted by my conversation with Miss Tremonte, and I do not want to end it.”
He barely paid Vasilisa a glance. I suppose by now he had been trained to scarcely notice any young woman who did not immediately rush up to him and gush over the honour of meeting the prince.
“You cannot mean that, and you will come.” He grasped me by the arm and began to move me towards the perimeter of the room.
I sighed and touched my forehead. “You, Dmitriv, are always so set on getting your way.” I turned and motioned to Vasilisa behind me. “Do come and take up my other arm, Vasilisa. Dmitriv must not expect to monopolize me all by himself.”
“Oh, thank you, my lady,” she said, and joined us. She was staring at my brother, as did every young maiden, but with exactly the same kind of awe she had been looking at the room just previously. Somehow it did not bother me that she considered him with the same high level of interest as she did our furniture.
“Forgive me, my lady,” she murmured in my ear, “but I believe you mentioned this man was your brother? Then he is—he cannot be—the prince?”
“He is,” I said.
“Oh!” said she, and on her face grew the sort of star-struck look which revealed she’d never really expected to meet such an illustrious person. I wondered if she would interest me for much longer. I’d worked hard not to be the type of person people could take advantage of, but she did not seem to be the same type of person as me.
On my other side, my brother was sulking along. “I cannot believe I am cooped up in here when I could be out riding—or shooting—or anything else! But of course I am stuck here and made to pretend I am actually interested in conversation about the latest styles of crinolines.”
“You’re not doing a very good job of it,” I said.
He gave me a mutinous look.
“Father is watching you.” I craned my neck, looking over the heads of the crowd to where Father had come to sit at the front of the hall. “You know what he is like when he thinks you are not performing your princely duties.”
“Blast my princely duties!” he said. “Father will not consider anything as fulfilling my princely duty if I am not in love and betrothed by the end of tonight!”
He was scuffing his feet against the ground as he walked. Vasilisa seemed to be genuinely surprised that even the prince acted like any other conceited younger brother she might know.
“So, let’s hear Miss Tremonte’s opinion of the ball as well,” I said, turning to her.
She turned pink. “I—I cannot possibly put it into words—”
Dmitriv made a grab for my shoulder.
“Quick! It’s Alexandrina, and she’s sure to be looking for me!”
I sighed and glanced at him. “Dmitriv, I am sorry to say that, whatever you think, I did not attend this ball solely for the purpose of shielding you from unwanted admirers.”
“But I’m sick of her!” he groaned. “She just goes on and on, and expects me to listen to her, and then when I don’t she laughs and exclaims how delightful I am!”
Vasilisa was scanning the crowd around us. “Who?”
“The tall, witchy one,” he muttered. “The one with the horrendous black and green dress.”
I thought about swatting my brother for his decidedly uncharitably description of Alexandrina. But Vasilisa spotted her first.
Her eyes widened in amazement. “You mean her? But she’s... beautiful.”
We suddenly stopped still in the corner, staring. My brother’s mouth hung open.
Alexandrina, I admit, is the sort of woman one could describe as ‘witchy’ or ‘beautiful’ depending on one’s tastes, but that wasn’t what made us stare at Vasilisa. She thought Alexandrina was beautiful, and she had the nerve to admit it.
My brother was looking at Vasilisa for the first time, I think. He was shocked, but couldn’t quite figure out why he was shocked. If he was a woman, or if he’d known how women worked, maybe he would have figured out why he was so surprised.
But at that moment the Grand Duke stepped up to us. To my surprise, and my brother’s consternation, he addressed himself not to Dmitriv, or me, but to Vasilisa. “I believe I have not yet been introduced to this young lady,” he said.
I hope my brother was thoroughly chastened for forgetting to request an introduction to Vasilisa himself, though he had been walking with her for the past ten minutes.
“Grand Duke, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Miss Vasilisa Tremonte,” I said, taking the introductions upon myself since I was not entirely sure my brother knew her name yet. “Vasilisa, this is the Grand Duke.”
He bowed, she curtsied.
“Would you care to share a waltz with me?” he asked.
“Oh, most certainly, sir,” she replied.
And they were suddenly swept off onto the dance floor.
My brother was still staring after them as if a meteorite had struck him. I nudged him with my foot.
“What is it, dear brother, have you never met a girl like her before?” I said. “One who is simple and unapologetically kind?”
He was blinking rapidly as he stared after them. “I suppose I have not.”
Chapter 2: The Fifth Dance
“ANASTAIA,” MY BROTHER SAID, “I need your help.”
I sighed and veered off my path to the ladies’ room. Having finally received a chance to escape after the fulfilment of my necessary social obligations, I had taken it. That is, until my brother intervened.
“You must bring that girl you were talking to here, so I can dance with her,” he said.
I retrieved my powder compact from my reticule and began powdering my nose in the hallway instead.
“Honestly, Dmitriv, this ball is completely saturated with women, and if you expect me to remember every one I talked to—”
“You remember her!” my brother said earnestly. “The girl you were with when I walked around the room with you.”
I glanced sideways at him, exasperated that he had not yet managed to absorb her name.
“Miss Tremonte,” I prompted, enveloping my nose in a cloud of powder.
“Miss Tremonte,” my brother said, waving powder away from his face. “You must get her for me.”
“I am not in the habit of dragging aside random girls for my brother to dance with,” I said.
“Oh, Anastasia,” he pleaded. “You talked with her, and she did not speak a word to me. You must get her at least to talk to me.”
I studied my brother over the rim of my powder compact. I had never seen him like this. He was running both hands through his chestnut hair with an anxious, brooding look in his eyes.
This girl! This sweet, naïve, fragile girl, who thought life in the palace was a fairytale dream come true. What chance was there that this would turn out well?
My brother looked up at me as if he comprehended not a word of what I was saying.
I sighed and turned back to the dance floor. “Don’t worry, I will fetch her for you.” It might do my brother good to have this kind of experience once in a while.
***
Vasilisa came over to my brother, looking shy and inquiring. My brother motioned her gently over to his side.
“So we have spent half a circuit of this room in each other’s company, and we still know no more about each other than we did before.”
Vasilisa stared at him as if her tongue had frozen, and then she blurted out,
“But what is there you would ever wish to know about me, sir?”
For a moment I doubted my decision to reintroduce them. She looked so unlikely to navigate our court’s intricacies.
My brother laughed and raised his eyebrows. “The other ladies seem to think there are many fascinating details about their lives that they must share with their prince.”
Vasilisa looked surprised. “Is that what your conversations consist of?”
“And I thought perhaps that once you saw you had my undivided attention, you would find you had something to say to me.” I watched with amusement as my brother exercised all the wittiness that had apparently won him female admiration before. “And then, perhaps, in time, you will ask me to dance.” His grin widened till it had stretched across his face.
Vasilisa drew in a breath. “Ask you to dance?”
“That is the usual practice.” My brother’s head tilted a fraction to the left, as if wondering why she had not giggled and pronounced him ‘clever’ by now.
But Vasilisa was not giggling. Her gaze drifted away from his. “I suppose that is highly convenient.”
My brother was frankly puzzled. “In what way?”
“That you have never needed to ask anyone else to dance.” She lifted her head and looked him square in the face for the first time. “I am afraid—you have never needed to risk anything for anyone else. How does that feel for you? Do you ever think about—how your actions feel to others?”
She added softly, “I’ve seen those girls all night, you know, my step-sisters and all the other girls clustering around you, and you—and you leading them on, as if their feelings meant nothing to you.”
My brother looked even more quizzical, as if this was not going precisely the way he’d planned.
“Look, I don’t care about any of those girls.”
“I am afraid this is so.”
My brother opened his mouth and closed it, unable to say he let it go on because he enjoyed it.
“I am sure they flutter around you because they truly believe they have a chance. If you do not care for them, I wish you would show them the respect of telling them so.” When he said nothing, she whispered, “Why, you’ve probably never risked asking a girl to dance yourself in your life!”
“You don’t understand, why should I, if they ask me?”
Her eyes darted away and she shifted uncomfortably.
“Why should you risk that they would say no, you mean,” Vasilisa said quietly.
Dmitriv’s face flushed. “Risk? Who rejects a prince?”
Vasilisa studied her feet, clad in some smooth, clear style of shoe. She looked amazed she’d dared to be so forthright.
She whispered. “If there wasn’t, what would you have to be afraid of?”
“But I’m not afraid—” She had already begun to move away. Dmitriv looked after her and muttered some words under his breath.
“I don’t think I understand women, Anastasia,” he said.
“Don’t you?” I said. “Well, perhaps it is a good thing you have realized that.”
***
“Lady Anastasia!” A woman who looked vaguely familiar rushed up to me as I detached myself from Dmitriv. “It’s been simply ages!”
Oh yes, Lady Erskine. She and I had attended our finishing lessons together. I hadn’t seen her since they’d ended.
“How have you been?” I inquired.
“Oh, it has been too long!” she effused. “Far, far too long. I have not seen you or your family for simply ages.”
Oh, my family. A certain member of my family she wished to see more often than she did, and I highly doubted I was that member.
“Now that we see each other, we must have a nice little chat. And I must catch up with that brother of yours again!” She glanced to where Dmitriv had disappeared into the crowd and, not seeing him, leaned closer. “Do let him know. My brother is here as well, and I’ll introduce him if you like—but I don’t know that you’d be that interested in him.”
I edged cautiously away from her. “Well, of course I’d be delighted,” I replied, though I hadn’t been ‘delighted’ by either of her proposals. “But I really must go and freshen my lipstick.”
To my surprise, her mask of politeness fell away.
“Your lipstick,” she said. “You care for your lipstick more than the happiness of your own brother.”
My polite mask vanished as well. “You! Make him happy!”
“You could do much, Anastasia,” she spat. “You—his very own sister—the things you might do! But I have never seen you use your influence even once.”
I turned and marched away from the dance floor.
Do so much? I should’ve tossed my head and laughed at her. Me, attempt to interfere in my brother’s life!
This time, after leaving the dance floor, I headed all the way up to my own room, to avoid interruptions, and settled myself at my vanity with a sigh of contentment.
I leaned my head on one hand and stared into the mirror. The other hand lay limply on my vanity, grasping my lipstick.
Moments later my door banged open.
“Anastasia, I don’t know what to do!” my brother said.
I opened my lipstick with a snap! and fiercely began applying it. “About what, Dmitriv? The way you keep intruding into my room?”
He walked into the room and collapsed himself on my bed. “She hates me,” he said, his voice slightly muffled. “She never wants to look at me again.”
Oh, Dmitriv can be dramatic if he wants to. “I’ll admit you didn’t come off as entirely likeable,” I said, finishing the re-lining of my lips with a flourish.
“What am I going to do?” he moaned. He rolled so he was facing the ceiling. “You’ve got to help me, Anastasia.”
For a long moment I stared at him, as if seeing him for the first time. Briefly, I could swear the rosy, chubby cheeks of the toddler I’d spoiled myself hovered over his face. I’d always loved him. But when the sons of earls had honed his taste for lavish parties, when his uncles had encouraged his habits of empty flirtations, I’d left him to himself. I didn’t think I’d had any power over him.
“Nonsense,” I said. “If anything, you’ve got to help you.”
He looked at me blankly.
I sighed, put down my lipstick, and went over to him, grasping him by both hands.
“I wish to the heavens you had been told this earlier,” I said. “But Dmitriv, your life does not entirely revolve around you.”
He stood still, not quite comprehending. I studied my younger brother, in all his princely frippery and finery, and wondered why I had not thought it my duty to intervene with him before. Perhaps now it was too late.
“Yes, it is your life, but your life intersects with many people, especially as a prince. Many of them may be highly unpleasant, but it is still your responsibility to look outside yourself once in a while and at least pretend you care. Oh—responsibility! But if you do not learn what that word is, you will ruin many lives besides your own.”
“How do you know I don’t care about people?” he asked sulkily.
I laughed. “Are you serious, Dmitriv? The blindes
t courtier knows this about you. Do you ever ask any of your admirers a personal question about their lives? Talk to any person who does not first show an interest in you? Even Vasilisa, who you professed to admire—you expected her to furnish all your conversation, rather than starting one yourself.”
“She insulted me,” he said.
“The truth hurts,” I replied.
He frowned and stared at his hands in mine. I hoped to goodness something of what I had said was sinking into his brain.
“You’re saying I should be like you,” he said, “and smile through gritted teeth at those who only wish to use our family.”
So Dmitriv had noticed the actions of someone outside himself for once! “That is what I am saying,” I replied, though there was much more I could say.
Before our mother had died, she had impressed on me the importance of treating others with respect. And while I could never address fools and schemers with patience and grace as she had, I had learned the art of at least hiding my irritation. An art that had taught me there was sometimes some good in people, despite their faults. An art I had clearly not passed on to Dmitriv.
I could have said it would be far better for him to be like Vasilisa and truly care—except I was not sure such vulnerability was wise. There was a danger in being a person who cared.
“And you agree Vasilisa hates me.”
I looked up thoughtfully. “I believe Vasilisa is the sort of girl who will give you a second chance. But I would be very, very careful with that chance—I should, if I were you, go back down there and not pay the slightest whit of attention to any of those young ladies who fawn on you. And I should, for once, strive to fill my mind with something other than myself. Once I had done that, perhaps I would think of talking to Vasilisa again.”
“What, drop the little pleasure I’ve got at a deadly event like this?”
“Life, my brother,” I said, “is not entirely about pleasure.” I met his eyes. “Do you think you understand?”
He dropped his eyes. “I shall try to understand.”
Is He Prince Charming Page 2