Dickon looked quite astonished. “Where do you mean?”
“Precisely,” Roger said, much to Christian’s confusion. But the older Thwaite brother did not appear to be teasing them or reveling in their bewilderment. Rather, he seemed to sink deeper into thought, a frown settling on his face and creasing his forehead. “Precisely.”
“Look here, fellows,” Dickon said eagerly. “Do you think if we ride around the park long enough, Lady Ella will put in an appearance? There’s quite a few ladies out today.”
Christian, too, was craning his neck for a glimpse of dark hair. He remembered Poppy then, and Marianne, and felt a jolt. He hadn’t been riding to the park! He had been on his way to Seadown House. Feeling muzzy-headed and faintly embarrassed, he was about to suggest that they invite Marianne and Poppy to join them when Roger did it for him.
“I must speak with Princess Poppy,” Roger announced. “Let’s go out this way, toward the Seadowns’. Come to think of it, I should probably inform Lord Richard of my suspicions as well. And talk to El—talk to an old friend, if she is there.”
Christian, relieved to have remembered his destination, didn’t ask who in the Seadowns’ household Roger considered an old friend. Dickon, for his part, was so busy looking for Lady Ella that he was almost sitting backward in the saddle.
“She must be around here somewhere,” the younger Thwaite kept muttering.
Finally Roger grabbed the reins of his brother’s horse. “Just come along, Dickon, we’ll get you sorted out later.”
Investigator
Roger, thank heavens!” Poppy leaped to her feet, scattering her knitting across the floor, when the butler showed Christian, Roger, and Dickon into the parlor. “I just sent you a message!”
She barely stopped herself in time: she had been close to throwing her arms around the older Thwaite brother in relief. She looked at Christian, almost blushing, but he was glancing around the parlor as though he had never seen it before. Dickon Thwaite, too, looked around with an expression of mild interest, taking no notice of Marianne on the sofa. Poppy raised her eyebrows, and Roger nodded gravely.
“Dickon, Christian,” Poppy said loudly. “Why don’t you chat with Marianne while Roger and I discuss something?” She kept her voice bright yet firm. It was the same type of voice she used when trying to get Pansy and Petunia—her youngest sisters—to do something without any tantrums.
“Are you plotting something, Poppy?” Marianne looked up with a twinkle in her eye, her hands tangled in yarn.
Poppy had been trying to teach her to knit in order to distract Marianne from the two topics that obsessed her: her birthday ball and Lady Ella.
Marianne had awoken that morning with a pounding headache and a memory of the gala that differed from Poppy’s. She remembered Lady Ella being not just pretty, but devas-tatingly beautiful, and both Christian and Dickon dancing only with the mysterious charmer, ignoring Poppy and herself entirely. She was almost violent in her feelings toward Lady Ella, and no amount of correction on Poppy’s part would convince her that her memories were wrong.
Having given up trying to talk to her friend about enchantments and the truth behind Lady Ella’s identity, Poppy had instead gotten her to talk about her own ball. She had hinted about gifts, both from herself and Marianne’s parents, and even agreed to dance at least one dance, just to appease her friend.
Poppy explained all this in a rush to Roger as they took up a position by the window seat, half-hidden in the long purple drapes. Poppy found her eyes searching each passing carriage, as though she expected a familiar face to arrive and provide help. But the depressing truth was that no one was coming.
“But what about Eleanora?” Roger’s voice was low.
“Oh yes! Eleanora!” Poppy was almost as passionate about her as Marianne was. “I insisted on coming home as soon as she left the ballroom, hoping that we could catch her changing her gown or something. But having the carriage brought round took so blasted long that it was nearly one o’clock before we arrived. And there she was, waiting to help Marianne and me undress as though she hadn’t been throwing herself at Christian just an hour before!”
“The gown? The jewels? There was no sign of them?”
“None at all,” Poppy affirmed. “In fact, I stayed up until nearly dawn searching most of the house. And this morning I sneaked upstairs to look in the maids’ rooms.”
“Did you ask her about it directly? What did she say?”
“ ‘I don’t know what you mean, Your Highness,’” Poppy recited. “ ‘I never left the manor, Your Highness. I wouldn’t have a gown fit for a ball!’” Poppy gritted her teeth. “All sweet ignorance, and all of it a lie.”
“Now, Your Highness,” Roger said, flushing.
Poppy remembered belatedly that Ellen, no matter how trying, was Roger’s childhood friend, and checked her temper. Slightly.
“Call me Poppy,” she said. “And I’m afraid it’s true. There was none of the nonsense that my sisters and I went through. She didn’t start babbling incoherently, she didn’t suddenly lose her voice. She looked right at me with big eyes and lied. Just as she lied when I asked her why, then, was her hair so full of pomade? Why did she smell of exotic perfume? And, more tellingly, where were her stockings and why was she limping?”
“Limping?”
Roger looked concerned, and Poppy had to fight down another sigh. It would not do for him to be just as smitten with “Lady Ella” as the other gentlemen, with or without enchantment.
“I would imagine it was from dancing for hours in those impractical shoes,” she said. “I’m sure she’ll be fine. In the meantime, we really must figure out what is happening.”
“What is happening in here?”
Poppy and Roger looked up, startled, as Poppy’s words were echoed from the doorway. Lord Richard had just come into the room, and was surveying the assorted young people with his typical amusement.
“Rehashing last night’s gala? Gossiping about who danced with whom?”
Lord Richard had been in the garden with friends during most of the gala, and had not seen Lady Ella. But his ears had been filled with the story of how Poppy’s gown had been copied by the mysterious upstart, as Marianne labeled her, all the way back to the manor the night before. More speculation had occurred over breakfast, of course, which caused the gentleman to barricade himself behind a newspaper.
“Papa,” Marianne said peevishly. “There’s no use ignoring it: Lady Ella ruined the effect of Poppy’s gown and stole away all the gentlemen!” Marianne gave Dickon an uncharacteristically scornful look.
Clearly startled, Lord Richard studied his normally cheerful daughter and then glanced at Roger and Poppy before turning back to Marianne. “All the gentlemen? My dear, I hardly think it possible for one young girl to commandeer all your dance partners at once.”
Before Marianne could reply, Poppy took Roger by the arm and led him across the room. “Cousin Richard, if we might have a word with you in your study?”
Lord Richard nodded. “As you seem more yourself today than the rest of the household, I am quite agreeable,” he said.
“What’s this all about?” The earl hardly waited until the study door was shut to ask the question.
First Roger, then Poppy poured out everything they knew: how Eleanora the penniless orphan had become Ellen the maid, then gone to the ball in a gown copied from Poppy’s and entranced everyone who saw her there. How no one, not even Lady Margaret, had recognized her, and how this morning Christian and Dickon were both muzzy-headed and obsessed with this Lady Ella, while Marianne and her mother both reviled the mystery woman for being so spectacular and desired.
“I can’t find any sign of the gown, the slippers, none of it,” Poppy said. “I’ve asked her over and over again about last night, but she denies everything.”
Seated behind his grand desk, Lord Richard toyed with a letter opener. “I see.” He pursed his lips. “Poppy, if I may ask a rather sensitive quest
ion: does this in any way recall the … unpleasantness you and your sisters suffered from?”
“Not at all,” Poppy said promptly. “Oh, it feels like some kind of spell, but that’s just my intuition. Ellen seems pleased. I believe that she could talk about it if she wanted to. I’ve seen her walking around the manor at all hours of the night, and always covered in soot with an expression like the cat who stole the cream. You didn’t see her last night, but I …”
She trailed off, finally noticing the expression on Lord Richard’s face. He was quite gray, and his eyes were bleak.
“Did you say covered in soot?” His voice was hardly more than a whisper.
Poppy had to clear her throat twice before she answered. “Yes. Why?”
Lord Richard merely stared over their shoulders for a long time, then he looked down at his desk, still pale. “This is something to think about, indeed. How did you avoid falling under the enchantment?”
Poppy opened her mouth to counter his question with one of her own, but thought better and meekly said, “I have garters knit especially to protect me.”
“And Thwaite? What about you?”
“I happened to be wearing a charm given to me by a magician, sir,” Roger said quietly. He, too, had become silent in the face of Lord Richard’s terrible expression.
“Good. Keep them with you at all times. Now if you’ll both excuse me. I would like to speak to Ellen. Alone.” He reached for the bell pull, and Poppy and Roger retreated to the parlor.
Now Poppy didn’t know what to think. Lord Richard knew something, Ellen was quite possibly a willing participant in the spell and didn’t want to talk about it, and Christian was alarmingly obsessed with “Lady Ella.” The comfortable little world she had known here in Breton just days before was all coming down around her ears.
“At least it wasn’t my fault,” she murmured. “Of course, it wasn’t before, either, but that didn’t help.”
She wanted to write another letter to Galen and Rose—she had already sent one that morning—but it was futile. They wouldn’t receive the letter for nearly two weeks, and it would be yet another two weeks before she had a reply.
She was both consoled and a little frightened, too, by Roger’s look of shock. The consolation came from not being the only one thrown by Lord Richard’s reaction. The fright, however, came from discovering that even with Roger’s knowledge of spells and magic, and Lord Richard’s steady intelligence, they hadn’t found a ready answer for what was happening.
Back in the parlor, Christian was playing chess with Marianne while Dickon looked on. The scene was so much the way things had been before the royal gala that Poppy was quite reassured. If they could just avoid talking about Lady Ella until this was sorted out, everything might be all right after all.
Exchanging a relieved look with Roger, Poppy sat on the sofa and took up her knitting.
“I wonder if Lady Ella plays chess?” Dickon mused brightly. Poppy cursed.
Torn
Ell en limped to his lordship’s study, her heart thumping. Her feet were feeling better, but she had been upstairs when she was summoned and the long walk down the stairs had made them ache again. The soles felt scorched, and her toes were very stiff.
It reminded her of a holiday by the sea her family had taken when she was a child. She had pulled off her shoes and stockings and run down the shore, not realizing until she reached the edge of the water that the sand was blazingly hot beneath the midday sun.
But had been worth it to feel the waves curl up over her toes, and the pain today was worth it as well. She had danced with a prince, and he had hung on her every word. And she had danced with Roger Thwaite, who was just as handsome as she remembered from the days before her father’s ruin. She had been the shining star of the royal gala, and Marianne and Poppy could not stop talking about it.
It was rather troubling that Poppy had recognized her, though, and suspected that magic was involved. Poppy seemed to think that Eleanora was in some kind of danger, and needed to be saved. She was quite odd, Ellen thought as she knocked softly on the door of Lord Seadown’s study, momentarily distracted. Quite odd.
Her fears came rushing back as she heard Lord Seadown’s voice bidding her to enter. He was sitting in a tall leather chair behind his desk, his expression severe. She shut the door and stood with her back against it, trying not to look guilty.
Then she raised her chin and took a step farther into the room, carefully placing her feet so their stiffness was not obvious. After all, she had nothing to feel guilty about. Lady Seadown had said she might go the royal gala, and the queen’s birthday ball in two weeks. And she hadn’t broken or burned anything (other than her feet) in two days.
“Yes, my lord?”
“Please sit down, Eleanora,” Lord Richard said, and indicated one of the handsome green upholstered chairs across from his desk.
Startled that he knew her real name, Ellen sat. She clasped her hands in her lap, noticed a stain on her white apron, and moved her left arm a fraction to cover it. She resisted the urge to twiddle her thumbs, and tried to look his lordship in the eye.
She had done nothing wrong.
“My dear, it has come to my attention that you may be in some trouble,” Lord Richard said gently.
“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” she said meekly.
“Perhaps you do not yet realize that you are in trouble,” he said. He closed his eyes and looked pained. “My dear, making bargains with… persons of power, shall we say… is never wise. They always find ways to twist their promises.
“Princess Poppy can be rather brash, I know, and I believe that she may have confronted you today about last night’s gala—”
“But your lordship! I didn’t attend the gala,” she protested, feeling a flush crawl up her neck and cheeks at the lie. “I haven’t a gown for such things!”
She would not tell him about her godmother. He would think it was black magic, and try to stop her from going back. She had to see her godmother again. She had to have more gowns, and go to more balls, so she could marry Prince Christian and be taken far away from Seadown House and its endless piles of ironing.
Lord Richard looked at her as he would have looked at Marianne, had she disappointed him. “Does the name ‘the Corley’ mean anything to you?”
Ellen felt the flush run all the way up to her forehead, and then recede like a sudden tide, leaving her pale. How did he know her godmother’s name? She swallowed, her throat dry.
“No,” she whispered. “No, your lordship.”
Lord Richard looked even more disappointed, and shockingly haggard. He stared into her eyes for a long time. Ellen wondered what horrifying tale someone had told him about her godmother that made him so frightened of the old woman. She felt even more strongly that she must not tell him the truth. All her hopes would be dashed if she did.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes, your lordship.” She smoothed her apron. “May I go, Lord Richard? I would not want to shirk my duties.”
He hesitated, his eyes boring into hers. “Very well. But please, my dear, if you wish to discuss … anything, please come to me. Or to Poppy or Roger Thwaite. We only want to help you.”
“Thank you, your lordship,” she said calmly as she rose. “But I am quite well.”
She managed to get out of the study without limping at all, and really did go downstairs to the airing room to collect the linens for ironing. That morning she had managed to make three beds without lumps or wrinkles, had carried a vase of flowers from the kitchen to the parlor without dropping the vase, crushing the flowers, or spilling any water, and had even taken a tea tray to Lady Margaret without incident.
Either dancing with Prince Christian had given her a new confidence, or her godmother was somehow watching out for her, Ellen thought as she ironed. The iron’s temperature remained constant and the wrinkles smoothed down just as they should. There was no scorching of fabric, no burning of fingers. Ellen practical
ly sang as she worked, and the stares of the other maids as she filled a basket with neatly ironed and folded linens couldn’t dampen her spirits in the slightest. Even the soot that seemed to sift its way into the folds of her clothes and cover everything she touched was gone.
Her good mood was finally ruined, however, when she burst out of the passageway from the servants’ domain and ran straight into Prince Christian. The basket of ironed linens between them, they gazed at each other, startled, for a moment.
Ellen’s heart began to race, and the blood thrummed in her ears so loudly that it took her a moment to understand what he was saying to her. When she finally comprehended his words, she felt her cheeks burn even hotter.
“Pardon me,” Prince Christian said again, and stepped around her. He whistled as he made his way to the water closet.
The complete lack of recognition in his face shook her. Had he not known her because of her maid’s uniform? She turned it over and over in her mind as she went about the rest of her tasks that day.
Had he only looked at her clothes, and not at her face? Roger Thwaite had known her, known her the instant he had seen her at the ball. Poppy had known her as well, but Marianne and Lady Margaret hadn’t recognized her and clearly thought that Poppy was mistaken.
Ellen’s godmother had said that she would cast a “mild glamour” over her, so there would be no hue and cry over a maid attending the royal gala, but surely a mild glamour wouldn’t prevent Prince Christian from knowing the dance partner he had been smitten with just hours before! Should she tell him? She would have to, eventually, if they were to be wed.
Worrying, too, was the cavalier way the Corley had shooed her out of her palace, aching feet and all. Ellen had hoped, deep down, that her godmother would let her stay in the glass- pillared palace from now on. That she would be allowed to take on the role of Lady Ella all the time, and not return to being Ellen the maid.
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