The door opened behind me, and for a second I thought it was Agatha coming back, but when I turned, I saw it wasn’t the door to the main corridor, but the door to the adjoining bedroom. The one that belonged to Elise. Opposite was another door, one which would never open again. It led to Grace’s room.
Elise ran in and flopped on the bed. She’d changed from her black mourning suit into a pretty summer dress. I wish I’d thought to do the same. The dress I was wearing had so much starch used on it that I itched in places I didn’t even know I had.
“What happened?” Elise was the most curious person I knew. She knew the name of every staff member and all the gossip that happened between them. I could tell that she had been dying to come and speak to me ever since our parents had requested to see me alone.
I told her everything. About how Grace’s ball was still going ahead except it would be me instead of her that the ball was for. I told her that I’d have to pick a husband at the end of it.
“You are so lucky!” was all she said once I’d finished my story.
“Lucky?” I felt anything but.
“Think about all those handsome men in tuxedos, all there just for you. You can spend the night dancing and drinking champagne, and then you get to marry the best of them all.”
“It sounds like hell,” I countered.
“Oh, don’t be like that. It’s romantic,” she sighed. I sighed along with her but for different reasons.
I could think of nothing less romantic than a group of men being paraded through the palace like a herd of cattle while I picked out the one I was going to marry. I had one night to pick out five men. How was I supposed to do that? If the ball went on all night, I’d still only get a few minutes with each one. How was I supposed to make such an important decision that would affect my whole future based on just a few minutes?
“And then there will be a huge wedding,” she continued, seemingly oblivious to how she was making me feel. “And then there will be another royal baby.”
“A what now?” I sat up on the bed
“A baby! Don’t tell me that it hasn’t crossed your mind? Why do you think Mother and father are doing this? They need to secure an heir to the throne.”
As if my week hadn’t been hard enough. I’d lost my sister, and now I was getting married to someone I’d never even met and was having his baby.
I fell back on my bed, consumed by my own thoughts. At some point, Elise left, more than likely disappointed by my lack of enthusiasm. As I fell asleep, my thoughts kept going back to Grace, and how I was taking the night she’d been looking forward to for months away from her. Mostly, I wondered how I was ever going to fill her shoes.
CHAPTER TWO
The Makeover
As early as the next day, Jenny, my former nanny, came to my room to drag me out of bed.
“Why isn’t Agatha waking me up?” I asked, stifling a yawn. The sun was yet to break through my windows. I sat up in bed abruptly. “Is it Elise? Has something happened to her?”
After the events of the past couple of weeks, I could think of no other reason that Jenny would be here to wake me except to tell me more bad news.
“Don’t bother yourself, child. Elise is grand. I’ve been told to escort you down to the dressing room. From now on you are expected to dress in a manner benefiting the royal princess.”
The royal dressing room was a room I’d avoided as much as possible my whole life. It was a place where royal women were laced up and squeezed into corsets and dresses and had their hair teased into all manner of shapes. Elise loved it. Grace had too, or, at least, she’d accepted it as part of her life. As the second daughter, I was pretty much allowed to wear whatever I wanted within reason unless there was a special occasion. Even then, I let Agatha pick up whatever the advisors had chosen for me and bring it to my room where she would help dress me. They knew my tastes by now. Plain and comfortable and boring. I liked to blend in with the scenery.
The room itself was much more than a dressing room, with tall gilt mirrors filling one wall and seats for different stations. Each station was for something different: hair, nails, buffing and shining, and makeup. There were three huge gold doors at the end.
“I still don’t understand why Agatha couldn’t have woken me up,” I said as I was manhandled into a seat at the first workstation.
“Because as you and I well know, you’d have just ignored her, and I’d have had to come up to pull you out of bed eventually. This way, I thought I’d cut out the middle man.”
Jenny had been my nanny since I was a baby. Each of the princesses had our own, and Jenny was mine. When I was too old for a nanny, she took on an admin-type role within the palace, and whilst she had no official control over me, she still had the ability to rule with an iron fist. I loved her fiercely, and I knew the feeling was mutual. Despite my moaning, I was happy she was by my side. I don’t think I could have gotten through this alone.
One of the palace beauticians came in and strode over to the pair of us purposely. Grace would have known her name and said something nice to her. I could only sit there open mouthed, staring at her in the mirror as she picked up my limp hair and sighed.
“This will not do. Not at all.” She was talking to herself. It was as though Jenny and I were not in the room, just this woman and my hair. She let go of my hair and wrote something on her clipboard. A beautician with a clipboard? She was wearing a smart black tailored suit, and I had the feeling this was the type of thing she usually wore and had more to do with fashion than mourning. With a severe black bob and blood red nails that matched the slash of scarlet on her lips, she reminded me of a sleek black panther. I expected her to growl like one any second.
I stayed silent as she eyed me up and down, her face contorted into an expression of obvious disapproval.
Jenny pursed her lips. “Will this take long because I’m sure Her Highness doesn’t want to sit around here all day?”
Yep, I loved Jenny! She might have been a whole head shorter than this woman, but she took no nonsense from anyone.
“Beauty cannot be rushed, and in this case, we will need longer than usual. I’ve gathered my elite team to work on her, and they will be up here momentarily. I suggest you go and get yourself a coffee or something.”
Jenny looked like she was just about to suggest something of her own in retaliation, but just as she opened her mouth to bite back, a group of about twenty people all walked through the door and stood in a line.
The woman walked down the line, kissing each one on the cheek in turn.
Why did I need twenty people? They looked like an immaculately dressed firing squad. I took hold of Jenny’s hand.
“I am Xavi,” said the woman, finally turning back to me, “and this is my team. They will turn you from a caterpillar into a butterfly.”
“I only thought I’d need a dress,” I replied in a small voice.
“Nonsense,” Xavi replied. “Chanelle here will be taking you to the marble room with her team first.”
I had no idea what the marble room was. I’d walked every corridor in this palace, and even though it housed over a thousand people, I knew every nook and cranny of it. I was yet to find a room made of marble. I was just wondering if she meant the great hall with its marble staircase, when Chanelle pulled me up out of my seat and, along with three others, escorted me to the back of the room. Along the back of the room were three huge sets of double doors painted in gold. I assumed they were full of dresses and royal attire.
The first set of doors opened, and I found myself staring into a room made out of marble. The marble room! How could I not have known it existed before?
“You won’t be needed in here,” said Chanelle to Jenny and shut the door in her face. I could only imagine the look on Jenny’s face. She didn’t stand being talked to like that.
Chanelle flicked a switch, and the room came to life. Where there had been only a room with a huge marble table in the center and a channel in the floo
r around the edge, there now was a waterfall. A huge waterfall that covered three of the walls. I wondered if it was caused by Magic or technology. I flicked my eyes to the trim of Chanelle’s uniform, but she only wore white. She, like the others, was non-Magic. Water gushed down the channels in the floor and then drained out somewhere. Along each wall were a number of large stone urns. Set against them and to the side of me next to the doors, was a marble bench and some hooks. I noticed a white robe hanging on one of them.
“Strip off and put your clothes here.” Chanelle indicated the bench. “I can assure you they will remain perfectly dry.”
I gawked at her, wondering what exactly she had in store for me. Because I’d taken so long to move, she clicked her fingers and the other three girls moved forward and began trying to remove my pajamas.
“It’s fine! I can do it myself!” I was going to have to be naked in front of these strangers! Had Grace ever had to go through this? It was certain she must have, and yet, she’d never mentioned it. Was this the palace’s best-kept secret or just one of many?
Once my clothes had been removed, I was told to hop up onto the marble table. One of the girls fetched three sponges filled with soap from the first urn and passed two of them to the other girls. Under Chanelle’s watchful eye, they washed me down, soaping me from head to toe, missing not a single crevice, from behind my ears to between my toes.
When I thought it was all over and I couldn’t possibly be any cleaner, they put away their sponges and brought back brushes. Chanelle herself poured a bucket of water over me to wash away the bubbles and then the others got to work, scrubbing my skin until it was red.
My cries of pain went unheeded as they roughly scrubbed off any dead skin.
By the time they had finished with me, my skin felt like it was on fire, and yet, I’d never felt as clean in my whole life. Chanelle handed me the white robe I’d seen earlier and after turning the waterfalls off, instructed me to go through a door I’d not seen earlier.
The next room was bland compared to the marble room. It looked a little like an office, although it too had a table in the center. This one was not made out of marble, however. It was padded leather and looked like it had moveable parts.
Judging by the huge double doors to my right, this room was right off the main room.
I perched on the edge of the table and waited for something to happen. I didn’t have to wait long before a young woman walked in. She gestured for me to lie on the table.
Just like the others in the room before, she worked silently. Her job, it seemed was to cover me in sticky brown stuff that looked a little like treacle. I wondered for a second if it was some kind of moisturizing substance until she added a small strip of fabric to the stuff she’d applied to my leg and yanked it off, pulling the treacle stuff and what felt like half my leg with it.
I yelled and pulled my leg towards myself protectively.
“It’s for hair removal,” she said in a foreign accent.
I looked down, and sure enough, there was a strip of hair missing from my leg.
“I like the hair on my leg!” I replied defensively. It had never been a problem before. I usually wore trousers, and in the few times I’d been forced to wear a skirt or dress, my legs had been covered with thick tights.
“I have orders,” she said, wrestling my leg back into a straight position and applying more of the treacle stuff. “Legs, underarms, upper lip, eyebrows, and bikini line. I make you look like a princess!” She smiled as if she’d just told me something wonderful instead of the horrific torture she was about to put me through. I was just about to argue when she spoke again.
“King tell Xavi, who tell me.”
So my father had put them all up to this. Did he know how much it hurt?
“My father would not expect me to go through this...Ouch!”
She pulled another strip from my leg. A stinging sensation hit me for the second time.
“His Majesty gets waxed twice a month.”
My father got waxed too? Part of me wanted to know exactly what he got waxed, but a much bigger part didn’t want to know. If my father had ordered it, I had to bear it. With each pull of the wax strips, the pain became worse and worse until she finally declared she had finished. I’d been naked in the last room, but now, without any body hair, I had never felt as naked in my life. She wiped me down with a cloth dipped in some strong smelling solution which she told me dissolved any remnants of wax and then rubbed a sweet smelling pink lotion over my whole body. After all the pain I’d endured, the cooling lotion was bliss to my skin. She handed me a simple thin white dress and pushed me through the double doors. As I had assumed, they led back to the large dressing room. As soon as Jenny saw me, she ran over, a look of concern on her face.
Xavi had also seen me.
“Bring her over here,” she demanded from across the room.
“Are you ok, child?” asked Jenny under her breath.
I was about to answer how awfully I’d been treated and how painful it had been when I realized my skin had never felt so good. My arms were softer than a newborn’s, and I felt amazing. Maybe Xavi and her team knew what they were doing after all.
“I’m good,” I replied.
The chair Xavi had indicated was next to a sink. A young man was waiting to wash my hair.
“Jon here will wash and dry your hair. Then Alezis will take over and create a style for you.” She indicated another man. This one had long black hair tied in a ponytail and was wearing more makeup than any woman I’d ever met.
Jon carefully put my head back over the basin and began to wash my hair with careful hands, massaging my scalp with practiced strokes. I closed my eyes, enjoying the sensation of his fingertips caressing my hair, shampooing, and conditioning until my hair was spotless. It was so much more pleasurable than anything else I’d had to endure that day that I was almost sad when it came to an end. Jon moved me to another chair and dried my hair until it hung down in shiny waves. It looked so amazing that I wasn’t sure exactly what Alezis would be able to do to improve it.
“Everybody leave!” He shouted as he examined my hair. “I need total silence while I work, and I cannot have anyone disrupting me as I create my masterpiece.”
I watched in the mirror as Jenny opened her mouth to argue, but she was swiftly removed by Xavi, who dragged her from the room and slammed the door behind them.
“Jenny isn’t going to stand for that!” I mused out loud.
Alezis didn’t answer. He was too busy examining my hair, strand by strand as though he might find buried treasure in there somewhere. After half an hour, he was still to pick up a pair of scissors or comb, and I was beginning to get impatient.
“Are you going to cut my hair?” I inquired eventually.
“Hmmm,” was his reply. I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant, but he finally picked up his scissors and began to chop at my hair. His work was delicate and deliberate. I could see him agonizing over every cut, and when he did snip, he did it slowly.
How could anyone care about hair so much? I’d have happily tied it up at the back with a ribbon and been done with it.
After what felt like hours, he put down his scissors. It looked exactly as it had before except it had a life to it that it had never seen. He’d glossed it and yet it was not heavy. It was difficult to put my finger on what exactly he’d done, and yet, it looked magnificent. I was pleased to see that he’d not changed it drastically. I still looked just like me except somehow better.
“When there is a royal engagement I’ll sculpt your hair into something much more magnificent,” he said, “but for now, you can wear this.”
He picked up a simple golden hair band and slipped it into my hair.
“Thank you,” I replied, gazing at myself in the mirror. The next step was the one that scared me the most. Makeup. I hated the stuff, and up until now, I’d gotten away with not having to wear any.
Xavi strolled back in with the rest of her team and ga
ve me an appreciative glance.
“Wonderful job as always Alezis,” she kissed him on each cheek. “I’ll send the royal tiara’s to you next week so you can decide what to do with her for the ball.”
“Magnifico!” he replied before leaving.
Jenny ran over to me and clapped her hands. If she was still angry, she didn’t show it. Instead, a grin spread across her face.
“You look stunning, child!”
“Not yet, she doesn’t,” remarked Xavi, “My team of artists will transform her. The first three will create a blank canvas, and then Louis will perform a miracle on her.”
Four more people to beautify me. Who knew that being beautiful was such an effort? Unlike Alezis who let me watch what he was doing in the mirror, this time, the chair I was in faced the middle of the room.
The only mirror I had was Jenny’s face which was alternating between concern and pride, before breaking into a huge grin which stayed on her face throughout the rest of the session. The three people working on me applied all manner of creams and powders to my face. They took it in turns to use a multitude of brushes, and I heard words being thrown around like “contouring” and “highlighting,” none of which I knew what they meant. As they worked, I counted all the people that had worked on me so far. The three in the marble room, the woman with the accent who waxed me, Jon, Alezis and now the three make-up artists. With Louis and Xavi herself that only made eleven. I’d counted twenty when they had all trooped in at the beginning. What were the other nine for?
When the three had finished, they spun my chair around until I could see myself in the mirror. I looked back at me, version 2.0. I looked exactly like I always had, and yet, I was beautiful. How had they done it? Just as Alezis had done with my hair, they had made me something better than I always had been but without seemingly changing me at all. They had put so much on me and yet it looked like I’d just stepped out of the bath, naturally flawless and makeup free.
Charm (A Cinderella reverse fairytale) (Reverse Fairytales Book 1) Page 2