After finishing my tea, I drew myself a bath and scrubbed the dirt of travel from my body. I did not bother to don the Cinder Girl’s face again, for the Prince knew the truth of it now, and he was the one from whom I’d meant to hide.
The chatelaine of the house next door was a jolly creature, round of cheek and belly, and friendly to everyone she met. Her ruddy face went white when she opened her kitchen door to find me on her stoop.
“Witch!” She exclaimed in a startled squeak. “Uh, I mean, Mistress Ember! It’s so good to see you again after such a long absence. How may I help you?”
“My sister says your dog is keeping her awake.”
The housekeeper shook her head frantically. “Oh, no. We haven’t a dog. Not after what happened to the last one. We’ve heard the howling in the night as well. We thought perhaps your household had acquired a dog.”
I shook my head and thanked her before going on to interview our other neighbors. I spent the better part of the morning asking after the phantom dog and finding no clues. Everyone had heard howling the past few nights, but none knew who owned the dog or what it looked like.
Dispirited, I returned to our kitchens and found them crowded with servants. Our house was unusual among the great houses of the Avenida Delpalacio in that our servants worked from afternoon to midnight, and did not live within our walls. We were not, however, unusual among other well-heeled houses of ill repute. In the finer emporiums of commercial fornication, clients pay for secrecy as much as for sex. Few men and women of wealth like it when their bedsport becomes the stuff of gossip, and full-time servants are inveterate gossips.
The chefs and chef’s assistants, the butler, the footmen, the maid and the scullery scamp, all stopped their work to gape at me when I stepped through the kitchen door. They had heard of the red-haired witch. The neighbors had gossiped of me, and the Prince’s lackeys had offered them money for news of my whereabouts.
I glared at them. “Don’t you all have tasks to do?”
They all turned away, even the chef. “You,” I snapped my fingers at the chef. “Fix me a tray for lunch and have it sent to the front parlor.”
You are thinking I was rude in my treatment of the servants. But you try to endure the shaky, frightened stares of half-a-dozen pairs of eyes and tell me how you well like it. Two weeks before, when I’d worn the guise of the Cinder Girl, these same people had treated me with courtesy and kindness. Now they trembled and scuttled out of my way as though they were afraid my shadow would fall on them and sour their luck. I was insulted.
I found Sylvie and Minette playing chess across the tea table in the parlor. Sylvie usually kept apace in their matches, but she was losing badly today. She seemed distracted and worried.
“Ember!” Sylvie jumped up, kicking her silver velvet skirts out of the way before crossing the room to throw her arms about my neck. “We were so worried when you left, and so relieved when Dulcie told us you’d returned. She is asleep upstairs. It must soothe her spirit to have you back at home.”
“I drugged her tea.”
Minette laughed. “Oh, it is good you are returned. I know you’ll figure out a way to thwart the Prince.” She paused to look at the chessboard. “And I think he knows it, too.”
Minette did not often allow her face to betray emotion, for such shows of feeling would eventually lead to wrinkles. But now the painted black lines of her eyebrows drew together in thought. She picked up her skirt with one powdered hand and paced over to my mother’s blue leather chair. Sylvie and I kept quiet, knowing the thought must be important if Minette would risk a wrinkle for it.
Finally, she said, “I wonder if the reason the Prince will not let you alone is because you defy him.”
“You’re not saying this is my fault!”
“No, no. I simply mean he is a man to whom it is impossible to say no. After a lifetime of such treatment, any sane soul would come to crave an honest opinion.”
I remembered what the Prince had written of me. I will her to come to me, but she does not. It only makes me want her more.
“You are right, Minette. He wrote that he wanted me because I might refuse him.”
“It goes further. Does his curse affect animals?”
“No, only humans.”
“Yet he spends his days caring for animals in his stables or his kennels. Any woman who sees his face will gladly spread her legs for him, yet he spends his coin to pay for whores. The Prince craves honest interactions, my dear. Even when you deny him, you provide a response he desires.”
“What a mad idea! I thought men liked to be flattered by their bed partners.”
“Most do, but not all,” Sylvie said. “Men may become aroused by the strangest things. I once had a very proper-seeming gentleman from L’Aingleterre who begged me to paddle his arse and call him naughty. And, did Dulcie ever tell you of the evening she spent with the Grand Duke and a zucchini?”
“Oh, Sylvie,” I buried my face in my hands, “please do not recount the tale. I like zucchini.”
Sylvie’s painted pink lips curved up into a mischievous smile. “So does the Grand Duke.”
My sisters broke into gales of laughter at the hot flush of embarrassment on my cheeks. They have always enjoyed shocking me. How I’d missed them! After my blushes faded, I laughed, too.
Our moment of merriment was cut short by a wailing howl from the street outside. Minette’s expression turned sour. “It is that dog again. I swear! If I have to endure one more night of howling I shall hire a hunter to track it down and kill it.”
I sneaked a glance at Sylvie. Her face seemed pale beneath her paint, and her expression looked drawn. Her hands lay in her lap, but she’d twisted her handkerchief into a rope and she held it taught between clenched fists.
I could not bear to see her in such a state. Another howl broke through the night, and Sylvie shivered at the sound.
“You should invite him in,” I told her, “before someone does him harm.”
“Him, who?” Minette asked. “The dog?”
“The loup.”
Immediately, Sylvie began to cry. She ran from the room, and I heard the low creak of the front door opening, and the clack of her woodheeled shoes on the front stair.
Minette looked me over with an arch eye. “You have a gift, Sister, for reducing people to tears.”
“And you have a gift for returning them to good humor. You know Sylvie loved him?”
“I suspected as much. I was with the constable when the Priest came to report her as a loup. I know Raoul did not betray her.”
“You never told her you knew?”
“Sometimes, we need little lies to save our pride.” She pinned me with a hard stare. “And sometimes we need big lies to save our souls.”
Minette was not speaking of Sylvie, anymore.
“You think a lie will save me from the Prince?”
“All this time, you have resisted his curse and it has made him want you. But if you were to nod and smile for him, acquiesce to his every whim and desire, you would be no different than anyone else. He would soon tire of you.”
“You mean I should spread my legs for him, even though I love another?” I hated to say the words, hated the way my heart leapt at an excuse to give in to his curse.
“You already have, Sister.” Minette paused. We heard two sets of footsteps ascend the stairs. She smiled. “You can only be with your lover if you rid yourself of the Prince. Do not think of acceding to the Prince as faithlessness; think of it as a noble sacrifice.”
She put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “The Harlots’ Ball is set for next week, at the dark of the moon. Let us dress you as a courtesan and take you to the palace. It will fulfill the promise the Prince forced from us and I do not think his obsession with you will last a day if you act as vacuous in his presence as everyone else does.”
* * *
“Where is Sylvie?” Dulcie asked as she stirred a spoonful of honey into her morning tea. “She is usually
the first of us to break her fast.”
“She is locked in her bedchamber with her lover,” Minette replied.
“Sylvie has taken a lover?” Dulcie’s eyes were wide. My sisters had among them a sort of code they used to describe the people they fucked. Men or women who paid were their “gentlemen” or their “ladies;” and those whom my sisters chose for pleasure alone were “lovers”.
“But Sylvie has not taken a lover in years. Not since we left Terre d’Or.”
“Not since Raoul,” Minette agreed. “And he is her lover, now.”
“Never say she has forgiven him! He would have seen her burnt at the stake.”
Minette took a few moments to explain the truth of the situation to Dulcie. I was glad to know she’d been as unaware of the true story as I. I did not want to think my sisters had deliberately left me out of their confidences.
“If he never meant her harm, then I am happy they are reunited.” Dulcie concluded.
I frowned. “You both are too forgiving.”
“So says the witch,” Minette laughed. “You never forgive anyone.”
“I do, too.”
“Oh? Then I suppose you have given up sticking pins in the little doll you made of Lord Campos after he blacked Sylvie’s eye.”
Minette knew me too well. The hex doll was to me as a favorite toy is to a child. I always kept it near. I poked it with pins or singed it with fire whenever I felt bored or peeved.
Lord Campos had become a wreck of a man since he’d crossed me, but it was not revenge enough. I intended for him to suffer the rest of his life for hurting my sister. You may think me cruel, but I have never felt the least bit of remorse.
“Do you forget Raoul gave Sylvie the loup a purpose?” I asked.
“He is a loup born,” Minette countered. Though all civilized people view the loup as an affliction, there are tribes in the east who consider the loup as a blessing, a mark of favor from their gods. “He likely thought he was doing her an honor. And besides, he did it for the love of her.”
“His intentions do not change the results of his actions, nor the fact that he forced the fate upon her.”
“No,” Minette agreed, “but it is the argument Sylvie will use as an excuse to forgive him.”
I wanted to disagree, but I have found over the years no man or woman alive who knows human nature quite so well as Minette. “Do you think so?”
“She loves him,” Minette answered. “For five years she has been melancholy, with her sad smiles and longing sighs. I have no doubt Sylvie will decide it is easier to forgive him than it is to go another five years without him.”
I thought of Rian and wondered if he would forgive me for betraying him with the Prince, once I confessed the truth of it. He loved me. Would he find it easier to take me back than to repudiate me? For the first time since I’d fled the Prince’s bed, I dared to hope things might end happily.
8. The Ball
The dark of the moon approached quickly, and with it, the Harlots’ Ball. Minette closed Maison d’Aube to all custom in preparation for the ball, and it was just as well. Sylvie had renounced the life of a courtesan and shocked us all by wedding her long-lost lover the day after their reunion.
Sylvie’s Raoul was tall and rawboned with pale hair and wary, wild eyes. He was a taciturn man. When he spoke, he spat his words out in short bursts, as though he could not stand the shape or taste of them upon his tongue. He seemed ill-at ease with the clatter and chatter of human activity. He bristled at the sound of cartwheels on cobblestones and the way voices echoed from ceilings and walls.
I did not understand at all why Sylvie loved him, until I saw him look at her. Raoul watched Sylvie as though she was the sun and the moon and the stars drawn down from the heavens and bound into flesh. He smiled when she smiled, and when she did not smile, he did everything he could to cheer her.
I wanted to dislike him, but Sylvie loved him. What kind of sister would I be, to hate the man who made my sister happy? I couldn’t even hate him when Sylvie told us she was going away with him.
“He cannot abide the city,” she explained. “He wasn’t born to it,
“A place where humans don’t hunt wolves? I do not believe such a place exists.”
“We will find a place.” Sylvie’s voice was firm. Her expression softened, though, and she said, “I will stay to help you prepare for the ball. Once this business with the Prince is past, you must introduce your lover—what is his name?”
“Rian,” I said. I hated the note of melancholy yearning in my voice.
“He was named for the Prince?” Sylvie’s lovely features crinkled with a slight frown. “How terrible that your lover should bear such a hated name.”
“I do not think of it,” I said. “Rian is ‘my Rian’ and the Prince is a stranger.” I knew the words were a lie when I spoke them. The Prince was not a stranger, far from it. I knew him too well—not because we had exchanged confidences but because we were too much alike. Long shunned for my witchery, I could easily imagine how alone he must have felt, faced with false smiles and Charm-compelled adoration every day of his life.
As much as I hated his desire for me, I understood it. Rian had been right those many months ago when he’d speculated on what a cruel fate it would be to be surrounded by people who loved you though they did not know you. The Prince only wanted what other men took for granted. A friend. A lover.
He had chosen the wrong way to achieve his desire. He had chosen the wrong woman. His threats and highhanded behavior had done nothing to endear him to me. But he’d never needed to ask for anything in his whole life. Is it any wonder that, when he set his mind to wooing a woman who was less susceptible to his charm, he made a mess of it?
“Well,” Sylvie continued, stretching a smile onto her face. “I would like to meet your Rian before I go, if only to be certain he is good enough for you.”
“If I am good enough for him,” I corrected. “And if he forgives me for betraying him.” I felt tears welling in my eyes, and looked away from Sylvie to hide them.
“Ember, you are crying!” Sylvie hugged me and patted my back. “You mustn’t lose hope. From everything you have told me of your Rian, I know he will understand. I am certain he will forgive you, if only you’ll forgive yourself.”
Forgive myself. I wondered if I ever could. In time, I might forgive myself the weakness that had let me succumb to the Prince’s curse and spread my legs for him that morning in his bedchamber. I’d never meant to betray Rian. But my plan to rid myself of the Prince was a deliberate betrayal. Even if it freed me from the Prince’s attentions, I would still have knowingly betrayed Rian. And that, I could not forgive.
* * *
I let my sisters dress me for the Harlots’ Ball, for the night I would give in to the Prince. I emerged from my bath naked as a newborn, and they remade me from my toes to the crown of my head. There was no magic in it, only artifice. Sometimes artifice is the greater power.
Sylvie teased and styled my hair. Minette slathered my face, arms and décolletage with ceruse to cover my freckles, before dusting the whole of me with white powder. Dulcie wrapped necklaces of diamonds, pearls and glass gems around my neck. She tugged at the chain of my moonlight pendant. “Are you sure you want to wear this?”
“I’ve never taken it off.”
Dulcie added another string of glass beads to hide it, and smiled, satisfied with her work.
Next, Sylvie gave me white silk stockings tied with red ribbon garters. And for my feet, Minette produced a pair of shoes in white satin, studded all over with glass gems in tin settings.
“They’ll look like diamonds in the candlelight.” Minette held the shoes up for my inspection. “And here is the best part.” She tipped the right shoe up to show me that the inside was crooked, to support the twist in my foot. From the outside both shoes looked almost equal.
Clever Minette also had lace gloves for my hands. The left one came with a wooden finger to disguise my missin
g one. It was perfectly carved and painted to appear as powdered skin through the lace.
“How lovely!”
“I had the carpenter do it.” Minette explained. “I don’t believe this is the first he’s made. Come now, let us get your clothes.”
To clothe me, my sisters first draped me in a linen shift as thin as a liar’s promise. Over the shift, they strapped lightweight panniers, followed by linen petticoats and an underskirt of silk charmeusse in the palest, prettiest pink I’d ever seen.
“They call it Last Blush,” Minette explained. She spoke of the lovely color, which came from a berry that grows in the Alts. The berry is a subtle poison. Even with careful training, a lifetime stirring vats of dye drives the dyers mad. This is why you will often hear d’Orans declare someone to be “mad as a red-fingered dyer.” They will also say someone is “rich as a red-fingered dyer,” for fabric dyed with Last Blush is quite expensive.
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