Midnight Falls: A Thrilling Retelling of Cinderella

by Jeanette Matern

  Gabriel hastily dismounted his horse and ran until he caught up with Ella and stopped her by gently taking her elbow in his hand. “I only told you to go to Kersley,” he said defensively, “because I wanted you to see what was happening, at the very hands of perpetrators to whom you were so willing to grant amnesty just this afternoon.”

  Ella halted, wrestling to free her arm and then restrain herself from clawing at his face—perfectly groomed, thanks to her friends. “That was not what I said, you clod! I was simply no longer willing to grant amnesty to you and your maniacal, absurd methodology. I assure you I want no amnesty for any of them, Thurlow or the Hussars.”

  Gabriel waited for Ella to finish and take the breath she so desperately needed after her rant. He inspected her closely. Even with the fading sunlight, one could see that her cheeks and eyelids were red and swollen from heavy crying. He felt sorry; he hadn’t meant to make her cry.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the Hussars, Gabriel?” she implored, her passion temporarily subdued.

  “I knew of the fact Thurlow had his own militia, of course. I only learned recently that they are sometimes referred to as the Hussars.”

  “I thought you made it your business to know everything.”

  “Trust me,” he said, his thick, foreboding voice taking over again, “I am more than well-informed of everything I need to know about those mongrels. A trivial nickname is of little consequence to me.”

  “It was of some consequence to me today,” Ella snapped, intensity returning to her vocal timbre, tears beginning to well behind her eyes again. Gabriel stepped toward Ella, fighting the desire to comfort her with more than his words.

  “Ella,” he began, “I know little about your relationship with the people of Kersley. I have only observed that you travel there as often as you can, bearing gifts, and then when you returned home, you seemed happier. At least until today. I knew you cared about the people enough to see for yourself what I observed two nights ago.”

  Gabriel’s intent was to pacify Ella’s anger but it only made her more irate.

  “You knew what was happening to them, and, instead of helping them, you manipulate me. You use my friends to get what you want from me. Well, you’ve got it! I will stay and play by your rules. I won’t give you any more trouble, rest assured! I see you as my only chance to stop Thurlow. I would try, but lest I sell myself to his sick fantasies, I cannot do it alone. You win! I surrender. Your plan will go on with no more resistance from me.”

  “Stop carrying on like I’ve just thrown you to a pack of wild wolves,” Gabriel snapped. “I didn’t hurt your friends and I am doing everything in my power to stop the man who is hurting them. That’s the best you will get from me, or anyone who isn’t deceiving you. Ella, you live in a different world than the rest of us— a fairy tale! I’ve known it since I first started watching you. You see villains and heroes, demons and martyrs, and you are so sure that you have observed everyone in their proper role and have fit them to such parts indefinitely.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I am saying that there are no such things as heroes, Ella! And we are all villains in some capacity. The only honor in life is willingness to see yourself in your true form and accept it. I admit that I am not the warrior for justice you hoped I would be. All of my actions have been and will remain completely self-serving. I don’t have the strength necessary to set aside my own need for vengeance to pine for people that—even if I tried—I could not help.

  “How was I to save your friends the Gypsies, Ella? What could I do that I am not already doing? What about the others in Kersley you never bothered to meet or get to know? They have been persecuted since before you were ever born. They live in that godforsaken land because no one else will take them. They’re decent people too, Ella. In a way, those people, my friends, saved my life fifteen years ago. And I couldn’t do anything to save them. I can’t save the Gypsies either, Ella. I couldn’t even save my brother!”

  Gabriel stopped abruptly, his voice breaking. He would not allow any human being to see him struggle, especially Ella. He had trained himself for the last fifteen years to bear grief not in his heart, or even his mind, but in his shoulders, and his forearms, and in the parts of his body that could utilize the pain and become stronger because of it.

  Ella watched as the man of iron melted from the inside out and she ached to touch him, just with her fingertips, to see what it felt like to touch sorrow in human form. She longed even more to hold him in her arms; not to assure him that all would be all right in the end (for he would never believe her) but to let him touch her, and feel, maybe for the first time, compassion in its human form.

  Even love.

  Ella wiped the tears from her sore, swollen cheeks and struggled to dam her thoughts of Gabriel from descending further past the point of no return. What good was it to love someone when the one person, the first person, she wanted to share it with didn’t believe in love at all? Like Gabriel had already made clear: life was not a fairy tale. And there were no heroes, only villains. But she was not a hero or a villain; neither was he.

  “You may think yourself a villain, Gabriel,” Ella declaimed, her eyes fiercely concentrated on his, “because it spares you. When just being alive is to suffer, which it is for you I’m afraid, you will take any relief you can get. The ache of not being there, or being too late, or being powerless is the worst kind. Tell yourself you don’t care, and the throbbing grief is numbed. But it is not gone.”

  “And what would you have me do?” he challenged. “Waste myself on pity? To what end, Ella? What good did crying today for your friends do? They still languish and you just stand here talking to me!”

  Ella couldn’t remember slapping him. She only could recall the sting of his bitter words followed by the look on his face, still turned to the side, as redness formed below his cheekbone. She’d stung him back. He was not shocked, nor was he angry. He knew he deserved no less.

  “And that is one thing I have no desire to do one second longer!” she exclaimed. Ella pulled her red wool shawl tighter around her shoulders and turned away from him hastily. The light of the sinking sun had only minutes left. When the same wool shawl she’d just stretched across her shoulders was yanked suddenly, her heart skipped. She hadn’t a clue what brought about such a powerful shock to her senses. The only thing of which Ella was certain was that she was falling. She expected at any moment for her body to smack the earth, but instead she fell against iron. Gabriel spun her around in her arms swiftly and before she could even blink or utter protest, she felt his lips against hers.

  His arms encased her firmly at her back and across her shoulders. Her arms and hands were still tucked against her chest, trapped between both their bodies. In the moment that she finally realized what was happening, every living part of her wanted to ask him what he was doing, though it was no great mystery. He was kissing her, passionately and with no inhibition and yet she felt intent on having him describe to her his actions, his reasoning…his intentions. Was this the way it was supposed to happen? She pulled away from him slightly, but his grip did not let up. She would not be able to escape his grasp long enough to make her request, so she resigned herself to simply live it and ask questions later.

  She could only experience it in fragments, the elements of her presence slowly decompressing. One by one her limbs and parts of her body she’d never felt before became weak and powerless. Except her heart, which drummed at her torso with a fury she had never known was possible. Gabriel loosened his hold on her shoulders a touch and spread his hands across her back. Ella wondered if he would act fast enough to catch her body when her knees inevitably buckled. Wanting not to take the chance, she wrapped her hands around his shoulders, sliding her left palm up the back of his neck until she could feel his hair slide like silk thread through her fingertips. Her right hand glided across his linen shirt, grazing his collar until she could hold his chin in her fingers. All the while she kissed him
, feverishly. She alternated between letting him prevail upon her his own suppressed desire and claiming her own vitality by enveloping his lips insatiably. She was learning, in that blissful moment, what a true kiss was and she knew Isolda, the wretch, had not experienced it with Gabriel the night before or ever.

  By the time the sun had disappeared behind the hills, Ella couldn’t tell where her heart was beating anymore, for she felt the rapturous throbbing like drums everywhere beneath her skin. He kissed her with such strength that she wondered if he might still be angry with her. But then she remembered that she had been the one to strike him. If Gabriel’s hands scaling her spine or his lips finding their way across her jaw and down her neck were some kind of projection of his hostility toward her, she would take care not to wait so long to incite it within him in the future.

  But Ella knew, sensibly, that her heaven might not last; that the future may not give her another chance.

  Chapter Twenty

  Leopold hardly recognized his father anymore; he’d only seen splinters of life and coherence from the king since he’d returned from his army service. The father and son had spoken several times since being reunited but each time it seemed so exhausting for William to engage in conversation that Leopold would stay for only a few short minutes.

  On the eve of the royal ball, from which Leopold would choose the future queen of Gwent, William called for his son. By the time the prince made his way to the king’s bedside, however, the old man had already fallen asleep. After once or twice of the same scenario, Leopold learned not to panic and assume his father had died each and every time it happened; even though the old man’s still, wrinkled face and raspy, almost inaudible breathing suggested death.

  The prince took many cues from William’s nurse, a much older woman with brown hair and eyes. She would nod, smile and make signs with her hands and a variety of other gestures to communicate to Leopold different messages about the king’s condition that particular day so as not to wake the ailing monarch. The nurse, Anna, never left the king’s bedside, not even to sleep or eat. Leopold was more than curious about all to which the woman had been privy from the numerous conferences that were held in the king’s chamber. It was unsettling to Leopold that a woman with no authority or political influence of any kind most likely knew more about matters of state than the future king of Gwent.

  It was more than unsettling for Leopold—in fact, it infuriated him. Why would his father raise him to be so exceptional, so significant a human being only to remain elusive of just what exceptions there would be? Leopold had learned how to be a warrior in the army but he knew nothing of being the leader of such a vast kingdom as Gwent. He’d wanted to learn, yearned so very badly to meet all of his parents’ expectations and then exceed them. But where were the expectations? Did his father have nothing to bestow on his heir that would be inspirational, instructive, or even empathetic? It was not as though William had ever been the other kind of father instead of the royal sort. Leopold had never, not once, been bounced on a knee or read a bedtime story. William never even thought to teach his son arithmetic or economics or anything like it. All of it was left to tutors and the convenient optimism that spoiling the prince would somehow bequeath him all he would ever need. Well, yes, Leopold was more than ready to play the part. The following evening’s ball would demonstrate that, but neither William nor Arabella seemed remotely afraid that their son could not be the part.

  Leopold gazed down at his sleeping father. Even distorted by illness and ravaged by age, the king’s face still reminded Leopold of his own: a wide mouth that was so easily curved into an enticing grin, thick eyebrows and rich, chocolate-colored hair that was short and cropped except for the very front, right at the rim of his forehead, where it feathered playfully. His mother had on more than one occasion divulged to Leopold that if she’d ever had a daughter, the little girl would look like her mother. Otherwise, she so pragmatically claimed, God would cease to be fair, since her son resembled his father so much.

  Arabella didn’t know it, but Leopold always thought profoundly about what it would have been like to have a brother or sister whenever she’d joke about such a thing. He was sure he would have enjoyed a sibling.

  King William moaned first and then slowly opened his eyes.

  “Father,” Leopold said compassionately, “I did not want to wake you. I am sorry.”

  The king did not speak clearly but his grunting and slight shaking of his head indicated to Leopold and Anna that he did not want to be ignored. “No, no, Son,” William said in a raspy whisper, “come closer to me. I want to see you.”

  “Of course, Father,” Leopold said, edging closer to the side of the massive, lowly bed on which the king rested.

  “You must know something,” the king said, and Leopold became excited, like he was a young boy again, “for I may not ever get another chance.”

  “What is it?”

  “I was never a good enough father. I am sorry.”

  Leopold was dumbfounded. “Father, do not say that,” he begged.

  “Leopold,” William exclaimed, an uncanny energy returning to his voice, “you have to listen to me now! I don’t have much more time.”

  The prince did not speak; he merely waited.

  “I was not a good father,” the king continued. “I failed in so many ways. I am failing now, as we speak. For tomorrow night, you are to stand in front of all of Gwent and choose a queen; a mother for your own son and I will not be there to witness it.”

  “That is all right, Father,” the son said, reassuringly. “Don’t fret. You must rest now.”

  “Be better than I am, Son,” William admonished, still more lively than he had been in some time. “It is not enough to be the same as I am. I’ve had time to reflect on my own life and those things that I have done, those things I passed on in legacy, and I long for something better for you. I am a coward, Leopold, and will die that way. Don’t be like me, my son.”

  How can I be like you? Leopold shouted in his head. I hardly know you!

  “I don’t understand you,” Leopold implored aloud. “Why are you saying these things?”

  “Because if I don’t say them, no one else will. At least not to you, Son. And it is very important that you hear it. Don’t become like me. Don’t stand by as I have and allow illusions of grandeur to cloud the truth that you… that we are… not…”

  William felt a horrific current of pain shoot up his spine and across his chest. He fell back against the pillows, moaning and clutching handfuls of his sheets in his fists. Both Leopold and Anna leapt toward him and, whilst pleading with the old man to give some signal of what was causing him such agony, struggled to keep him from flailing so violently that he rolled right off of his bed. William could not speak and simply cried out, over and over, in nonsensical lyrics of his trauma.

  After many minutes, Anna was able to allay the king and ease him back into his pillows where it looked like his excruciating torment was dissipating one second at a time. He could scarcely breathe—let alone speak—any longer. Leopold knew his father had few days to live and that what the old man had just endured certainly stole one of those precious days. As Leopold departed from the dormitory, he wrestled with his father’s declarations; confessions that had obviously pained the ailing king to have kept from his son for so long. Leopold wondered how many days that particular pain had stolen away from his father.

  Ella clutched Gabriel’s waist tightly and rested her head against his back. They had been riding for some time and her entire body ached. Ella felt the brunt of the throbbing in her temples and knew the excessive amount of sobbing she’d done that day had undoubtedly wreaked some kind of vengeance on her brain.

  But it had been worth it.

  That was, if it had even happened. Ella was still in a strange but blissful state of shock. She recalled hitting Gabriel across his face. She remembered the violent yank of her body and falling backwards. But the rest was a blur; an invigorating collage of r
ecollections, feelings, and sensations that yielded such inexpressible delight that it made her doubt if it was real—if it were even possible.

  Would it ever happen again?

  As they neared the courtyard of the Delaquix estate and the conclusion of their travels, Ella was set upon by apprehension that all but knocked her from Seely’s saddle.

  Ever again?

  She clung to Gabriel even tighter and pressed her face so desperately to his back that he stopped the horse, with still many yards to cover, and cranked his neck as far as he could toward her.

  “Are you all right, Ella?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied, releasing his body, “but I would like to get off here.”

  Gabriel did not argue but swiftly dismounted the stallion and then turned around and took Ella’s waist in his hands, lifting her from Seely’s back.

  “I can’t believe Marion and Marguerite aren’t waiting at the door with rollers and wooden spoons ready to attack me,” Gabriel said, looking toward the house. “I don’t know if I can withstand another beating tonight.” He smiled and Ella was immediately discomfited with the memory of slapping Gabriel only an hour before.

  “I’m not too surprised,” Ella replied, blushing, “I never told them that you were the reason I was so despondent last night. As far as I know, they only hate you as much as they did before; nothing more.”

  Gabriel laughed and Ella could only think of how much she loved the sound of his jovialness, his contentment.

  “Well, that and the fact that I told them I was accompanying you on your trip seemed to help assuage their worry,” he added.

  “You lied to them?”

  “Of course not. I did accompany you, Ella. Just not where you could see me.”

  “You mean you were with me in Kersley?”

  “At a distance.”

  Ella was not angry. She was not even surprised. “Gabriel,” she inquired as she watched him take the horse’s bit in his left hand, “can I ask you something?”