Once Upon the Rainbow, Volume Two

by Jennifer Cosgrove

  “Come. You wish to dance, don’t you?” She thrust the shoe toward me in an impatient gesture. “You can’t dance without shoes.”

  “I can’t dance in those shoes.” I withdrew my trembling feet under my skirts. “Not without my mistress.”

  “Wear these slippers, which contain the warmth of Ariella’s feet.” The footman’s voice was soft, almost seductive. I could imagine it was Ariella herself speaking to me. Only my lady would never have dropped to one knee, still offering the shoe. “You shall dance with your mistress in a way you never dreamed possible.”

  My feet still trembled, but I responded to that voice. I allowed them to creep out from beneath my skirts and offer themselves to the footman.

  Gently, she slipped one of the slippers onto my left foot. I trembled more than ever. This was the kind of trembling usually reserved for my mistress. What was happening tonight?

  The footman/fairy godmother removed the second shoe from her pocket. With a gentleness that surprised me, she slipped the second shoe onto my other foot. It went on with remarkable ease.

  “A perfect fit,” the footman/fairy godmother said. Was there a note of disappointment in her voice? She shut the coach’s door, then turned her back on me. Any disappointment was lost in her brisk manner. “Don’t worry, the spell only lasts until midnight. At which time, the coach will turn back into a pumpkin, and you’ll be reduced to rags once more. Or you’ll be a girl in a smudged dress. It will be humiliating, either way, so I suggest you leave the ball before then.”

  She leaped up like a cat into the coachman’s seat. The transformed pumpkin trembled when s/he landed.

  I did my best to pull myself into a sitting position and smooth my skirts around me.

  The coach jolted and started moving. It was then I realized something was missing.

  “How are we moving?” I yelled, holding on the edge of the coach. “There are no horses!”

  “Oh, yes, there are!” the footman, no coachman, called back. “Look!”

  I stuck my head out the window and stared. It was impossible to see the coachman from my seat. All that was visible were the faint gleam of reins, attached to horses with the hue of twilight. I could see bits of the landscape through their moving forms, as if they weren’t quite there. The ghost horses drew the coach along the road, their strength vibrating through its frame.

  “In life, these horses belonged to His Highness!” the coachman shouted over the steady jiggle of the pumpkin coach. I could hear the grim satisfaction in her voice. “They cannot rest, but they much prefer pulling a lovely lady’s coach to the prince’s ungentle touch. Hopefully, this simple task will release them from their earthly bonds!”

  I withdrew into the coach, held on to the sides, and braced myself as the ghost horses picked up speed. I wasn’t entirely sure if they were truly contented to be pulling my coach. They kept trotting as if they wanted to gallop.

  The coachman laughed, a wild, dangerous sound, as she urged them on. The ghost horses were more than happy to be urged.

  One thing was certain. The transformation must not have been complete. My fairy godmother was no coachman, judging from the way she drove. She still got me to the ball intact.

  My enchanted carriage pulled up to the front of the palace, just one more fancy coach in a gathering of fancy coaches. A few ladies and gentlemen gaped at the transformed pumpkin, more at its small size than its exceptional elegance. No one seemed to notice or care about the way it floated.

  I watched the ghost horses fade away through the window. No one seemed to notice that either.

  The transformed coachman leaped down from her seat, lightly landing on the ground beside me. With perfect aplomb, she opened the door of the coach and extended her hand.

  “My lady, your first ball awaits you,” she said gravely, but there was a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

  I accepted her hand, and she managed to help me step with relative grace onto the ground, though my feet wanted to buckle under me.

  “Just head on up the stairs like everyone else is,” she said.

  Gorgeously dressed men and women with feathers and jewels in their hair and hats were walking hand in hand up a flight of marble stairs to the entrance of the palace.

  I’d never seen a palace before. Certainly, my lady’s chateau was beautiful, but the sheer opulence of this place took my breath away. There must have been at least five different kinds of marble in the entrance alone. The marble was all trimmed with gold. Light shone from an invisible source, gleaming upon the gold. The jewelry twinkled on the guests mincing up to the ornately carved doors. The sparkle reflected off the wood, dazzling my eyes.

  “Remember, the spell ends at midnight,” the footman whispered. She disappeared, vanished into thin air, right in front of the crowds of people making their way into the palace.

  Nobody paid any attention. Was magic normal here in this place? I gulped and lifted my skirts to make my way up the marble stairs everyone else was climbing.

  The doors loomed above me, getting closer with every step. Angels trapped within vines and thorns writhed within the wood. I stared at them, overwhelmed by the detail, then looked down at my feet.

  I entered the palace and blinked. A wonderland of candles and couples dancing awaited me within. A small orchestra sat in a corner, playing merrily, as people talked, danced, flirted, and mingled.

  For a moment, I thought I saw a plump young man dressed in finery, surrounded by a crowd of young women, each in a stunning gown. The lights flickered around a dark-haired woman who turned slowly as I entered the ballroom. She seemed alone in the crowd of ladies, each of whom was trying to impress the young man.

  This one was watching the crowd, scanning each face. It was my mistress.

  I climbed the last steps, my heart beating wildly. She was there. She was waiting for me.

  I couldn’t see her face, but I felt her smile, wicked and knowing. Her smile made the candles blaze even more brightly.

  My dazzled eyes tried to focus upon her but failed. The entire room flickered. I nearly stumbled. Flickers became shapes as the ballroom reformed around me.

  A sleek young man stood apart from the crowd, watching me. I looked past him, tried to find the familiar figure of my dark-haired lady. The plump noble and his cluster of admirers had disappeared.

  A sigh of disappointment escaped from me before I could stop it.

  “Been abandoned by a thoughtless suitor, have you?”

  The words made me start. I looked back to see the courtier I’d noticed before, standing very close to me. His hair was the same midnight color as my mistress’s. His smile had a hint of playful mischief. As everyone present, he was immaculately dressed, but his suit of white was trimmed with bits of emerald green. The buttons on his coat matched my gown perfectly. I couldn’t help staring at his coat.

  “Would you mind dancing with me, instead?” The gentleman held out a gloved hand to me. The gesture reminded me of the footman, the stranger who had decided to give me this night. It was an odd feeling, being treated in such a courtly fashion, but not an unpleasant one.

  A flush rose in my cheeks, coaxing a smile onto my lips. I accepted his hand, which was slender and cool under the glove. Once again, this made me think of my mistress. My face grew even warmer.

  “Such sweet modesty is rare at a gathering like this,” the gentleman said, leading me by the hand onto the dance floor. He put his arm around my waist. Terror fluttered in my stomach when the musicians paused for a moment.

  I couldn’t dance. I’d never danced. I knocked things over when I tried to walk. What was the point of even trying to do something I was so ill-suited for?

  “It’s not sweetness,” I thought, only to realize I’d said the words out loud. I gulped down my fear.

  The gentleman looked at me with an inquiring cock of his head.

  I couldn’t ignore that gesture. “It’s apprehension. I have very little grace.”

  “Grace is something that
can be learned and acquired with practice.” The lights softened in time with the gentle encouragement of my partner’s words. The music, mingling with the sound of his voice, had a magic of their own. It washed over me. “Just follow my lead and learn.”

  The stranger started to move, still holding me in a light embrace. I followed his steps, moving almost like a reflection to mirror his gestures. My partner moved with such grace and confidence, it was infectious.

  No one was watching me. Everyone was caught up in the dance, in their own partner’s steps. This made me relax a little. I surrendered to each step as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  My mysterious gentleman was a marvelous dancer, light on his feet, but easily carrying me in his wake. All I had to do was follow his movements. Caught up in the elegance of creating and completing the pattern with every gesture and sway, I started to enjoy myself.

  Every woman should dance once in her life, my mysterious benefactor had told me. She had been right.

  “You’re a fast learner,” the gentleman murmured in my ear. Having his lips so close to my face made me shiver.

  “I guess it’s obvious that this is my first dance,” I murmured back. My unease trickled back as the crowds thinned around us.

  “Only to me,” he whispered. “Look around you.”

  I glanced at the crowd and realized a space had formed around us. Everyone was watching us dance, including the plump young man and the ladies who’d been with him. Ariella wasn’t among them.

  “Oh, where is she?” The brief happiness I’d enjoyed was gone. “Why can’t she see me when I’m like this, instead of tripping over her gowns?”

  “She?” the handsome stranger whispered teasingly. “I wonder if I shouldn’t feel jealous, the way you search for someone else.” He didn’t look jealous, although he watched my face with an almost hungry intensity.

  “I’m sorry.” I avoided his eyes. “I didn’t mean… There was someone here, someone I’m always upsetting or disappointing. I would have liked her to see me at my best, rather than my worst.”

  “It’s hard to imagine you disappointing anyone,” he said warmly.

  My cheeks again grew hot. We continued to move, not missing a step.

  “Why did you want this friend to see you dancing with me? Did you want to make her jealous?”

  “No!” The thought of Ariella being jealous was strange. She had always been my benefactor, the one who was everything I could ever dream of. “I just wanted her to see me, to…” I stared at our moving feet.

  “To?” His voice was gentle, encouraging. There was no censure in it.

  “To find me beautiful,” I confessed.

  I looked up at his eyes. They were the same dark blue as my mistress’s. “I wanted her to look at me and think, ‘she’s precious and she’s mine.’”

  I lowered my gaze to the floor, uncertain again.

  “If she doesn’t think so, she’s blind.” The young man leaned closer to whisper in my ear, “You are beautiful, precious, and I wish you were mine.”

  The heat was running down my neck.

  Being flattered was very pleasant, if not downright exciting.

  “Sir,” I began, completely unsure what to say. “I’m honored that you would say so, but I, well, I…”

  “Your heart belongs to another?” he asked slyly. “Won’t you give me the chance to steal it?”

  The twinkling lights of many candles in the room seemed to gather in his eyes.

  How easy it would be to be bewitched by that luminous gaze.

  “Is that gentlemanly, sir?” The timid question escaped from my lips before I could think better of it.

  I took a step back, dimly aware of other people, other couples moving onto the dance floor around us. “To steal what belongs to another?”

  This startled a chuckle out of him.

  “Perhaps not.” He made a little bow of acknowledgment to me.

  The music stopped, marking the end of the dance. He seized my hand before I could move away and brought it up to his lips. The closeness made my fingers tremble.

  “I suppose I’m not exactly a gentleman.” His words sent a strange shiver through me. This time, it had nothing to do with pleasure. Who was I to accuse him of not being gentlemanly?

  It wasn’t like I was a real lady. In truth, I was a cinders girl. My coach was really a pumpkin. I’d only been able to come to this ball because of the gifts my fairy godmother had given me. Most of those had been stolen. The pumpkin I’d used as a coach belonged to my mistress. The glass slippers on my feet were rightfully hers. The only thing that had been given to me was the dress.

  “I suppose we’re evenly matched.” I looked down at our clasped hands.

  To our left stood a man and a woman. To our right stood a man and a woman. We were part of a long line of men and women in the ballroom, standing, waiting. Only they weren’t just men and women. They were lords and ladies. What was I doing here in their company?

  “I’m not exactly a lady.”

  “What nonsense!” His merry laughter seemed to summon the music. It began to play, and the line of men and women shifted. We moved along with it. My dance partner caught my waist. I circled him.

  He gave me a twirl and released me. I realized I was spinning toward another man, even as another woman swayed for my partner. It should have been confusing, but the music guided me. I accepted the hands of a smiling young man dressed in a suit of blue. He twirled me before I headed back to my partner, passing a young lady with a lifted chin and heavily lidded eyes. She was headed for the young man in blue.

  My partner, waiting for me, seized my hands once more. “Every step you take reveals your true self.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Before he could answer, he was moving away toward the corner with the lady with the lifted eyes. The smiling man in blue approached me. Dim memories of walking, turning guided my feet. I recognized this pattern. I’d learned it when I was a little girl. Ariella had taught it to me. Her dark blue eyes had sparkled the same way my gentleman partner’s eyes sparkled now.

  He watched me while he held the hands of another lady. The man in blue took mine and gave me a turn before leaving me. Ariella had grown up and abandoned me. Once upon a time, she’d treated me as an equal. She would have continued to do so if her own mother had let her.

  “She’s only a cinders girl!” her mother had shouted. How huge the former mistress loomed in my memories, shouting at her daughter, shouting at me. “You take far too many liberties with her!”

  “She’d be a lady if her father hadn’t died, leaving her penniless!” Ariella had retorted. Even as a child, she’d stood proudly in the face of opposition. “What’s the harm in teaching her to dance or any of the graces, which should be hers by rights?”

  “No matter what she might have been, she’s nothing more than a cinders girl now!” The former lady of the house had been like an enormous, black dragon. Unfurling her wings, ready to breathe fire on the budding bond between her daughter and myself. Reducing it to cinders.

  I swallowed and nearly stumbled, returning to the present, to the ball. A moment later, my partner returned to me.

  He reclaimed my hands and resumed our dance. There was a slight quirk to his mouth, which wasn’t exactly a smile. For a moment, I wondered if he hadn’t read my mind.

  “Yes, I can see the pride in your eyes, a noblewoman’s pride, which cannot be easily vanquished,” he said.

  We circled each other. I took a step close to him. He took a step close to me. The music demanded closeness.

  “You are a lady.”

  “No!” The fierceness of my denial took him by surprise. I backed away, waving a hand to match my protest. It was easier to deny it. Once upon a time, it might have been true. The memories of those days were vague. I’d done everything I could to forget them. My mistress’s mother had done all she could to force me to forget them. I’d denied my nobility a hundred times, trying to con
vince that woman I was nothing more than a servant. A servant loyal to her daughter. The irony was my denial had come true. I became her daughter’s in every sense.

  My partner watched me with an inquiring tilt of his head. Ariella used to tilt her head in such a fashion. It had vexed her mother to no end. It was a silent way of asking the endless questions Ariella had learned not to voice. I couldn’t ignore such a gesture. I needed to explain my strange rudeness.

  “At least, I’m not a lady in the way you would expect,” I added, feeling awkward and shy.

  Once more, we circled each other. The dance was oddly comforting. It gave me an outlet to stamp out any awkward feelings. Hopefully, I wouldn’t damage the glass slippers. It was a wish guaranteed to make me step more gently.

  “Oh?” My partner’s coyness was almost feminine. He claimed my waist and brought me close. His lips twitched with barely concealed wit. “How do you know what I would expect in a lady?”

  How, indeed. Perhaps he had every reason to be amused by that statement. I did have an answer for him, though.

  “By what you see in this very room,” I whispered in his ear. His nearness was intoxicating. Oh, it would be so easy to let him absorb my attention, to be drawn away from everything else. “Take a look at the other ladies dancing.”

  “Why?” He released my waist to back away. We circled each other once more, along with every other man and woman in the room. “I only want to look at you.” He breathed this wish with such tempting earnestness.

  “Ah, but what do you see?” My question had the bleak ring of an oracle’s prophecy.

  I was enjoying his attentions. I didn’t want him to discover the truth. It was painfully obvious what a fake I was.

  Every other woman present wore a coquettish, knowing smile. This ball was nothing new to any of these ladies, nothing special. They were used to going to balls. Oh, they might be enjoying themselves, but there was no sign of the giddy madness that had had me in its grip not too long ago. This ball was their birthright, as was being in this room filled with music and magic. It wasn’t the stolen pleasure for any lady that it was for me.