by Maia Chance
“He’s my . . .” Ophelia swallowed. “My fiancé.”
“Oh! Well done, Ophelia, well done.” Henrietta clapped her gloved hands.
“Only, he believes I’m an heiress from Cleveland.”
“A trifle. I once told a fellow my family owned a million acres in California. That tale was worth a Mediterranean yacht cruise.”
Ophelia gulped more of Henrietta’s wine. Was this what she’d become? Simply another opportunistic actress? Ugh. “I want a full story about where you’ve been, and why,” she said.
“You’ve always been such a schoolmarm, Ophelia. Why don’t we simply enjoy ourselves? This ball is magical! I—”
“Now,” Ophelia said. She took Henrietta by the elbow. Henrietta swiped another glass of wine from the table, and Ophelia steered her through the mob and onto the terrace.
“Start at the beginning,” Ophelia said.
“I met Malbert in New York. He swept me quite off my feet.”
“Hard to picture.”
“Well, you know. His title. And he mentioned a mansion in Paris.”
“Did you know he was already married?”
“Goodness! You don’t beat about the bush, do you?”
“No.”
“At first, Malbert told me his wife was dead. When I pressed him for details, he confessed. I was rather relieved, because once we’d actually arrived in Paris it became quite, quite clear that he’s broke, and those daughters of his did not take a shine to me. Nor I to them. I did, alas, make the error of confessing to that devious little couturière, Madame Fayette, that I was not truly a marquise, and that I had a daughter in the corps de ballet at the opera house, for which I paid a pretty price.”
“Your diamond bracelet.”
“My, you’ve been busy, Ophelia. Yes. At any rate, playing at marquise provided me with a splendid vantage point to scout out new opportunities.”
“Is that where you’ve been for the last week and a half? Scouting a new opportunity?”
“Well, it didn’t start out that way. I was simply visiting my dear friend, the authoress Artemis Stunt, at her château in Champagne.”
Artemis Stunt? Now why did that . . . ? “Did Artemis Stunt happen to pen a book entitled How to Address Your Betters?” Ophelia asked.
“Ingratiating drivel, but she’s earning buckets from it.”
“And do Artemis’s friends call her Arty?”
“Yes. But more important . . . we were in Champagne, darling. Do you understand what they’ve got locked up in their cellars? Champagne as far as the eye can see! It’s like paradise. It just so happened that Artemis’s new husband—some old Frenchman who looks like a scarecrow—had a gentleman friend—”
“All right,” Ophelia said. She could guess the rest. “Back up a little. What about the lawyer, Monsieur Cherrien?”
A crease appeared between Henrietta’s eyebrows. “How do you know of him?”
“You are his client? But surely not for divorce—”
“Obviously not. I shall tell you, but you must keep mum. Promise?”
Ophelia crossed her fingers. “Promise.”
“Cherrien wrote me, out of the blue, three or four months ago, and offered to pay a staggering sum for an ugly diamond stomacher kept in Malbert’s bank box.”
“You sold it to the lawyer?”
“It’s a hideous thing, Ophelia. Only grannies would wear it.”
If only that were true.
“The sum from Cherrien has tided me over quite nicely, since Malbert cannot afford me. Cherrien wrote to me last week and asked if there were any other antique items I would be willing to sell. It seems his client is excessively interested in the Roque-Fabliau estate. Inexplicably, of course. Those mice! All the droppings.”
That explained the half-burned envelope Ophelia had found in Henrietta’s grate. But Ophelia wouldn’t tell Henrietta just yet that Prince Rupprecht was Cherrien’s client. She didn’t wish to stem the flow of Henrietta’s confessions.
“I’m done with Malbert,” Henrietta said. “And selling off one piece of jewelry seemed my due. But two?”
“Malbert thinks you’re dead, you know.”
“But I told him, and his two ugly daughters, that I was going to Champagne. Or, I told the daughters. Perhaps they forgot to tell Malbert.”
“Forgot? No. They’ve been keeping it a secret.” One of the stepsisters must have removed Artemis Stunt’s book from Henrietta’s dressing table. They must have feared that if Ophelia or Prue saw the book, they might deduce where Henrietta was. “Why would Eglantine and Austorga neglect to tell Malbert where you’d gone?”
“Isn’t it obvious? They didn’t wish for me to come back.”
* * *
“I’m mighty thirsty,” Prue said to Dalziel. She’d polished off the entire roast fowl that a footman had wheeled into the guest chamber, along with a dish of the most luscious gravy. But the gravy had been as salty as the seven seas, and now she was absolutely parched. She eyed the turtle’s swimming basin. Fresh water in there . . . no. She just couldn’t.
“Take a glass of wine,” Dalziel said.
“Can’t. I’ve got my big performance coming up. Won’t you get me a cup of water from somewhere? How about a whole pitcher? Maybe with some ice?”
“Your wish is my command, Miss Prudence.” Dalziel headed for the door.
“Don’t be too long,” Prue called after him. “It’s fifteen minutes till midnight.”
Once Dalziel was gone, Prue changed out of the nun’s habit and into her costume. It was tight in the waist, and since it was a ballet costume it exposed her bare feet and ankles. Luckily, Prue wasn’t shy about her ankles.
A knock on the door. Dalziel was back already?
She swung the door open. No one was there. The long corridor, with its painted panels and elephant-sized furniture, was empty.
She was shutting the door when she saw a blue brocade pillow with tassels on the corners and a pair of sparkling shoes sitting on top.
“Hello?” she called down the corridor.
No answer.
Prue broke into a smile. Dalziel. He felt bad about her not having shoes for the ball. These were a little gift from him. She leaned over and wiggled her right foot into a slipper. It was awfully tight, but by golly was it pretty, with clear glass beads stitched all over in a flowery design. She had to cram her toes into the ends and then hook her finger around back like a shoehorn—but she got it in. Same with the left one.
Ouch.
She hobbled back into the chamber. The door had almost fallen shut when she heard a wheezing sound.
Her ticker gave up for a few beats.
Slowly, she pushed the door back open and stuck her head out.
“Cendrillon!” Lady Cruthlach said. “You naughty, naughty girl. You will be late for the ball! The prince awaits.”
Prue took a step back. “Prince Rupprecht?”
“Whoever he is.” Lady Cruthlach’s face had more color than the last time Prue had seen her. She wore a small, pointy black hat, a lavender cape, and she held some kind of stick. A . . . wand? “It does not matter. The important thing is that the story continues without error.”
“What story, ma’am?”
“The Cinderella story! Don’t you know who you are, girl?”
“I sure do, but it seems like you don’t.” Prue moved to shut the door. Instead, it burst open and Hume shoved in, reaching out for Prue.
Prue dodged him and dashed across the chamber. Hume trundled after her.
“Hume shan’t allow you to miss the ball, my lovely,” Lady Cruthlach called.
Prue made it to the fireplace. She snatched up a brass coal shovel from a rack, and the rack crashed to the floor. She lifted the shovel high.
Hume smiled. One of his front teeth was miss
ing.
He didn’t think she was going to do it. “This is for all them kidnappings, you ogre!” Prue yelled. She took a mighty swing and smashed Hume across the side of his head with the shovel—clang.
To her amazement, he thunked to the floor.
“Oh!” Prue dropped beside him. Thank goodness. He was still breathing. She scrambled to her feet, tottered across the chamber, and pushed past Lady Cruthlach in the doorway.
“Cinderella did not do that,” Lady Cruthlach said.
“Who cares, you old bat?” Prue set off down the corridor. There went that wheezing again, and a creaking-basket sound. Prue stole a look over her shoulder.
Lord Cruthlach bore down on her in a wicker wheelchair. He was just as scrawny as ever but his eyes had life in them now, and he spun the wheels with gusto. Lady Cruthlach wasn’t far behind. Her little pointed hat hung on the side of her head, and her eyes looked mean.
Prue ran as fast as the tight, glass-beaded slippers could go.
* * *
At two minutes till midnight, the orchestra finished playing and shuffled offstage. The crowd watched and whispered as footmen cleared the dais of the musicians’ chairs and stands. Fans flicked. Ladies giggled nervously.
Prince Rupprecht strode up onto the dais in his white evening jacket, crimson sash, golden epaulets, and medals.
Ophelia’s palms sweated. Would her plan work?
Prince Rupprecht began a speech in French, and Griffe whispered a translation in Ophelia’s ear.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Prince Rupprecht said, “at last the moment has arrived that we have all been anxiously awaiting. The moment when I, Prince Rupprecht of Slavonia, announce the identity of my cherished, my love, and, yes, my intended.”
Feminine yelps rang out. A glass splintered somewhere.
“At the stroke of midnight,” Prince Rupprecht said, “I shall identify my cherished one, the only lady of flawless beauty, the only lady with a foot small enough to fit”— he extracted a tiny, shining shoe from his pocket—“this glass slipper.”
The crowd erupted like a tree full of chickadees.
“Silence!” Prince Rupprecht boomed.
The crowd hushed.
“At the stroke of midnight, I shall fit this dainty slipper to my darling . . . Cinderella.”
Ophelia craned her neck to see the huge golden clock on the wall. One more minute.
“Are you well?” Griffe whispered.
Ophelia nodded. She looked back to the dais and saw Colifichet standing up close, narrow arms folded, smug.
The crowd babbled. Ophelia stood on tiptoe to see a footman pushing something up a ramp and onto the dais. Shrouded in a white sheet, it glided as though on wheels.
“She arrives,” Prince Rupprecht said, watching the thing approach with a look of boyish anticipation.
It couldn’t be.
The footman parked the thing beside the prince. Then he bowed to his master and whipped off the sheet.
The crowd gasped.
Standing beside the prince was a beautiful automaton in a sumptuous gown of ivory tulle, embroidered all over with gold and silver threads. The Cinderella gown, except it didn’t have a stomacher. The waist was plain ivory silk. The automaton’s hair was heaped upon its head in a profusion of shining, diamond-studded cornsilk that looked too heavy to be supported by such a slender neck. Its demure lips and alabaster arms curved in permanent perfection.
“He means to marry a doll?” Ophelia whispered. “An enormous doll?”
Prince Rupprecht caressed the side of the automaton’s neck. He must’ve touched some kind of spring, because it jolted into motion. It gracefully moved its head on its filigree neck. One hand lifted to touch its throat in a maidenly gesture of surprise, and back again.
The crowd was having forty fits, but Prince Rupprecht seemed to be deaf and blind to his guests. He knelt before the automaton. He gazed up at it, still holding the glass slipper.
“He truly seems . . . jumpy,” Ophelia said. “As though it were a real lady who might turn him down.”
“I always suspected it would come to something like this with him,” Griffe said. “He is not right in the head.”
There was a delicate chime, and then another and another. The crowd fell silent.
The clock was striking midnight.
Where was Prue?
Just as the clock chimed twelve, the automaton kicked out a bare foot from under its tulle hem. Prince Rupprecht attempted to place the slipper onto the foot. He wiggled and shoved, but he could not get it on. All the while, the automaton went on swiveling its head and touching its throat. The prince leapt to his feet, cursing and ranting in French.
“What’s he saying?” Ophelia asked Griffe.
“He asks if this is a joke. He demands to know who has tampered with his Cendrillon and replaced her foot with a larger one. He says someone will be punished.”
Someone had replaced the automaton’s foot? Yes. The feet in Malbert’s workshop cupboard must have been the automaton’s original feet. But how had they come to be in that brining vat?
Prince Rupprecht yelled and pointed at someone standing to the side of the dais.
“He says, ‘You! You destroyed her, you ditch rat!’” Griffe said.
“Who?” Ophelia struggled to see. Her breath caught.
Prince Rupprecht was pointing at Pierre, Colifichet’s apprentice.
32
Gabriel stood in a doorway to the side of the dais only a few yards away from Pierre. Where were Inspector Foucher and his men? Gabriel had received word that they were on their way from Paris, but he had not seen them yet.
Pierre had appeared downtrodden and flimsy the few times Gabriel had seen him before. Now he exuded a vicious power.
“Yes,” Pierre said in loud, clear French, addressing the shushing crowd as well as Prince Rupprecht. “It was I who altered your automaton.”
“You replaced her foot with another!” Prince Rupprecht yelled. “A large, ugly foot, like any ordinary woman’s. You destroyed her—her perfection!”
“No lady is perfect,” Pierre said. “Not even a clockwork lady, it seems. You thought you would destroy my sister for her imperfections, did you?”
Sister?
Understanding hit Gabriel. It hadn’t been Lord and Lady Cruthlach on the lake. It had been Pierre—slightly built, vengeful Pierre. But who was his sister? Surely not Sybille.
“You thought,” Pierre said, stalking forward, “you would not pay the price for sullying my sister, for discarding her like a soiled rag? No, altering this automaton was only a little joke, Prince. Only the beginning of what we have in store for you.”
The two men locked eyes, Prince Rupprecht large, opulent, and looking like he was about to erupt, Pierre cool and crackling with hatred.
Where was Miss Bright? Had she forgotten her role? Because an entrance on her part at this moment would be theatrical indeed.
The crowd parted for a figure barging towards the dais. Not Prue, but Miss Austorga in a puffy, pollen-yellow gown. She hitched her skirts and tromped up the dais steps. Redness mottled her upper lip, complexion spots dotted her forehead, and she was out of breath. “You say, Prince Rupprecht, that your intended, your bride, your true love, is the only one in the world who would fit that slipper?”
“Yes,” Prince Rupprecht said with a scornful glance.
“And you promise to marry she who fits the slipper?”
“That was the idea, yes. But it has been ruined, and I—”
“But do you promise?”
“If her foot had been small enough, then yes, I would have promised to marry she of the tiny foot. But this grotesque thing”—Prince Rupprecht sneered at the automaton—“is imperfect.”
Austorga dragged one of the musician’s chairs to the center of the dais. Sh
e plopped herself in the seat, skirts puffing like a cheese soufflé, and pried off one of her slippers. She thrust out her foot. “I am ready.”
“You cannot be serious,” Prince Rupprecht said. He addressed the sea of faces. “This creature?”
“Her foot appears to be quite dainty,” a gentleman near the dais said. “Why do you not make an attempt?”
“Try,” another gentleman said. Then the whole crowd was urging him on.
Prince Rupprecht shook his head with disgust. He bent before Austorga and affixed the glass slipper to her foot. It slid on neatly.
The crowd cheered.
Prince Rupprecht’s jaw went slack.
Lord Cruthlach, in a wheelchair, rolled up beside Gabriel. He was wheezing for breath. Lady Cruthlach, also wheezing, emerged beside her husband.
What had they been doing? Playing badminton?
“Where is she?” Lady Cruthlach whispered. “I cannot see her.”
On the dais, Prince Rupprecht looked ill. Austorga looked like she’d just broken the bank at Monte Carlo.
* * *
The gas chandeliers sank to blackness. The only light came from paper lanterns on the terrace outside. For a moment, Ophelia was blind. Ladies yipped. Gentlemen made indignant noises.
A lady screamed, “Un fantôme!”
A lone figure stood outside on the terrace, staring through an open door. A young, fair-haired girl, lovely to see in her ivory tulle gown that seemed to shimmer with stars. But there was something wrong, very wrong, with her chest: her ivory bodice had a dark stain around a small, black hole.
The girl’s face was expressionless. Slowly, she lifted a bare arm and pointed at Prince Rupprecht.
“Sybille?” the prince croaked. “Mon Dieu, Sybille!” His eyes were wild as he clung to Austorga’s arm for support.
He’d fallen for it. “Translate for me,” Ophelia whispered to Griffe. He nodded.
“I beg of you, have mercy,” Prince Rupprecht said to the apparition. “I did not mean for it to—oh, Sybille, your grave is too fresh!”
The apparition did not move.
“You know that it was not I who pulled the trigger!” Prince Rupprecht said. “I only meant to lift you up from misery, to bring your beauty into the light, to polish it. I did not intend for you to—mon Dieu, say something, Sybille!”