The Reluctant Godfather

by Allison Tebo

  Ella was an easy mark for peddlers, since she adored anything new. Burndee never even had to regale her with any details about a product he was allegedly selling. He could dourly point out everything wrong with an item, and that would be the one that Ella would buy. It was as if she felt sorry even for breadboards and pepper grinders and wanted them to have confidence in their abilities. Burndee hated that she did that.

  “Here, let me have that.” He grabbed the carpet beater from her and attacked the carpet hanging in the courtyard with such a vengeance that he was in danger of splitting it in two.

  “I don’t know why you always take the time to help me,” Ella said gratefully, before coughing raucously on a cloud of dust.

  “Me either,” Burndee muttered, but not so she could hear.

  “I think that’s good enough,” Ella said loudly. “Um . . . you’d better stop. It’s . . .” She cleared her throat delicately. “It’s rather old.”

  Burndee stopped beating the carpet and eyed it critically. In his opinion, everything in this place was falling apart, including Ella. But every item here—not to mention Ella—could have all been replaced long ago if the Hall hadn’t been taken over by tyrants.

  “Where are . . . they?” Burndee asked as he pulled the carpet off the line and walked with Ella across the courtyard.

  “They?” Ella asked in confusion.

  Burndee sighed. “Your stepfamily.”

  “Oh, they’re in Glendale visiting Cynthia. She’s my other stepsister, you know. I don’t think you’ve ever met her, Burndee. She left the Hall shortly after my . . . my father passed away.”

  Burndee looked down and busied himself adjusting the carpet that sagged in his arms, trying to give her some privacy. They walked down the steps that curved around the outside wall of the main hall and moved down into the sunken walkway that led to the servants’ entrance.

  “She’s a nice girl,” Ella said finally, with a touch of wistfulness.

  Burndee made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat.

  Ella said hastily, “Oh, she’s not at all like . . . Portia and Stepmother.”

  Strong words coming from Ella. That was the closest she ever came to criticizing Portia and Countess de Ghent or admitting that their behavior was less than acceptable.

  “You sound as if you’d like to see her,” Burndee observed.

  Ella opened a small door for him in the outer wall of de Ghent Hall and stepped after him into the narrow passage of the west wing. “Well . . . yes,” she mumbled. She took one end of the carpet from him and backed down the length of the hallway, helping him spread the carpet flat on the floor.

  “Why didn’t you insist on going?” Burndee asked as he clambered up off the floor.

  Ella shrugged.

  Burndee’s agile brain connected several unspoken thoughts. “Wait a minute. I’ll wager I know what happened. They always meet Cynthia somewhere other than de Ghent Hall or Andvar so that she doesn’t find out how they’re treating you or how the Hall has fallen to rack and ruin. And by meeting her in Glendale, no local character will be able to tell Cynthia the truth. They probably used to take you along with them, all dressed up like Portia so that Cynthia thought you were being treated the same as her sister. Doubtless your stepmother ordered you to keep up the charade or suffer the consequences. Then, one day you felt too guilty about “lying”and refused to play the part anymore, no matter what de Ghent did to you. So, they’ve made up some ridiculous excuse about your being sick or something to explain why you aren’t there to see Cynthia today.”

  Ella gaped at him. “How did you know?” She snapped her jaw closed with a confused grimace, as if she thought she might have revealed too much or accidentally tarnished someone’s character by her admission.

  “Ella,” Burndee groaned. “Why didn’t you tell Cynthia the truth? If she’s really such a great egg, she could help you.”

  Ella ducked her head. “But I don’t need help.”

  Burndee was so dumbfounded he was rendered temporarily speechless.

  Ella opened the door to the kitchen and stepped into the stone room that still bore a facsimile of warmth and color, despite the cold masonry. The Hall’s kitchen was largely Ella’s domain, and it bore her personal mark in the well-waxed, honey-colored tables and the bright copper pots shining from the roof amidst bunches of dried herbs. There were flowers everywhere, and a tall hutch was bursting with jars of Ella’s exceptional homemade jam—a row of dark gems. And tucked up on top of the hutch, nestled amidst white and blue crockery, was Ella’s old childhood doll with her tufted head of faded yarn.

  Burndee studied the kitchen and sniffed critically at several bubbling pots sitting on the stove, while Ella reached for an apron.

  “Cynthia absolutely must focus on her studies,” she resumed their earlier thread of conversation as she slipped the apron around her waist. “You should meet her, Burndee. She’s so smart! She’s even smarter than you, I believe.”

  Burndee was sure Ella had meant it as a compliment, but she had inadvertently insulted him. The very idea that a de Ghent would be smarter than him . . .

  “Most of our money must go to Cynthia’s education . . . it’s important that she finish college.” She saw that Burndee was about to challenge her again and added, “There would be no point in sending me to college . . . I’m not very bright.”

  He wasn’t arguing that fact, but it was beside the point.

  “And Cynthia has to look nice. It’s a very fashionable college. And then there’s Portia’s coming-out party, and Stepmother hasn’t been feeling well, and she keeps sending off for special medicines that are quite expensive.”

  Burndee could just guess what those medicines really were. Probably chocolate. Countess de Ghent certainly did not appear to be fading away.

  “What about you, Ella?” Burndee demanded. “What about your education, your clothes, your health?”

  Ella averted her eyes. “Well, they’re not important.”

  Right again, but that was still beside the point.

  Ella blundered on when Burndee kept staring at her. “I’m not smart. I’m not pretty. But I’m strong . . . so of course I have to help the others.”

  She had actually swallowed all the lies that old bat of a stepmother fed her. Speechless, Burndee grabbed an apron and slipped it over his head, savagely tying a bow around his middle.

  “Are you baking for us?” Ella asked. “You don’t have to, you know.”

  Burndee shrugged. As much as it pained him to think that one of his creations would be eaten by the pigs that lived here, baking was the only way he could take out his frustration—and besides, it helped Ella. He always tried to ensure that the two of them feasted on the best while the stepfamily got the leftovers.

  Ella watched him expertly mix ingredients together as she began to knead bread dough that had been left to rise on the worktable. “It must be nice to be so talented.”

  “It is,” said Burndee bluntly and racked his brain for a response—something like telling her she was talented at something . . . but what? “You’re . . . talented, too.”

  Ella smiled as if she didn’t believe him, and bent her head over her task.

  Burndee stirred furiously. His talents didn’t lie in the area of compliments. In his opinion, dreaming up compliments was a useless tax on brain power. “Er . . . I can’t . . .” He coughed. This wasn’t an easy admission. “I can’t . . . make bread as good as yours.”

  “You can’t?” Ella asked, sounding pleased.

  Burndee nodded briefly. “Your bread is . . . neat.” There—he had said it, and he wasn’t going to say a word more. He wasn’t about to admit that her bread was the only decent bread in the kingdom. He didn’t want her getting a big head; her brains would get lost.

  “Thank you,” said Ella with a smile. “I do like making bread . . . but my pastries and cakes can’t hold a candle to yours.”

  Burndee grunted, ready to stop trading niceties. He went t
o the cupboard to find a cake pan.

  Fortunately, Ella seemed content to focus on her work, singing softly as she kneaded—some mawkish but crowd-pleasing little ditty about love.

  He supposed other humans would find Ella’s incessant cheerfulness appealing. They would probably find her perpetual singing soothing . . . and if he hadn’t had such a highly attuned ear, he might have been able to agree with them. He turned to watch her and saw that her fair hair was falling loosely around a face that was growing pink from exertion. She was a pretty little thing, but she was dumb as a hammer.

  I don’t need help. . . If ever a human needed help, it was Ella. How did the girl even dress herself every morning?

  Burndee finally located a cake pan and slammed the cupboard shut before stomping back to the worktable. His frustration mounted until he felt his pulse beginning to pound in his ears. Didn’t the girl have any backbone at all? Why didn’t she just stand up for herself? If she would just do what any normal person would do, he wouldn’t have to be here making one of his prize-winning cakes for a pack of jackanapes. How could Ella stand to cook for them every morning? Clean up after them?

  He sprinkled the cake pan with flour. He was going to explode if he didn’t start talking. The conversation would play out exactly as it had every time, but like the fool that he was, he couldn’t stop himself from bursting out indignantly, “Why? Why do you do it, Ella?”

  She looked up, and for once, he didn’t have to spell anything out for her. Her gaze was clear but oddly gray as she said quietly, “Someone has to.”

  “They could have hired someone to help out years ago, if they hadn’t been so cheap,” Burndee protested. “And now that they’ve squandered your father’s money away, they could at least split the chores fairly. Don’t you realize they’re taking advantage of you? Can’t you understand that? Just answer my question—why do you do it?”

  Ella bit her lip as she set down her dough and turned her attention to a butter churn. “I do it because . . .” Her face twisted for a moment, and pain swept into her eyes.

  Burndee immediately turned his back. He wanted to stay mad at her.

  “Because I’m trying to be loving towards them,” she whispered.

  “They don’t deserve it,” he said decidedly.

  “Well . . .” Ella swallowed audibly. “No one deserves it.”

  You do, Burndee thought and then looked around as if the idea had come from someplace else. Perhaps it had. He glanced over at the tiny hands working doggedly at the churn and felt a surge of irritation. “You’re too small to be doing such hard labor.”

  Ella shook her head. “I’m stronger than I look.”

  Burndee sniffed. “You’ll be worn out before you’re twenty-five. You might even be dead.” Such a possibility had never occurred to him before. He stopped pouring batter into the cake pan as he queasily attempted to wrap his mind around such an image. He might not want to be a fairy godparent, but he certainly didn’t want to lose the wards he had by having them die off—especially if it was due to his own negligence. He knew he was an unpleasant person, but he wasn’t that unpleasant.

  In that moment, he finally struck upon the identity of one of the strange feelings that always came over him at de Ghent Hall: being around Ella always made him feel guilty.

  His job was so frustrating. As far as he could see, there was no way he could practically help his charge. His ideas of vaporizing de Ghent and her daughters had been sternly discouraged by the Fairy Council. What else could he do besides that?

  He snuck the coins that Ella paid for his idiotic contraptions back into her money box. Poor Ella had never been good with figures and never knew the difference. For once, her dimwittedness was a mercy, because the few times she had realized there was some kind of discrepancy, she invariably gave the “extra” money to Countess de Ghent. Any other items Burndee smuggled to Ella were almost always confiscated by the Old Dragon as well.

  He studied Ella out of the corner of his eye as she tapped her nose in thought, leaving a smudge of flour behind. Unbidden, the memory of last winter’s debacle came rushing into his mind—when he had arrived at the Hall one morning and found Ella looking so frail, he had marched her to the best inn in town and stuffed her with food. Unfortunately, Ella seemed to be under the impression that it was some kind of prelude to courtship. That would have been bad enough, but as a final blow, some black-hearted villager had reported to Countess de Ghent that Ella had been “cavorting in town with a strange man,” and de Ghent had had Ella beaten in punishment.

  Burndee flinched and mechanically mixed sugar and milk together in another bowl for icing as the horrid memory prodded him, like a finger poking at the old wound. It wasn’t often that he had good intentions, and it had been disheartening and mortifying to have the few times he had tried to help backfire so terribly. He had relived that last mistake many times, going over all the ways he could have actually helped Ella instead of getting her whipped. He could have taken her on a remote picnic or simply cooked dinner for her at the Hall, but no—he had taken her out in public for a bunch of scoundrels to spy on.

  He had tried to quit that day. Everything he did to help people failed, and he was certain he could only make his wards’ situations worse. Fey had sternly informed him that a fairy godparent couldn’t make a mistake like that with his or her ward and then walk away. That would be the worst form of cowardice. Burndee simply had to learn how to truly help humans.

  That day had been, without question, the worst day of his life.

  A knock suddenly drew Burndee’s attention from his disagreeable memories. He grated lemon peel absently into the bowl of icing as Ella went to the door and pulled it open.

  A messenger in royal livery gazed at her glumly. “No one answered the front door.”

  “I’m sorry!” Ella smiled apologetically. “I couldn’t hear the bell from here.”

  “You ought to have a doorman,” the messenger said severely, looking around the room with a critical eye. “I would think a place like this would warrant a doorman, though I see you’ve fallen on hard times.”

  “Not that it’s any of your business!” Burndee yelled, before sticking his head into a cupboard to fish for a jar of cinnamon that had been shoved back into the cobwebby corner of the cabinet.

  There was a short silence and then the messenger remarked, “You might want to find a new cook while you’re at it.”

  Burndee emerged from the cabinet, about to say something sharp, but the messenger cut him off.

  “Here.” The man thrust an envelope at Ella. “A message for Countess de Ghent and her family. By official decree, all the eligible maidens in the city are to attend the royal ball being held tonight in Prince Colin’s honor.”

  Ella peered at the envelope. “Tonight? Isn’t this short notice?”

  “The palace has plenty of good staff.” The messenger gave Burndee and Ella a look and raised an eyebrow in silent judgment.

  Ella put the envelope into her apron pocket. “That will be an awful lot of work for those poor servants.”

  “They’re paid,” the messenger said dismissively.

  Burndee looked at Ella pointedly, wanting her to note that every servant in the kingdom was treated better than her. She didn’t seem to make the connection.

  “You be sure to give that to your mistress,” said the messenger, turning away. “Good afternoon.”

  “Her stepmother,” Burndee said bitterly as they were left alone again. “Or is she your mistress, Ella?”

  Ella gave him such a wounded expression that he wished he could have bit off his tongue. Feeling like he had just whipped a puppy, he slunk back to his worktable and sprinkled cinnamon into his cake batter. He heard a crinkle of paper as Ella fished the invitation out of her pocket and turned it over in her hand.

  “A royal ball,” she murmured. “That would be nice. I wish . . . I could go.”

  Burndee froze in mid-sprinkle. Just like that, all the pieces snapped tog
ether in his mind. This must be what brilliance felt like. Let Fey scold him when she heard this plan. He had just struck upon the ultimate idea to bring happiness to two separate people with the smallest amount of effort.

  He would send Ella to the ball and throw her at Colin. Surely it would be impossible for any mortal man not to fall for such a good-natured, good-looking girl. The two of them would fall in love, Colin could finally act like a man—with a little help from Burndee—and rescue the girl of his dreams from her dreadful circumstances and deal with de Ghent and her daughters once and for all. Colin would be happy, Ella would be happy, King Alfred would be happy, Fey and the Council would be happy, and, most importantly, Burndee would be happy.

  Why, if everything went smoothly, Colin and Ella could be living happily ever after within a matter of days. He would be killing two birds with one stone—and good riddance to them.

  Burndee felt a huge grin wrapping around his face as he popped his cake into the oven and licked batter contentedly from his fingers. He would have his cake and eat it too.

  3

  A fter he left Ella, Burndee returned to his work in the palace kitchens. He was so preoccupied with his brilliant solution—and so busy mentally congratulating himself and chuckling out loud—that he burned a layer cake intended for the ball.

  The head cook was furious and would have thrown him out if Burndee had been less talented—proof, in Burndee’s mind, that attitude didn’t matter so long as one was invaluable. He was directed to start over, and he applied himself to holding his tongue and keeping his mind firmly on the task at hand as he aided the royal kitchens in creating a menu that would bring the countryside to its knees in epicurean reverence.

  Time usually seemed to fly when he was baking, but today it felt like the sun was dragging, deliberately slowing its descent as the much-anticipated evening approached. Finally, he was dismissed from his duties and was able to escape, leaving a busy and increasingly festive beehive of activity behind him.

  He found an old bakery and made himself comfortable at the small bench in front of the establishment, sipping coffee and sampling the food to see if the baker could even come close to surpassing Burndee’s own skill with cinnamon buns. He couldn’t. While the shop’s appearance was charming, the food left something to be desired, and Burndee wasn’t at all surprised that the bakery was for sale.