The Cracked Slipper

by Stephanie Alexander

  Imogene buried her face in her hands. “And your father died a week later. I had the estate to keep us fed. A roof over our heads. I was free.”

  For a moment Eleanor thought of taking Imogene’s hands. I understand, Mother Imogene. I can’t have the man I love, either. I know how it feels to be trapped. Oh, I do understand.

  But Imogene looked up. “You did this to me. It’s your fault he’s gone, you and your blabbering mouth. And still, I couldn’t get rid of you. You were too much like me…a mother-killing, cursed child. A child who spoke out…like I did, when I was young. Robin loved that about me…” She paused, and seemed to wait for the pain to pass before continuing. “I couldn’t send you into the streets. Even with a voice that took from me the only person who ever made me happy. But you wouldn’t bend. Wouldn’t become manageable. And then you stole the only dream I had left. A crown for my beautiful, exquisite daughter. I have no more pity for you, Eleanor Brice.”

  So the lines remained drawn. There would be no reconciliation between the two women, shared heartache or not. “I’ve never sought your pity, as I never sought to cause you pain,” Eleanor said. “Nor will I ever, as long as I draw breath, forget your treachery against the crown.”

  “You can’t threaten me,” Imogene whispered. “My daughter is the Duchess of Harveston.”

  “And I’m the future queen of Cartheigh. You shaped that naïve girl who stumbled into the palace. You don’t realize you also helped me put her to rest.” Eleanor curtsied. “Good day, madam.”

  Eleanor stirred when his hand ran up her hip. She had fallen asleep quickly after Leticia finished nursing, and she was bone tired. She shifted against him, feeling his body wrap around her, and she sighed, half asleep. She felt dimly powerful that even in her body’s new baby daze she could feel his arousal, hard against her back. He cupped her swollen breast and kissed her neck, just like he had at Rabbit’s Rest.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said.

  She rolled toward him, a sleepy smile on her face.

  “And I you,” she said, but when she opened her own eyes the ones that looked back at her were brown, not pale green.

  She took a deep breath. Gregory leaned in and kissed her. His is tongue slid into her mouth. She turned her head.

  “Gregory, I can’t, not yet. It’s too soon after the baby.”

  “I know,” he said. He groped her breast again and it was no longer pleasant. He slid his hand down her flaccid belly. She grabbed it before it could go any further.

  “Eleanor, please,” he went on. “I promise I won’t take it too far. Just let me touch you. It’s been torture.”

  She didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or hit him. This is part of it, she thought, part of returning to Eclatant.

  Maybe, but it wouldn’t be the same. Not after Rabbit’s Rest. Nothing would be the same. She smiled sweetly at Gregory, and kissed him back, before turning away from him and letting him continue his exploration.

  “Please don’t wake Ticia,” she whispered. The baby slept in her cradle beside the bed. The purple rabbit watched over her.

  “I’ll try.” She knew that gruff tone in his voice. This shouldn’t take long.

  Any guilt she had left floated up the chimney and dissipated into the night. She closed her eyes and thought only of Dorian’s promise.

  Before Ticia was a month old Gregory spoke of packing for Solsea. He suggested she leave the baby behind with a wet nurse, but Eleanor flatly refused. Just because most ladies at court abandoned their children to an army of servants didn’t mean she would. Her resistance irritated Gregory, but once she promised the baby’s care would not get in the way of her being on his arm he acquiesced. She would bring along the obligatory wet nurse, and a nanny, and as many of her best dresses as she could fit into. So began the delicate balance of so many mothers, the divvying of attention between children and husband. In Eleanor’s case, she added a third. She and Dorian had both stepped back, afraid of giving themselves away, trying to figure out this new dynamic, but she had no doubt they would. She was more secure in his love than she had ever been in her husband’s.

  At least Gregory was enamored of Ticia. He held her while she napped. He made ridiculous faces at her. He even changed her diaper on one memorable occasion. Eleanor laughed until tears streamed down her face when he held the baby up to show off his efforts. The diaper promptly slid off, and Ticia just as promptly piddled on her father.

  “I will give you ladies credit. There are some skills I cannot master,” he said, and excused himself.

  Eleanor invited Rosemary and Mercy Leigh to Eclatant for a picnic the day before they left for Solsea. Both women were visibly distressed.

  “Are you sure you can’t leave Ticia here?” asked Rosemary. “She’ll be near grown by the time you return.”

  “It’s so far,” said Mercy Leigh. “What if she gets sick?”

  “It’s only for two months this year,” said Eleanor, “and there are witches in Solsea, Mercy Leigh, even if they lack your skill.”

  “Country bumpkins,” said Mercy Leigh.

  “Mercy,” said Eleanor, “how unlike you. Come now, you don’t really want me to leave her, do you? Would you have me follow the same philosophy of mothering as Sylvia?”

  “Of course not,” said Rosemary. “We will miss you, that’s all.”

  Anne Iris sat on the blanket. “Don’t worry, Rosemary. Margaret and I will not let Eleanor neglect her child.”

  Margaret joined them. “Anne Iris will have plenty of time to watch Ticia when she’s not drinking wine and chasing marriage prospects.”

  “You know,” said Anne Iris. “Eliza wrote and said Frederick Harper is no longer engaged! Yes, he called it off. Just wait until he sees me in that blue gown…”

  Eleanor laughed, anticipating the trysts her friends would get into along the cliffs. She herself looked forward to dancing off the last of her baby chubbiness. It would be good to be back at Trill Castle.

  Dorian left Gregory and the other men at lawn bolls and sat beside her. Chou Chou dropped from an overhanging branch like a falling apple and lit on his head. Dorian absently put a hand to his hair and Chou crept down his arm. The parrot nibbled at the brown leather glove Dorian wore to cover his missing finger.

  “It’s hot,” Dorian said. “I could do with some cliff breezes.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing.”

  “Indeed, the salt air does wonders for my complexion,” said Chou. He hopped onto the blanket.

  Dorian reached out for Ticia and Eleanor handed her over. His big hands cradled the baby’s tiny head. She cooed when Dorian blew on her nose.

  “Dorian!” Gregory called. “Where’s the whiskey?”

  Dorian gingerly returned Ticia to Eleanor. His hand brushed hers, as if by accident. She admired the length of his stride as he ambled across the playing field. He passed the whiskey to Gregory’s manservant, took a ball from Brian, and gave it a lazy toss. It rolled across the lawn and gently tapped the target.

  “You bastard!” said Gregory. “Everything you touch turns to gold.” He draped an arm around Dorian and lifted his shot glass. “To Mister Finley, the luckiest man my kingdom.” The other players laughed and joined his toast.

  You will be fortunate in love.

  Eleanor kissed the redheaded child in her arms. The game played on.

  What happens next?

  Turn the page to read the first chapters of

  The Dragon Choker

  CHAPTER 1

  Come What May

  Eleanor Brice Desmarais did not often pass an afternoon mucking out stalls. She had no aversion to hard work. Eight years of living under her stepmother’s roof as the maid in her father’s house had left her accustomed to the aches that came along with a vigorous day’s labor, but all that was nearly two years behind her. It was hardly becoming for the wife of the Crown Prince of Cartheigh to haul hay bales and wield a shovel, even if her hauling and shoveling benefitted not a mere cow o
r horse, but a unicorn.

  The unicorn in question peered into the stall. Her white mane fell over the edge of the half door leading to the paddock. “This is unnecessary,” Teardrop said. “Let me call the groom.”

  Eleanor shook her head. The grooms had lingered, embarrassed and confused, until she snapped at them to take their leave. Her own rudeness irritated her. As one who had spent much of her life in servant’s shoes, she always treated the help with respect.

  “I agree with Teardrop,” said her parrot, Chou Chou, from his perch above her head in the rafters. “It’s frightfully warm. You might expire.”

  “Hush, Chou,” said Eleanor. “I’d rather be out here in pants than inside in a petticoat and corset.”

  “Why don’t we take a ride?” asked Teardrop. “We could visit the beach at Porcupine Bay.”

  “No,” said Eleanor. The thought of Porcupine Bay brought memories of his pale eyes reflecting the sky. She attacked the hay with her pitchfork.

  Three festive weeks had passed in the resort town of Solsea, full of the usual summer diversions: parties, tournaments, picnics, hunts. At every event Eleanor stood beside her husband, Prince Gregory, smiling and laughing and dying inside. Only her newborn daughter, Leticia, brought her any real happiness.

  Leticia was over two months old. Two months since she was accused of the theft of an enchanted national treasure and her husband abandoned her. Since she’d exposed Ezra Oliver, the king’s chief magician, as the true culprit, and sent him into magical oblivion.

  Two months since Dorian Finley had sworn he would find a way to love her.

  Eleanor knew one false move on her part or Dorian’s would send them both to the scaffold. Gregory was the heir to the throne, the keeper of the Great Bond. The living legacy of three hundred years of good fortune wrought by a mystical synergy between unicorns, dragons, and the Desmarais family. He would hardly suffer an affair between his wife and his best friend. Eleanor and Dorian had not spoken more than pleasantries since their last night together during her exile at Rabbit’s Rest Lodge.

  The misery of their separation in plain sight finally drove her to the physical exertion of cleaning the unicorn barn. An ocean breeze drifted over the cliffside and across the rolling grounds of the royal compound, Trill Castle, but it stopped short against the walls of Willowswatch Cottage. The modest moniker belied the mansion’s heft. Its Fire-iron and granite walls blocked any hint of moving air that might have found its way to her sweaty forehead. The unicorn barn, with its stone facade and dazzlingly white interior, was cheery, but a stable is a stable. Wide un-paned windows let in both sunlight and flies, the latter of which buzzed Eleanor’s face. Heat bore down on her from all sides. She ignored the headache pounding behind her eyes. She’d barely managed a full meal a day the past few weeks.

  She brushed a few strands of damp blonde hair behind her ears. Sweat dripped down her face, and she wiped it away with the tears that snuck out of her mismatched eyes. One blue, one brown, both stinging with cooped-up frustration. At least the perspiration provided a disguise, let the tears flow without suspicion.

  “What in the name of holy HighGod is this?”

  Eleanor straightened, only to be confronted by both sources of her misery. Gregory and Dorian, in their riding clothes, stood in the barn’s entrance. Gregory walked to her, but Dorian stayed framed in the passageway.

  “Sweetheart,” continued Gregory. “What are you doing? Let me call a groom.”

  “We tried to convince her, sire.” Chou Chou flew down from the rafters and lit on the handle of her pitchfork. As he flapped around in an attempt to maintain his balance, a few red and blue feathers floated down amidst the hay. “Talk some sense into her before we have to call a witch to revive her.”

  Eleanor wiped at her face again and forced a smile for the millionth time since her return from Rabbit’s Rest. “I don’t mind. The exertion will help me fit into my dresses again.”

  “Hardly. I think you slighter than ever before. Don’t disappear on me. I need something to hold onto.” Gregory ran a hand down her arm and her skin crawled.

  She glanced at Dorian, but he was examining a stirrup. He turned it over in his hands, and the silvery Fire-iron threw reflections of sunlight against the walls in jolly rainbows. Eleanor wished he would look at her.

  “Where are you boys going?” she asked, turning back to the hay.

  “Just taking Vigor and Senné for a ride down to Porcupine Bay.”

  Porcupine Bay, again. The hay crinkled and crackled as Eleanor flung it about Teardrop’s stall.

  Dorian finally spoke. “Would you and Teardrop join us?”

  “I must return to Ticia.” Eleanor probably would not have joined them anyway, but her breasts ached after two hours away from her daughter.

  Gregory scowled, and a line appeared between his light brown eyes. “Again? What about the wet nurse?”

  Dorian opened Senné’s stall door. He eased the black stallion’s silver horn aside and disappeared inside.

  “Gregory,” Eleanor said. “I can’t stay away from her all day.”

  “Hasn’t this gone on long enough?”

  She swallowed her pride and sidled up to him. “Oh, stop. Don’t you want me to come along to the Harper’s dinner tonight?” She touched his cheek.

  To her surprise he grabbed her around the waist. He spoke in her ear again. “I want you to enjoy yourself. Have a few glasses of wine. Relax.”

  She knew exactly what he meant. As she whispered her reply, she caught Dorian watching them over Senné’s stall door. “You know I have to see a witch first, husband. The birth—I need to know all is healed.”

  “Well call one. Soon.” It was a command, not a request. He kissed her nose and strode into Vigor’s stall.

  Vigor and Gregory followed Dorian and Senné into the courtyard. The grooms rushed around them, handing off bits of tack and hoof picks, happy to be allowed to do their duties. Senné and Vigor stood beside each other, black and white, like two giant chess pieces.

  “Enjoy the ride,” said Eleanor, as Dorian swung into the saddle.

  “We’ll miss you, and Teardrop,” he replied. She cringed at the distance in his voice. He could have been speaking to his butler.

  Gregory kissed her again. This time she felt the flick of his tongue. He mounted and she held Vigor’s bridle. The unicorn nuzzled her with his velvety lips. She stroked his nose and squinted up at Gregory.

  “Dorian and I have been called to Point-of-Rocks to meet with the Ports Minister,” he said. “There’s a shipment of raw Fire-iron coming down from the Mines. A big one.”

  “Bigger than usual?”

  “Early summer yields are always good. The dragons burn hot in the spring months. Mating season,” he said with a laugh. Eleanor ignored the reference to mating and attributed his mirth to the thought of copious amounts of money. Fire-iron, the light, wondrously versatile result of a dragon’s body heat and fiery breath, was the lifeblood of her country.

  “We leave the day after tomorrow.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Oh, nine, maybe ten days.”

  Eleanor’s heart sank. It must have shown on her face, because Dorian teased her. “Don’t be glum, Eleanor. With Gregory gone you can hole up with Ticia all day and night if you choose.”

  She tried to join him in their old banter. “I hope the Ports Minister has stored up on whiskey and wine if he’s to entertain you two for ten days.” It was a sorry attempt, but Gregory didn’t seem to notice. He grinned.

  “Don’t worry, Dorian will bring me back to you with my brains intact.” He leaned down. “Now go send for that witch. I don’t want to wait another two weeks.”

  She watched them go, across the grounds toward the steep path leading from Neckbreak Cottage to Porcupine Bay. Gregory didn’t look back, but Dorian did, although he didn’t wave or smile. Eleanor felt warm breath on her neck and rested a hand on Teardrop’s silky neck. Chou Chou lit on her shoulder
. Neither spoke, but their silent understanding comforted her. She kept her face from crumpling. When Dorian and Gregory disappeared she walked up the stone path to Willowswatch to attend her daughter.

  The next evening Eleanor sat on a blanket on the south lawn with her beloved stepsister, Margaret. They passed Eleanor’s daughter and a basket of grapes between them. Ticia smiled and cooed and enjoyed the attention. Eleanor missed the company of her other dear friends, Anne Iris and Eliza, but with Anne Iris recently married and pregnant (under speculation that the two had not necessarily happened in that order), and Eliza busy with her second baby, neither had made the trip to Solsea this year.

  “I wonder how Anne Iris is getting on,” said Margaret, as if reading Eleanor’s mind.

  “I wonder how her husband is getting on.”

  “True,” said Margaret. She ran a hand over her kinky brown hair, made kinkier by the summer humidity. “Perhaps pregnancy will distract Anne Iris from flirtation.”

  “Doubtful. She’ll have more cleavage to flaunt than ever.”

  “Poor man, he’ll be a jilted husband before he even has a chance to be a jilted father.”

  They laughed, and Eleanor felt a prick at the reference to jilted husbands. She’d enjoyed a brief respite from guilt in the weeks following her return to Eclatant, but lately her conscience had been hanging on her skirt like an insistent child. Although she had been a jilted wife for the entire duration of her marriage, she couldn’t fully embrace her husband’s comfort with deceit.

  Gregory, Dorian, and Raoul Delano crossed the lawn. Raoul sat on the blanket beside Margaret and kissed her cheek. A blush lit Margaret’s face, and Eleanor marveled at her friend’s happy beauty. She only wished her stepmother could see it. How Mother Imogene thinks her homely I’ll never know.