The Fairy Stepmother Inc.

by Maggie Hoyt

  “Hello,” I said. “Sorry we—”

  “You must be Madam Radcliffe. I am Roompilda Stidolph. I’m here to prepare Fanchon for her Season. My letter of reference.”

  I started to say we hadn’t asked for a consultant, but then I saw the seal on the letter she’d handed me.

  “The queen sent you to help Fan?”

  She looked at me over the top of her spectacles with an expression that said, “My, we are quick, aren’t we?” Even her face was dripping with sarcasm.

  “May I?” she said, gesturing toward the house.

  “Oh. Yes,” I said, turning and immediately cracking my shin on the center table. “Ow. Fan, help me move this back.”

  Fan and I reset the furniture, Roompilda trailing along behind us, casting a disapproving eye on everything from the color of my drapes to my lifting technique.

  “I was just giving Fan a dance lesson.” We put the armchair back in place and offered it to our visitor.

  She hid her skepticism about my dancing abilities better than Fan had, but I’d still caught that raised eyebrow. Although, to be fair, one of Roompilda’s eyebrows always seemed to be raised.

  “Good. Dancing lessons are certainly high on our list of priorities.”

  “What other lessons do I need to take?” Fan asked.

  “Comportment, etiquette, conversation, to name a few.”

  “I can do those things!”

  “Can you? This is the Season. You are not merely trying to impress Strachey. The Capital is here. If your behavior varies even slightly from that of the other girls, everyone will notice.”

  “In terms of etiquette, of course. We don’t want all you girls to seem like you were made from the same mold,” I said, less to reassure Fan than to inform Roompilda. I’d been to finishing school. I wasn’t giving her free rein with my daughter.

  Roompilda gave a dazzling fake smile that put mine to shame. “The queen simply wants you to be prepared before you attend your first fete.”

  “Oh, I already went to the Courtenays’ party! It went really well.”

  Roompilda’s already icy countenance dropped a few degrees. “You’ve already been out?”

  Fan nodded. “It was lovely!”

  “Without any instructions, without any training. Ugh.” Roompilda shook her head in disgust. “Now we’ll have to add damage control on top of the rest. Still, nothing I can’t do …”

  “Damage control?” Fan cried. “But I didn’t embarrass myself! Everyone was really nice to me!”

  Roompilda tipped her head and gave Fan a rueful smile that fairly obviously said, “Bless your heart.”

  “That’s because they’re well bred.”

  “But—”

  “Do you know what they said about you behind your back? With no training or skills on your part, I can guarantee it wasn’t a wall of compliments.”

  Fan deflated. I, on the other hand, bristled. Exactly how mean to my daughter did she need to be? Could she not have convinced Fan she needed lessons without making her feel like an embarrassment?

  “I don’t think it’s necessary—” I snapped.

  “Can you honestly say you are certain this was an unparalleled success?” Roompilda interrupted. I opened my mouth to interject, but she kept going. “Are you certain that you gave no little darts to the gossipers?”

  She gave me a pointed glance. My objection died in my throat. I knew, of course. And I knew stupid little Odetta wasn’t one of a kind. I knew Fan had mildly embarrassed herself, and while I wouldn’t have pointed it out to her face, I’d still have done something. I’d—well, I’d have hired a consultant. I stayed miserably silent.

  “I—I guess not,” Fan said, eyes welling up. “I thought if I was just a nice person, then …”

  “Only fairies care about that. This is court. Shall we begin?”

  Fan nodded.

  “Excellent. Madam Radcliffe, if you wouldn’t mind?”

  She glanced at the door. I made it out of the drawing room with poise, but I definitely slammed the door to the study. Dismissing me from my own living room? How self-important could a person be?

  I kicked the ottoman in frustration, which did nothing but hurt my toe. I knew I should continue reading my father’s herbal, but I’d never be able to concentrate now. I’d probably get it into my head to start eavesdropping on the lesson, which would lead to meddling, which would only cause trouble. Fan needed help, and I couldn’t give it—my social skills were rusty and outdated. Roompilda may be condescending, I thought, but she was probably very, very good at her job.

  You’d better leave the house, I told myself, or you won’t leave them alone. I found my purse and walked into town.

  I knew it would be futile to try to get a little shopping done. The day after a ball, the brunch traffic was always brutal. But there was at least one shop that wouldn’t be packed, and it had a shopkeeper I very much wanted to speak with.

  When I finally reached the apothecary, I pushed the door open and nearly walked right into a noblewoman and her daughter.

  “Do you have any of those, what are they called, Aroma Elixirs?” the woman asked. “You inhale the good smells and they replace the bad humors.”

  “I don’t think that’s a medically sound treatment,” said our apothecary, Milburn Kent. “I have some headache medicine, if you’d like that.”

  “No, no, none of that works for my daughter. Only the aromas help.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I have that specifically, but I do have scented candles.”

  “Oh, heavens no! It’s the special blend of oils Aroma Elixirs uses that cures the headache.”

  I rolled my eyes and leaned back against the wall, arms folded. Milburn caught my expression and suppressed a grin. “Well, let me see what I’ve got in the back,” he said. “Does the young lady have a scent she prefers?”

  “Lemongrass and lavender,” the young woman said.

  Milburn nodded and disappeared into the back room. The older woman turned and fussed over her daughter, asking where the pain was. The girl rubbed the bridge of her nose and her forehead; her mother reached out and started rubbing her temples. I had trouble imagining how those strong-smelling oils didn’t make her headaches worse.

  After a few minutes, Milburn came back carrying a small vial. “I regret to say I do not carry Aroma Elixirs. However, and I probably shouldn’t tell you this, I did recently catch word of a new formula that should be hitting the market very soon, developed by a new company. I happen to know how they mix it, and I’ve whipped you up a small amount of your favorite flavor.”

  Both mother and daughter were suitably impressed. The girl gaped as she took the vial from Milburn. The mother paid without a second thought. I grinned at Milburn as they left the shop.

  He raised both hands in a shrug. “If Aroma Elixirs has no qualms about taking their money … I don’t want to be a charlatan, but I’m afraid all my customers want to be duped. Except you, of course.”

  I sighed. “If my father were alive, he’d be furious he hadn’t thought of this oil business himself.”

  Milburn chuckled. Milburn Kent was a small man, and every part of him seemed rounded. He himself had large round spectacles, which made him look perpetually nervous. He had a tendency toward perspiration, and when he was concentrating on a mixture, beads of sweat invariably formed on his receding hairline.

  “How’s your wife, Milburn?”

  “Oh, quite well, thank you. What can I do for you today?”

  “I’m sure you’re familiar with the gold penny trick,” I said.

  “Of course! Coat a copper penny with zincum filings and fire it. The copper and zincum make brass, and it looks like you’ve got a gold penny. I showed my kids that trick. Were you going to do it with Fanchon? I imagine she’s a little old for that, but it is fun.”

  “Actually, I have some copper candlesticks I dislike and thought I might try it. I found an outline of the process in my father’s notes, but he isn’t as
thorough as I’d like. Can I do this at home?” This was only half-true. Of course, I had no such candlesticks, but my father really had left out what I thought were some essential details: how much zincum to use, how long to leave it in the oven, etc.

  “As long as your oven gets quite hot, you should. You can mix the zincum with lye to help it coat the copper, or if you have a big enough crucible you can simply use that.”

  “And what ratio do you use to get the right color?”

  “Well,” Milburn began, “some say the best imitation gold is seventy-five percent copper and twenty-five percent zincum …”

  I took notes as he laid bare the mysteries of brass. If I could get thin copper threads, I could add the right proportion of zincum to give them a brass coating. This could work. At least, I hoped so, because then I’d be stuck with paint or gold leaf—the former of which would look embarrassingly fake, while the latter would be barely affordable and beyond tedious.

  “I might have zincum in stock. Would you like me to check?” Milburn asked.

  “Let me estimate how much I’ll need, and I’ll get back to you,” I said. “Thank you, Milburn.”

  “Anytime! Have a wonderful day!”

  Now I’d have to know the amount of the loan, I thought as I left the shop—and then the volume of gold equal to that amount, so that I could order the copper. It would be wonderful if I could somehow get Piminder to come down on the amount of gold Clarrie needed to spin. I didn’t want to coat a whole barn’s worth.

  “Madam Radcliffe!” I turned to see Clarrie herself waving me down.

  “Hello, Clarrie. How are you this morning?” Not particularly well, if her puffy eyes were any indication.

  She shrugged. “Mama was furious. Papa was terrified. Even Terence was a little cross with me.”

  “Terence?”

  “Lord Piminder’s son. He thought I’d embarrassed myself. But it is going to work, isn’t it? Do you think the fairies will hear what’s happened?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “I’m just really worried what he’ll do to Mum and Dad. They don’t have family members they can go live with. I mean, I can go into service, can’t I? I don’t need to be proud; there’s a lot of people who suffer worse things. But I don’t know what Mum and Dad can do! So I’ve got to fix this.”

  I swallowed down a lump in my throat. I’d been in exactly this position just a year ago, only I’d had two daughters to worry about, not two parents. And until the diamonds and the frogs, I’d had the same last-ditch plan: marry someone, whether I wanted to or not.

  “Clarrie, I have no doubt the fairies are going to help you and your family. You do want to marry Terence, right?”

  She nodded, but with less conviction than she’d had a few days ago. “No, I do, I really do. We just had a bad day today.” She set her jaw and changed the subject. “What do I do next?”

  Give me time to make some gold, I thought. “At this point, we will undoubtedly have to be patient. But you must take any chance to impress Lord Piminder.”

  Clarrie grimaced.

  “I know. He’s unpleasant. But it’s the only way you can try to solve your problem yourself.”

  She sighed, and nodded in resignation.

  “Think of it as though you’re giving him a chance to stop being the villain,” I said. “And the more unpleasant he is, the more he simply digs himself in. All right?”

  “All right. Thank you, Madam Radcliffe.”

  “I’m happy to help, Clarrie. Chin up, and have a nice day.”

  I watched Clarrie stride off into the marketplace. I probably should have told her to pretend not to know me, I thought. I wouldn’t get anything out of Piminder if he knew I was working for Clarrie. Ah well, she was a sharp girl. Hopefully she would think of it herself.

  I started back toward home, dodging carriages and nosy tourists. I was almost halfway there when I remembered why I’d left in the first place. I groaned.

  This was exactly why I needed Henry. You’d think a person who always thought on the bright side would be insufferable, but he wasn’t. The mental gymnastics he went through trying to find something nice to say when I was furious were downright hilarious. And he knew it, too. The Season when we were married was the best one I’d ever suffered through.

  I could picture him walking next to me, hands in his pockets, ready to reassure me that things couldn’t be as bad as I thought they were.

  “What would you say about Roompilda?” I asked him.

  “She just rubbed you the wrong way, Evie. You’re actually very similar!”

  What.

  “No, well—” his image broke off, just as he always had. Whenever he floundered, he would hem and haw, starting and restarting his sentence, always with a pointed finger or openhanded gesture. “What I mean is,” I pictured him continuing, “she may not have your interpersonal skills, but she’s still a consultant, just like you. You try to get girls ready for the fairies, she has to get them ready for the court. You’re just not used to someone else being the expert and bossing you around. Not that I’m saying you’re bossy, of course, um …”

  No, it’s all right. Point taken, Henry, I thought to myself. I manipulated people with honey; Roompilda seemed to do it with a slap in the face. Still, she was just trying to do her job, and I knew exactly how that felt. Perhaps, just perhaps, I needed to accept that she knew more than me.

  She knows more than you do, Evelyn, I admitted to myself. See, that wasn’t so hard! I gritted my teeth and tried not to sneer. Let the woman do her job.

  Roompilda was just leaving as I approached the house.

  “I will be returning every day this week at precisely nine o’clock,” she said abruptly. “We have considerable ground to make up, but it would be inadvisable to refuse callers at this point. Please make yourself available during calling hours.”

  “Wait, what callers?”

  She looked at me as if I were a particularly slow child. “I won’t know who they are until they call, but I imagine they will be nobles who want to meet Fan.”

  Who would want to meet Fan? The Season had hardly begun, and she’d barely made a splash. Well, her stepsister is the princess, I thought. Great. We’ll have a house full of desperate nobles hoping to curry favor with the royal family.

  “You ought to have tea prepared. It would be better if you had at least one more servant, but I suppose that can’t be helped.”

  Don’t get riled, Evelyn, I told myself. She knows what she’s doing—and she’s right. You ought to have someone to open the door. You just don’t like being told what to do. I took a deep breath.

  “Good day,” she said, and walked away, carpetbag in tow. What did she keep in there? Books to balance on Fan’s head?

  I found Fan collapsed on the couch, rubbing her eyes. “Oh God, Mom, you would not believe how many mistakes I made last night. There are so, so many rules. I so should have gone to finishing school.” She suddenly looked up at the ceiling in alarm. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be critical. I’m sure you didn’t think it was a good thing for me …”

  “No, I tried to send you,” I said, sitting in the armchair across from her. “Your father didn’t want you to go.”

  “Wait, what? But Dad ate this kind of thing up! He’d be thrilled I was doing this. Wouldn’t he?”

  “Oh, absolutely. But your father never believed anyone was really qualified enough to teach you. I managed to persuade him to visit the school I went to, and I had to hear dissertations on all its flaws for weeks. I didn’t dare visit anywhere else, he might’ve tried to shut them down.”

  Fan grinned.

  “Then I insisted we find you tutors, but he demanded to see their lesson plans every day and ordered them to make changes. If they didn’t quit from the nervous strain, he usually found a reason to fire them after a month or two. After he passed, I couldn’t afford to keep it up.”

  “Why not? We weren’t poor,” she asked.

  I hesitated. I r
eally needed to stop running my mouth, or I was going to accidentally say something Fan didn’t need to hear.

  “No,” I began cautiously. “But the allowance your father left was meant for you, not for both of us. And his will didn’t actually let me access your balance, so while we had plenty, all I had to work with were the allowance payments.”

  Fan frowned. “That’s a big oversight. I wouldn’t have thought Dad would make a mistake like that.”

  I just shrugged. It wasn’t a mistake. I changed the subject before Fan could realize that her father hadn’t intended to provide for me at all.

  “How was Roompilda’s lesson?”

  “Oh, I learned how to stand up perfectly straight, and what to do with my hands, and how to walk like a lady. She says tomorrow we’re going to practice what you can talk about, since people will be coming to see me.”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much. You’re charming and delightful.”

  She smiled weakly and nodded.

  “You don’t seem like you believe me. Do you want to talk about something? Is something bothering you?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m fine, Mom. Thanks. I’m probably just nervous because it’s all new. I’m sure it’ll go fine.” She tried to smile a little brighter.

  You’ve got a lot to learn about fake smiles, kid, I thought.

  “All right. You let me know if you need something,” I said, which was an inadequate response in every way, but I didn’t know what else to say. I never had known. I’d been just fine when she cried because she was either tired or hungry, but as soon as she got old enough to have all these complex reasons for being upset, I was lost.

  I walked out of the room, feeling a little like a coward. You can’t force her to talk to you, I thought. But it would be nice if she did.

  CHAPTER FOUR