Soot and Slipper

by Kate Stradling

  Eugenie clutched the ties at her throat. “To… to the chickens. To see if any laid this afternoon.” Her stepmother lifted her chin as though enlightened, which prompted her to add, “I didn’t know you had gone out.”

  “Yes, down to the inn to reserve a carriage for tomorrow.”

  “Oh, of course,” said Eugenie.

  “I suppose you disapprove,” Marielle said, her mouth curving in a faint smile.

  “I—”

  She tilted her head as though contrite. “Don’t judge us too harshly. You don’t know what it’s like to have an uncertain future. Sometimes you have to take your chances to survive.”

  In former days, Eugenie would have reassured her stepmother. Despite Pip’s charge for her to act natural, she could not force such words to cross her lips. Instead, she said, “I’m just worried. What happens to Florelle and Aurielle if their foot doesn’t fit? Will the queen be angry?”

  “Psh,” said Marielle with a dismissive wave. “Court will be packed tomorrow with claimants. It will become a sport among the nobles, with lords placing wagers while ladies stand in line.”

  Eugenie nodded and moved again toward the door, eager to end the conversation.

  “Why do you not use the door off the kitchen?” Marielle asked.

  Eugenie’s hand trembled on the knob. She forced a carefree smile. “I like to walk through the garden.”

  Her stepmother’s expression remained steady, observing. “Well,” the woman said at last, “steer clear of the pond or any other puddles that may yet lurk from the rain. I don’t know how many more baptisms your shoes can withstand before we get you another pair.”

  A feeble chuckle worked from her throat. She ducked her head in acknowledgement and scuttled out the door.

  Heavy clouds yet hung in the purple sky. She bundled her cloak closer and hurried around the side of the house, certain she could feel the weight of Marielle’s gaze upon her with every step. She dared not chance a look toward the windows to confirm, but she caught movement of the curtains in her periphery.

  If Pip awaited her in the garden, as he’d said, they would have no privacy. She continued quickly to the back of the house, to the coop that lay beyond the barn. The birds, gathered within for the night, chirred protests as she reached beneath them in their boxes. She slipped the full clutch of eggs—most of which she should have collected that morning while her stepmother and stepsisters slept—into her apron pockets.

  Marielle would know from the sheer volume that she had not completed that task, which might lead to unwanted questions. Paranoid, Eugenie contemplated chucking some of them into the pond before she returned to the house.

  As she stepped out of the coop, a voice whispered from the shadows around her.

  “You’re a blessed sight, Eugenie.”

  Pip emerged in a rustle from among the nearby shrubbery. She gasped and dragged him behind the coop, her watchful eyes searching the path back to the manor.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, close enough that she could feel his warmth. “There’s no one else out here. I watched to make sure no one followed you.”

  Her shoulders sagged on a sigh of relief. “I think Marielle might suspect something,” she said, stricken. “She’s paying special attention to everything I do. She told the younger Elles that they would all skip the next masquerade and insisted I rest, which seems innocent enough, but—”

  “Do you want to come away with me tonight?” he asked. His eyes gleamed in the low light.

  Eugenie studied him. “Is that your plan? To spirit me off in darkness?”

  “No, but if you’re worried, I’ll drop everything and take you away.”

  His mere presence restored her lost equilibrium. The panic that had fluttered through her veins all afternoon subsided, and her breath evened to a calm rhythm.

  “What was your plan?” she asked.

  “Oh, it’s brilliant. I went straight from you to the queen.”

  Her anxiety sparked. “That’s something else! The queen sent out a proclamation this afternoon, that the lady of the shoe is to present herself in court tomorrow to… to…” She couldn’t complete the sentence about claiming Prince Fernand’s heart, but she didn’t need to. A broad grin split Pip’s face and he quivered with ill-suppressed mirth. Mystified, she asked, “Why are you laughing?”

  “That’s my doing, the proclamation,” he said. “I told Her Royal Majesty everything. The whole proclamation is a ruse. I’m only relieved that word of it reached the manor house so quickly.”

  “It’s not funny, Pip. Marielle has convinced Florelle and Aurielle to try on the shoe for themselves.”

  “As I intended. No, listen: they’ll be gone the whole day, which gives us plenty of time to collect your personal effects and steal you away from that wicked woman’s clutches.”

  He had created a window of opportunity where they would have no fear of Marielle’s eminent return. Even as she marveled at the simplicity of it, anxiety for its possible side-effects shot through her. “But what if one of them fits the shoe? Will Prince Fernand have to honor his word?”

  “Prince Fernand is a willing party to the whole of it,” he said, though with a flash of exasperation. “Besides, any claimant that fits the shoe will have to rescind her claim when you show up with the match.”

  Eugenie squeaked. “What? I can’t—”

  Pip grasped her wrists, his gaze intent. “The queen is willing to believe you are who you say on my word alone. But as your funeral was a public event, she demands that your return to society be public as well, that all the ranks of the nation acknowledge the House of Pluterra restored before their very eyes.”

  Her throat constricted at the grandiose image he painted, and of how ill she fit it. “I have nothing to wear to court. All my clothes are threadbare. I’ll look like a peasant among that crowd.”

  “So look like a peasant. Come in sackcloth and ashes. It’ll confirm the baroness’s crimes all the more.” When his words failed to reassure her, he pressed her hands. “Your clothes don’t determine your rank in the world, Eugenie.”

  “I know. I wouldn’t mind if I could go in private, but to present myself before all the nobles of the court—”

  “Baroness Lavande must have a public reckoning. That was the queen’s own condition. If you come to court away from the eyes of the nation, there’s nothing to stop your stepmother from fleeing the country. This way, she presents herself into our midst, never suspecting the trap that awaits.”

  The plan was a cunning stroke. It left Eugenie breathless, struggling against instinctive guilt for springing a snare against one who had often treated her with kindness. Had she not seen her name carved into her parents’ memorial she might still believe her stepmother’s treachery a fantastic lie.

  But what if Marielle caught wind beforehand? Her keen eyes always observed and assessed. What if she could read into her stepdaughter’s very soul?

  “I’m a little afraid,” Eugenie admitted.

  He squeezed her hands again. “Every masquerade has to have an unmasking at its end. The baroness has played this game far too long to get away with it. Tomorrow, if all goes well, she’ll finish the day inside a prison cell.”

  Would that be the end of everything? Even if the queen believed Eugenie, would the rest of Jacondria? What of the people of her own village, who thought she was the housemaid Nanette?

  “Have you heard anything from Theo?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “Not yet. He’ll turn up eventually. And when he does, I’ll make sure he begs your forgiveness.”

  She chuckled, but half-heartedly. On her backward step, the manor house slid into view. Lantern light burned in the younger Elles’ windows on the upper level, but Marielle’s was yet dark.

  “I should go back before she comes looking for me.”

  His lips parted to respond, but her next realization cut him short.

  “Oh! Here.” She pulled eggs from her apron pockets and
set them in his hands, three in each.

  He stared down, bewildered. “What am I supposed to do with these?”

  She frowned. “You eat them. Haven’t you eaten eggs before?”

  He huffed a laugh. “Yes, but—”

  “I should’ve collected most of them while the Elles were sleeping today. If I come back with the whole batch, Marielle will know I didn’t, and she’ll ask about what I did this morning. So you get to take those.” She backed away toward the house, not ready to turn from him yet.

  A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, though bemusement still possessed him. “Eugenie,” he said as one newly enlightened, “I know this is not the right time, but you are absolutely adorable.”

  Her heart and her face burned. She thanked the shadows for hiding her heightened color. “Why would this not be the right time?”

  “Because you’re in the midst of a crisis. And yet”—he raised both hands full of eggs—“you charm me nonetheless.”

  Crisis or not, she loved him. The knowledge struck her like a bolt of lightning from the lowering clouds above and robbed her of any coherent response.

  He called her charming? He radiated the stuff. It infused him from top to toe, ensnaring anyone lucky enough to encounter him.

  “I’m coming for you tomorrow,” he said. “Expect me as soon as the baroness and her daughters are gone. Until then, be safe.”

  She nodded, her heart too full to speak more than a hurried goodnight. She bolted up the path to the house, single-minded in reaching that goal, of shutting herself up in her room to sift through these new feelings.

  Of course she loved Pip. She had loved him from the first masquerade, but that had been a shallow, frivolous love. This—this possessed her senses beyond anything she could describe. It burned within, filling her with determination to merit whatever he felt for her, whether trivial or great.

  She swung the front door inward to a dark entryway. Light spilled from the younger Elles’ rooms into the hallway above. Eugenie started toward the kitchen.

  “What took so long?”

  She shrieked and spun, her pulse galloping in her throat. Marielle stood within the door to the front room, shielding the dull light from a lantern trimmed low. Its meager flame cast her pretty face into ghastly, hellish relief. At her stepdaughter’s outburst, her brows arched. “Did I frighten you?”

  Eugenie, panting, scrambled for an excuse. “I’m sorry. I think I spooked myself out there. I should have gone before the sun was down.”

  “You were gone so long that I wondered if I ought to send one of the girls after you.”

  “I was… lost in my thoughts, I guess.”

  Marielle drew closer. “And what thoughts occupied you so fully?”

  Conscious of a pressing desire to escape, Eugenie willed her feet not to move. “Costume ideas. Dragonflies, and water sprites, and cypress trees, and how I might create any of them in a gown.”

  “I told you not to worry about that this week,” her stepmother said, her voice light. “If the prince finds his bride tomorrow, it’s unlikely the palace will hold another masquerade anytime soon. They’ll focus on a royal wedding instead.”

  “Of course,” said Eugenie. “How stupid of me.”

  “Do you want to try on the slipper?”

  The question caught her off-guard. She started, then took a defensive step backward. “No. I wasn’t at the masquerade.”

  “No one knows that,” said Marielle. The corners of her lips tipped upward in an encouraging smile.

  What did she suspect? Had she found the hidden shoe? Surely not—

  “I don’t want to interfere,” Eugenie said.

  “And I suppose there’s no reason you should. How many eggs were there?”

  Wordlessly she lifted the remaining four from her pockets, grateful she had passed the majority to Pip before coming inside.

  Marielle pursed her lips in what was almost a lop-sided pout. “Into the basket with them, and then up to bed. We have to wake up early, and you know how the girls depend on you to look their best. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No,” said Eugenie. For once she would be eager to get the whole lot of them out of the house.

  12

  Amid the Ashes

  Florelle’s lavender gown had a tear in the sleeve, and Aurielle’s chosen dress, in aqua blue, had a dribble of egg yolk on the flouncing skirt. Despite Marielle’s charge to go to bed early, Eugenie stayed up in her workroom to complete these tasks. Her lantern burned bright and she kept one eye on the door and the darkened hallway beyond. When she had pressed both frocks and starched the underskirts, she hung them up and banked the coals in her small workroom fireplace. She did the same in the front room and the kitchen, checking over her shoulder as she collected excess ashes into their respective bins.

  Every shadow crawled with untold malice. She crept upstairs to her own room and stoked the fire in her grate. As she drifted off to sleep in the dim glow, she pulled her covers to her chin as if to guard against any harm. Dawn, only a few hours later, poured feeble light and birdsong into her room. She awoke to Marielle beside her bed, a neutral expression on the woman’s face.

  Eugenie, stiff as a board and every fine hair standing on end, stared up at her.

  “You didn’t wake when I knocked,” her stepmother said in her feathery voice. She was already dressed in a dark green gown, its color a compliment to her beauty, though her pale hair yet hung in waves over one shoulder. “The girls need your help tightening their stays.”

  “Of course.” Eugenie scrambled from beneath her covers and out her bedroom door, conscious of the stare that bored into her spine. She found the younger Elles squabbling as usual, each refusing to help the other lace up her underthings. Quietly she went to work.

  Sometime in the many layers that followed, she stole away to change from her thin nightgown into the least threadbare of her work dresses. A patchwork of faded blues and whites, it was a far cry from the gorgeous ensembles her stepsisters and everyone else would wear to court.

  “You’ve tied Aurielle tighter than me,” Florelle complained when she returned.

  “If she ties you any tighter, you’ll break a rib,” her sister said. Eugenie ushered Aurielle to the vanity, hopeful of distracting any further argument, but Aurielle slung one more barb over her shoulder. “It’s not her fault you’re built like a tree trunk, with not a curve in sight.”

  Florelle was ready for her. “At least my posture’s not hunched. If your shoulders were any more sloped, the mice could sled off them come wintertime.”

  “Will you have time to eat breakfast before your carriage comes?” Eugenie asked as Aurielle’s outrage manifested in a shriek. “Should I fix you something?”

  Aurielle transferred her ire, sneering at her stepsister’s reflection in the mirror. “What, so I can spill egg on my dress again?”

  “You think I can swallow a bite when I’m trussed up like this?” Florelle asked behind her. “You’ve obviously never worn anything tighter than that sack you’re wearing now.”

  Her fairy-costumes had been not at all constricting—doubtless thanks to the magic that constructed them—so Eugenie said with complete honesty, “No, I haven’t.” She brushed Aurielle’s thin hair into a tail and twisted it upward.

  Florelle harrumphed. “You wouldn’t suggest something as stupid as breakfast if you had. If you’re so hungry, you can eat as soon as we leave.”

  Eugenie perched three hairpins between her lips so she wouldn’t have to respond.

  Marielle, who had been conspicuously absent from her daughters’ preparations, appeared now with a basket of flowers from the garden, freshly cut to fit into the younger Elles’ coiffures. “I’ve gathered the morning eggs as well,” she said to her stepdaughter, whose brows arched. None of the Elles ever collected the eggs. Marielle continued. “I think there must be tramps cutting through our garden at night. There were boot prints in the mud that were too big to belong to any of us.
”

  “Are you sure?” Aurielle slid a snide glance toward her sister’s feet.

  “I’m sure,” her mother said before Florelle could bristle. The tone of her voice warned against any further quips, deadly serious. “Eugenie, you didn’t see anyone out there last night, did you?”

  Startled, Eugenie jabbed a pin into Aurielle’s scalp. Her stepsister yowled. “Watch what you’re doing!”

  “No,” she said, meeting Marielle’s gaze in the mirror and averting her own again. “Do you think someone was out there the same time I was?”

  “It’s possible. You should be careful, especially going out after dark.” The words sounded light, but Marielle’s expression remained piercing. A chill swept over Eugenie. Her hands shook as she coiled a strand of hair into a curl.

  The tension broke when Florelle loudly asked, “How long are you going to take over there? I need my hair done too, you know.”

  Marielle ushered her to the opposite vanity and started the task herself. Silence enveloped the room, broken only when one of the younger Elles demanded a certain flower for her hair. Half the garden sprung from their upward twists before they were satisfied.

  “There’s one left for you,” Marielle said to Eugenie, pulling a battered carnation from the bottom of the basket.

  Had she always carried such veiled hostility? Eugenie took the broken stem with a forced smile and snapped the lower half off. The flower, half-crushed, she tucked into her apron belt.

  Florelle and Aurielle were already pulling their wraps around their shoulders, giddy with anticipation for what the day would hold. Through the open window floated the sound of a carriage rattling up the drive.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come try this slipper on for yourself?” Marielle asked.

  Her daughters gaped.

  “She can’t,” Florelle said.

  Aurielle thrust an elbow into her ribcage and added, “Not wearing that. And the hackney’s already here. There’s no time for her to change.”

  “It can stand at the door,” said Marielle, her gaze never leaving her stepdaughter’s face.