Soot and Slipper

by Kate Stradling

  She motioned Eugenie inside. Sunlight poured through airy curtains upon a lovely sitting room. The queen led her to a couch against the far wall. On a low table, fragrant steam wafted from a silver teapot, with biscuits and cakes piled high on a matching platter. The queen poured a cup and offered it to her guest, who took it with a self-conscious glance around the room.

  The things Eugenie had brought from the manor house were propped in an adjacent chair, her childhood family gazing upon the royal tête-à-tête. Her heart squeezed painfully in her chest, its wound still fresh from her stepmother’s betrayal. In a way, she was more alone in the world than she ever had been. She averted her eyes and sipped her tea to calm these troubled thoughts.

  Queen Patrice resumed their conversation when she had poured her own cup. “He didn’t want the royal masquerades to start again. In fact, he vowed he wouldn’t attend, and when I commanded it, he arranged his ridiculous plan with Theo.”

  The mystery of the masquerade prince unfolded on that simple disclosure. “So Theo was the popinjay,” said Eugenie in wonder.

  The queen tipped her head. “And the goldfish. And, despite his protestations to the contrary, he enjoyed every minute of the spectacle. The boys switched their costumes right before the unmasking, and no one has been the wiser so far.”

  Theo’s enjoyment notwithstanding, the scheme suited Pip to a button. “As a domino, he could go wherever he liked without anyone taking notice,” Eugenie said.

  “Without having to take notice of anyone in return, too. He wasn’t interested in playing nice while lords and ladies jockeyed for position around him. He’s always been very intense, that boy, though I suppose you’ve surmised as much.”

  Eugenie reflected on the charge. She wouldn’t have called him intense, but he was single-minded. “Why didn’t he want the masquerades to start again?”

  “Because he was broken-hearted, and he didn’t want it to mend.”

  A pang shot through her, uncertainty laced with… jealousy, perhaps? So someone had broken the prince’s heart, then. No wonder he skulked in the shadows above the dancing throngs. Perhaps the woman who had spurned him moved among them. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Eugenie said, feeling instinctively inferior to the phantom coquette.

  The queen, teacup poised halfway to her lips, spared her a sidelong glance. “Yes, it was a sorry affair. He’d fallen in love in his youth, but the girl he’d set his heart on died three years ago of the influenza.”

  Eugenie choked on her drink. She coughed and raised huge eyes to the monarch, who wore a hidden smile.

  “Or so we believed. He didn’t tell you that, either.”

  Crimson as a cardinal, she shook her head.

  Queen Patrice hummed and took another sip of her tea. “Poor boy. It was at your mother’s funeral—most inappropriate, I know, but he was smitten. Starry-eyed and walking on clouds, and when we got home I had to sit him down and explain that you both were too young for him to pursue any lasting attachment and that, as you had just experienced a death in the family, your heart was tender and he needed to take care not to burden or injure it further. He settled for writing you in friendship instead.”

  The letters of yore—polite, well-worded things—flashed through Eugenie’s memory. “I thought he wrote to lots of people.”

  “No. You were the only one.”

  This revelation stoked a thread of vanity within her, summoning that child-self who had reveled in each letter despite more practical beliefs that they were written out of courtesy. She squelched the exultant feeling. “He always signed his full name, like it was an official correspondence.”

  The queen chuckled. “And how much of that do you recall?”

  Eugenie rattled off the beginning. “Louis Fernand Renaud Theophilus…”

  “…Antonin Dominic Charles,” Queen Patrice finished with a fond expression.

  Even if she had remembered that mouthful, Eugenie would never have connected “Dominic” to Prince Fernand. The more she learned, the more foolish she felt.

  “The letters had to stop when your father remarried, of course,” Queen Patrice said.

  “Is that why Pip—Dominic—never liked Marielle?”

  “Oh no. He disliked her from sheer pettiness. He went to the wedding hoping to talk to you, and she sent you home before he got the chance.” She laughed at the memory. “Don’t tell him I told you that. He’s had a chip on his shoulder ever since and bristles when anyone so much as mentions her.” A somber expression replaced her mirth as quickly as it had come. “But he blamed her for your death, too, though he never said as much aloud.”

  The atmosphere in the room shifted. The queen set her teacup on the table and angled herself to face Eugenie more fully. Conscious of this attention, Eugenie placed her cup down as well. She fought the urge to pull at her fingertips as she so often did when she was nervous.

  “We received word of your death the same week he returned home from his study abroad,” said the queen. She clasped Eugenie’s hands and squeezed. “I’ve never seen someone so devastated. I hadn’t realized how highly he thought of you until that very moment. It had always been a sweet little infatuation before, something we assumed would fade with time, as childhood infatuations often do.”

  A self-conscious blush blossomed upon the girl’s cheeks, and her adoration for Pip redoubled, that he had suffered such grief on her behalf.

  “I’ve watched my boy in silent mourning for the past three years,” said Queen Patrice. “Distant, bitter, disconsolate. When his mask came off after that first masquerade, for the first time in years, a spark of happiness lit his eyes, and it kindled hope within my heart. When he admitted his delight had come from the company of a fellow masquerader, doubly so. At that point, I didn’t care who you were—peasant or noble, servant or master. You restored my carefree boy to me. I prayed you would return the following week, but of course, everything fell apart that time. He had my blessing to seek you out, to make right whatever had upset you.

  “So you can imagine my surprise,” she finished, “when he burst into my breakfast room yesterday afternoon and announced that Eugenie of Pluterra was alive, and that Baroness Lavande was the wickedest villain ever to walk the earth.”

  The image invoked both a sense of awe and the instinct to laugh. Eugenie ducked her head, her overabundance of emotions driving her too close to tears. “Somehow I’ve caused more trouble than I thought possible, and without the slightest idea I was doing it.”

  “If you were fairy-blessed at birth, it’s no wonder. That explains why your mother was so protective of you, and yet how you ended up with only two names.”

  Eugenie frowned, a voiceless question in her eyes.

  “Fairies always announce to parents when they’ve chosen a child to watch over,” said Queen Patrice knowingly, “usually within an hour or two of the birth, and the parents have no say in the matter. If they give the child too many names, the fairies take it as an insult and curse the child instead. And it’s not that your pleasant attributes come from them, but that they appoint themselves as guardians, so to speak, to protect you from harm. It’s like having a wild animal adopt you, though I might prefer a bear or a wolf. Fairies being what they are, mischief inevitably follows even their best intentions.”

  “So ‘godmother’ really does mean something different to them,” Eugenie said.

  The queen chuckled. “Quite. If we could outlaw dealings with the creatures, I would, but that would insult them as well. Your fairy godmother seems to have more patience than others I’ve seen—that she could carry on a bargain with a mortal for almost two decades, for one thing, but that she allowed you to live in seclusion for three years before she interfered as well. They’re capricious creatures, though, so I doubt we’ll ever know her true motives.”

  “She said she wanted to restore balance,” said Eugenie. “I didn’t really believe her.”

  “She restored it in the end, so perhaps she spoke the truth.”

&
nbsp; Was the world back in balance, then? Everything felt uncertain and unfamiliar.

  But what had she expected? A restoration to her proper place could not restore the quiet life she had led since her illness. Nor did she want it restored. The fairy had been right: she had been slowly dying in seclusion on that estate.

  “What will happen to Marielle?” she asked.

  “She deceived and defrauded the crown. Her title is forfeit, and she’ll go to prison or exile, whichever better suits her crimes.”

  “And the younger Elles?”

  The queen’s eyes crinkled at the nickname, though she sobered almost as quickly. She spoke with care, weighing her words. “It all depends. They were complicit with their mother’s deceit, but to what degree filial loyalty played a part—whether they approved or whether she coerced them—will largely determine their fate. If possible, I would like to give them into the care of their grandparents, two girls in recompense for the two they have lost, along with a healthy stipend and the crown’s deepest condolences. I would not have wished today’s revelations on any feeling parent.”

  Eugenie shivered against her memory of sweet, well-meaning Nanette, whose bones lay cold in a borrowed grave. The maid had been only a year or two older than her, kind and cheerful. She deserved a better end than the one she had received—particularly her own sister using her as cover for a greater crime. Marielle might have murdered Eugenie any time these past three years had her vanity not kept her from the deed, and no one would have been the wiser.

  “And what’s going to become of me?” The words left her lips on little more than a whisper. How small and selfish, that she could even wonder; her fortunes had been reversed, while others’ would be damaged from this day forward.

  Queen Patrice seemed to think no less of her for the question, though. She patted Eugenie’s clasped hands, compassion softening her regal face. “Your future is largely yours to determine. I will say this, however: you hold my son’s heart in your power. Whatever your own feelings may be—and he knows not to press you in this time of crisis—please deal with him kindly.”

  In wonder Eugenie met the monarch’s gaze. Silently she nodded, robbed of any other response.

  16

  Dreams Rekindled

  A long, hot bath ebbed away the stress of the afternoon, of the past few days. The queen gave Eugenie rooms of her own as a ward of the crown. Accustomed to tending to herself, she submitted in bewilderment to the ministrations of three busy maids who helped her dress and brushed her hair until it gleamed. The girls, younger than her by a few years, treated her like a porcelain doll that might break if handled too roughly.

  They never spoke directly to her, and Eugenie, overwhelmed, could think of nothing to say to them except her gratitude.

  When they left, she stared at her pristine reflection in the full-length mirror.

  Her old, worn clothing had had the comfort of familiarity, and the fairy’s costumes had been like something out of a dream. The dress she wore now, a sedate blue that made her eyes bright, had fabric as fine as anything Marielle wore, with meticulous tailoring and delightful embroidery along its sleeves and hemline. It was nothing opulent, but she felt like a different creature wearing it, a butterfly that had emerged from its drab chrysalis.

  She had never belonged among the Elles, even when her father was alive. She knew now that, for all their posturing to the contrary, they had never wanted her to belong.

  But could she belong with the prince?

  The queen expected her to join the royal family for dinner, though she almost would have preferred to eat by herself. Her nerves whirled like a windstorm. Rather than wait for a summons, she determined to walk off some of the erratic energy. She took a deep breath and opened her bedroom door.

  Pip stood on the other side, one hand poised to knock. On a sharp inhale, he stepped backward, hiding his hand behind him like a child caught in mischief.

  Eugenie’s heart leapt against her ribcage. She stepped into the hall and pulled the door shut behind her, then leaned against it.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were the prince?”

  He flinched, shame flashing across him. “I should have, but…” After a fleeting glance, he looked away to the wall. “You didn’t recognize me.”

  Was he sulking?

  Her pulse quickened all the more. She ducked to catch his attention. “Should I have? You stood right next to me while the prince pranced among his guests.”

  “That was—”

  “Theo? I know. But you didn’t know who I was either until I as much as told you.”

  “That’s because you were—”

  “Supposed to be dead. I know.” She allowed herself a wan smile as she leaned against the door again, still holding to the knob behind her for support.

  He fixed a steady, contrite gaze upon her. She could have drowned in his eyes and died happy.

  “I’m sorry. I should have told you. I didn’t want to complicate things any more than they already were, or to scare you off, and I didn’t want you to act toward me out of duty, either. I could be close to you as the anonymous Pip, a confidant and a help. I didn’t think Prince Fernand would have the same liberties.”

  A smile threatened to manifest, but she kept it under tight control. “You thought I was so inconstant?”

  “No. Just—before I knew it, the truth was too awkward to tell. At the end, I even worried I couldn’t live up to your image of my younger self.”

  She snorted a laugh and quickly covered her mouth.

  “You think that’s funny?” Pip asked in wonder.

  She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

  At last he recognized the tease behind her line of questions. His expression turned grave. “You know my heart, Eugenie of Pluterra. I can only guess half of what my mother told you, and I’m forbidden from any attempts to engage your sensibilities until the dust of this calamity settles. But in the meantime, will you forgive me, or will you leave me in agony?”

  The queen was right. He was intense, but in the very best way.

  His reasoning was also sound. Had he told her he was the prince, she would have distanced herself on instinct, embarrassed and convinced that she shouldn’t burden someone of such lofty rank.

  But that hardly mattered anymore.

  Eugenie matched his fervency with her own. “You are forgiven. And you know perfectly well that my sensibilities were already engaged.”

  In relief, he swept her into his arms. She shut her eyes, her knotted anxiety dissipating. For fully a minute they stood in silent contentment, each drawing comfort from the other’s embrace.

  “You do know that when you brought your other shoe today you staked a public claim on my heart,” said Pip. “That means you have to marry me.”

  She huffed a laugh and swatted his shoulder. “Is that really how you’re going to ask?”

  He drew back, his eyes alight with mirth. “Will you—?”

  “Of course I will,” she said before he could finish, and she kissed him with all her soul.

  About the Author

  Kate Stradling was among the bayous born

  But soon thereafter moved to other lands

  Where sun and wind kept vistas sere and worn

  And cactus thrived amid the desert sands.

  Though blessed with countless relatives and kin,

  In quiet reading was her soul most fed.

  When books no longer filled the void within,

  She took to making stories in her head.

  Some say that’s where she probably went wrong.

  The stories now consume her waking hours.

  Her love of language waxes ever strong,

  And all her other interests devours.

  In prose she babbles, but it could be worse.

  At least she isn’t writing things in verse.

  Also by Kate Stradling

  Brine and Bone

  Namesake

  The Legendary Inge

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bsp; Goldmayne: A Fairy Tale

  The Ruses Series

  Kingdom of Ruses

  Tournament of Ruses

  The Annals of Altair Series

  A Boy Called Hawk

  A Rumor of Real Irish Tea