“Spineless?” Cinderella echoed, heat rising to her cheeks. “Why do you think she’s spineless?”
“A girl who runs off on my nephew must be hiding something.”
“What if she didn’t know he was your nephew?” asked Cinderella carefully.
Genevieve lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Even so. A potential princess of Aurelais cannot afford to have secrets. The court would eat her alive if she were anything less than perfect. Trust me, I would know. She must be a model of courage, grace, and virtue. A princess who runs off like that and refuses to come forth is not a paragon of any of the three.”
“I’m sure she had a good reason.”
“Believe what you wish,” said the duchess, withdrawing a deep emerald gown from her closet. “Have the collar mended before the masquerade. I don’t need a fitting—I’ve been wearing this dress since before you were born and it still fits.”
As she folded the gown into a small trunk, Cinderella hesitated. “Do you think the prince loves her?”
“I think he’s in love with the idea of her,” replied the duchess flippantly, her words echoing Cinderella’s fears. “If she were to return to the ball, I am certain he would propose marriage, but that’s only because George is forcing him to.”
Forcing him to? Cinderella’s ears began to ring uncontrollably, the words repeating over and over in her head. She sucked in a breath to calm herself. “What . . . what do you mean?”
“My brother is the one behind the royal proclamation—and the ball. George is in such a rush for Charles to find a wife that he vowed my nephew would wed the girl who fit the glass slipper. Honestly, from what I know about this girl, I don’t think that such a union would be good for Charles, or for Aurelais.”
Cinderella’s hands, clenching the sides of the trunk, shook, and she had to fight to keep her voice from trembling. “I see. Then let’s hope she doesn’t appear tomorrow.”
With the hastiest curtsy she could manage, Cinderella hurried out of the room, ignoring the duchess’s call, “Cindergirl, I wasn’t finished with you!”
Cinderella needed to breathe. Everything felt suddenly hot, and she desperately needed some fresh air, needed to clear her mind of what the duchess had told her.
Her heart ached with disappointment, and try as she might, she couldn’t reason it away the way she had whenever her stepmother hurt her. This was new, deeper than the sting of when Charles hadn’t recognized her in the palace.
To learn that the entire ball had been a ruse to find Charles a wife, that he had all but been forced to choose someone. No, that wasn’t the surprising part. That wasn’t the hurtful part.
What hurt was that Charles had picked her simply because he had to pick someone. And now, if there were another ball, he’d choose the next girl who caught his eye. Maybe she had taken their connection that night for granted . . . but had he never cared about her in the first place?
Of course, there was the fact that he hadn’t recognized her. Days later, the pain from seeing him spin away from her and disappear down the corridor, as if she were a perfect stranger, was still fresh.
Cinderella’s head throbbed, and she clutched the trunk holding the duchess’s dress tighter.
Did she care about him? She’d thought she did, but how many young men had she met while under her stepmother’s charge? None.
The prince was the first. He’d been so charming, listening to her attentively as if she were the most important person in the world and not a servant to be ordered about or treated with callous contempt. His easy smile and warm eyes had won her over, and now here she was, still thinking about him.
Maybe she was naive to expect he felt the same as she did—that they had shared something special. Truth be told, it would be foolish of him to marry someone he’d only met once. Besides, she knew nothing about being a princess. And she’d spent enough years under her stepmother’s pitiless eye; she didn’t need to spend the rest of her life under her entire country’s.
Cinderella stopped at one of the windows, pressing her hand against the cool glass.
Outside, the gardens beckoned. Bathed under the cloak of moonlight, they were breathtaking. The hedges rustled under the dim lamplight, swaying to an invisible symphony, and the marble pavilions shone white as pearls.
It was late enough that no one would be passing through now. Perhaps she could cut across and make a short detour before heading to her room. Being outside would help her think clearly again.
After a long breath, Cinderella pulled away from the window, making for the two doors leading outside to the gardens. She waited for the guard to open them, but he met her gaze with a penetrating glare.
When she tried to enter the doors, he stopped in front of her.
“What is your business here?”
Cinderella blinked, unsure why the guard had taken such a sharp tone with her. “I wanted to walk out into the gardens back to the servants’ quarters.”
The guard peered at her as if she’d uttered the most foolish thing he’d ever heard.
“Servants are not permitted to access the royal gardens, not without express permission.”
Cinderella took a step back. “So the entire garden is off-limits, even to the staff? But it’s even larger than the palace.”
“The palace is not yours to roam,” the guard admonished. “There are rules to respect. Traditions to honor.”
Cinderella raised her chin, but she knew it was no use arguing. Without another word, she turned away and continued to her quarters, her heart even heavier than before.
Being around nature had always lifted her spirits. She had grown up helping her mother tend the flowers in their garden, which had once been the pride and joy of the family estate. But after her stepmother had fired her father’s staff to save on expenses, the entire yard had fallen to disarray.
“Who has any use for a garden?” Lady Tremaine would say. “The flowers can’t be sold. Let them die.”
Cinderella had tried as long as she could to maintain the garden, rising before the sun to nurture her mother’s rosebushes and tulips. But one morning, she’d found the entire garden trampled by Lucifer.
Back then she’d blamed it on the cat. But now she knew better. Knowing how much her mother’s garden meant to her, Lady Tremaine must have let Lucifer loose on the flowers. By the time Cinderella discovered what he had done, the garden had been destroyed, and Lady Tremaine had ordered Cinderella to clean up the “dirt.” The very next day, her stepmother had a brick path laid over the area so that another garden might never grow there again.
The memory still stung, even after all these years, and Cinderella pushed it away. Her stepmother didn’t deserve another second of her time, not even in her thoughts.
Before long, she’d returned to her room. Setting aside the duchess’s gown, she sat on her bed to give her tired feet a short rest. Work in the palace wasn’t half as strenuous as it had been at home with her stepmother and stepsisters, yet Cinderella hadn’t been sleeping well.
There was so much she’d missed during her unhappy years with Lady Tremaine; now that she was free, there was so much she wanted to do. There was so much she could do. She wanted to see the world and to help others who might have felt as lonely and trapped as she had. She didn’t want to have to force herself to smile anymore just to bear each day; she wanted to find out what truly made her laugh, what truly made her happy. She wanted to get to the heart of things—to find the truth, instead of turn a blind eye.