Anna and Diane had carriages waiting to return them home. My own carriage was nowhere to be found. Not wanting to be seen walking home, I slipped inside the Small Stables for a moment until the rest of the party cleared out.
The musky smell of horse and hay hit me like a wave as soon as I walked in the door. Elodie thought I was a fool, but I loved that smell. I’d spent so much time hiding in the stables from Lady Catherine and Severine that they were safe spaces for me, and that feeling extended to most any stables I encountered. These were no different, even if they were much larger than any I had been to before.
Row upon row of wooden stalls lay before me underneath the high-arched ceilings of cream-colored stone, occupied by the widest variety of horses I’d ever seen, from golden palominos to gorgeous white Arabian stallions. The king only kept the best animals, and it showed. A few stable hands and young squires hurried up and down the stalls, but they paid me no mind. It was nice to wander through the stables while they were so empty. Normally, the Royal Stables would be a hotbed of energy and packed to the brim with people, but the royal hunts were such a huge endeavor that the services of most everyone who worked in the stables were required.
I wandered down a row of stalls at the far end of the stables. At this point I didn’t think I was going to find the coachman, so I decided I might as well take the chance to explore without constantly feeling like I was getting in someone’s way. And the soft whickering of the horses, the rustle of hay, and the clicking of my shoes on the cobblestone floor were comforting and familiar.
The peace was disturbed by a few harsh curses accompanied by a tall, dark-haired figure tumbling backward out of one of the stalls and landing flat on his back.
I rushed toward him. That looked terribly painful.
“Are you . . . ?” I started to ask, the rest of the words catching in my throat when I realized who the figure was.
Auguste. He was lying on his side, facing away from me, but I recognized the deep voice that was swearing up a storm as he clutched at his knee. His eyes widened when he saw me. “Cendrillon? What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be on the hunt?”
“The hunt is over. Are you all right?”
“Yes. It’s nothing,” he said, shaking it off and standing up. His hair was mussed and his cheeks were red.
“You always say it’s nothing.”
He shrugged. He didn’t look as wounded as he did the other day, but he was definitely aloof. “If the hunt is over, do you need a way home?” he asked. “I can call a carriage and—”
“No, thank you. I’ll wait for my carriage. If you haven’t seen the coachman, I’ll look elsewhere,” I said shortly.
“You can’t just go wandering all over the palace looking for a coachman. He could be anywhere. Etienne,” Auguste called.
A little boy no more than ten years old poked his head around the corner. “Yes, Monsieur?”
“Have you seen a dark blue carriage recently?” Auguste asked, standing tall in his coat and breeches.
“Yes, Monsieur. Early this morning. That lady there climbed out,” the boy said, nodding to me. “But it drove away.”
“Find it for me, will you? Ask the coachman to come back to the Small Stables. His mistress is waiting.”
Auguste fished around in his pocket and pulled out a few gold coins. He tossed them to the boy, who caught them with ease. “There will be a little something extra in it for you if the carriage returns quickly.”
The boy nodded and took off running. Auguste waited to speak until the sound of Etienne’s shoes no longer clomped against the cobblestones.
“Getting rid of me as fast as you can, are you?” I said, with just a hint of sadness.
He looked shocked. “What do you mean?”
Now it was my turn to be mysterious. “Nothing,” I said. I was starting to feel ridiculous for worrying about him so much.
“Why don’t you sit down while we wait?” Auguste said. “You look hot.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re awfully flushed.”
I felt myself blush even hotter. Auguste took hold of my arm and steered me toward a stool pushed up against one of the stalls, and his hand on my arm generated even more heat inside me. I had never felt this way around Louis, not today, not even when he had his arm around me, and I suspected I would never feel this way about him. But I didn’t want to think about that too much. “Of course I look flushed. It’s hotter than Hades and I’m wearing eighteen layers of clothing.”
His mouth quirked. “So, how was the hunt? Did my brother get his stag?”
“He did. Two of them, in fact. Enough that all the ladies were swooning over him through the luncheon.”
“All the ladies?”
“Well, perhaps not all.”
Auguste looked astonished. Even though I was irritated that he was so moody, I couldn’t help but find him charming, and he was, with his furrowed brows and the confused pout of his lips. “Not one of his many admirers, then,” he said. “You must be the only one.”
When he smiled, I forgot all about Louis’s arm tightening around my waist and his breath in my ear. Auguste was standing a few feet away, but the heat he sparked in me was palpable. I would have to stop looking at him; that was the only solution. I tried to look elsewhere.
“Louis has admirers aplenty,” I said tartly. “I doubt he’ll miss me.”
“I would miss you,” said Auguste, “if I were him.” He wasn’t looking at me when he said it, but he was looking at me now.
I could feel my entire body trembling as I met his eyes. “Why were you so upset the other day?”
“Don’t you know?” he asked lightly.
“Am I supposed to be a mind reader?”
He laughed.
“So it is the competition, isn’t it?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“I’m sorry too,” he said.
I wasn’t sure what we were talking about anymore. A silence stretched between us of all the things we somehow could not say to each other.
“May I ask you something?” he asked after a silence.
“Anything.”
“Do you want to win?” he asked.
Did I want to win? What kind of a question was that? I had to win. I had to get out of my stepmother’s clutches, and I couldn’t fail Elodie and Marius. I debated silently over whether or not I should tell Auguste the entire truth about Lady Catherine. Even if he’d been acting a little strange, I decided that we were friends after all, and I could confide in him.