Ashes and Roses, by Carma Lynn Park, 4/5
I tucked the remaining shoe in my pocket and set off home. The walk was long and weary, giving me too much time to think about the ball and the prince’s cousin. When I got home, the white horse was grazing by his pasture gate. I took his tack off and slipped him some grain from the carriage horses’ bin. As he munched, I brushed him, pausing from time to time to wipe my face with the back of my hand. What were those ridiculous tears doing running down my cheeks?
Finally I changed out of my dress, the rose petals wilted and brown. I was just warming my feet when Stepmother and the girls came in. No doubt they thought I had been dozing by the fire.
Lavvy said, “I wish you could have come.”
“Was the prince very handsome?”
“Oh yes. He danced once with every lady present, then disappeared.”
“So he is not betrothed to – anyone – quite yet?”
Stepmother replied, “No, but there was a duke who seemed very taken with Priscilla. They say he keeps more than 20 servants.”
Priscilla smiled and yawned. “I wouldn’t mind having 20 servants.” She slipped out of her cloak, and automatically I took it from her and draped it over my arm to hang up.
Lavvy leaned over to me and whispered, “Jack danced with me five times!”
During the following week, the household was in quite an uproar. Jack dropped by several times, each time on a pretext thinner than the one before. One day a carriage drew up in front of the house, and a footman delivered a message to Stepmother inviting her and Priscilla to tea with the duke. I was called on to refurbish gowns and clean jewelry and dress hair.
There was little time to mope, although at night I sat sleepless by the window in the garret telling myself to stop sighing over the prince’s cousin. A wind rattled the pane, and the yellow cornstalks bent in the fields. The distant river ran black and silver. Bleak and cold.
It was a relief to go to church on Sunday. Afterwards, Gran Nanther was giving me her opinion of the service when Stepmother pushed me in the back with her prayer book. “Run home and neaten up. The prince is coming.”
“The prince is coming to our house?”
“He’s coming to all the houses to see the shoes.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t understand.”
“Just go. Quickly, girl.”
I ran home and tidied the front parlor – lit the fire, beat the cushions, and hung sachets of herbs to sweeten the air.
Stepmother and Priscilla and Lavvy hurried in, and Stepmother directed Priscilla to sit on the sofa next to her and for Lavvy to take one of the chairs. “Ella, you will open the door – no, I will open the door myself. After all, it’s the prince. You’d better go to your room and stay there. He can want nothing to do with you.”
Instead, I went out to my roses, still blooming despite the late season and sending out extravagant fragrance. Sighing, I plucked one and tucked it in my hair. I didn’t want to see the disagreeable prince. There was only one person I wanted to see.
As if my wish had given him flesh, he stepped around the corner of the house. One hand cradled my glass slipper. He murmured, “The scent of white roses. Where are they?”
My hand went to my lips, and he saw me then. He started forward, and the shoe dropped to the ground. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
He looked handsome in his fine-woven blue coat, the seams lying flat and smooth. “You wear such nice clothes,” I whispered, and turned my head away so as not to see his reaction to my dress, handed down from Priscilla to Lavvy to me, fabric faded at the seams, the elbows worn thin.
He took my hands and looked at them, their red, chapped skin, a burn on one palm from the oven door, a bump where the thimble was always rubbing my finger. He kissed one, then the other.
Stepmother’s voice came raw and shocked. “Gabriella!”
I jumped back guiltily, suddenly aware of my unseemly behavior. Stepmother was goggling from the doorway, Priscilla and Lavvy peering over her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” I said, hardly knowing what I was apologizing for.
But she was dipping into a deep curtsey, with Priscilla and Lavvy bobbing behind her.
“Your Highness.”
My mind flew back to the ball, and I remembered all the clues I should have caught then. I accused him, “You’re the prince.”
His eyes crinkled. “I hope you don’t mind.”
I blushed and looked down. The roses rustled, although there was no breeze, and petals fell to my face with the gentlest of touches.
