Black Pearls - Louise Hawes [41]
She laughed nervously. "I am afraid I shall never be a stay-abed princess. I was up with the birds, and your mother was kind enough to send for me." She withdrew further behind the queen, deferential and shy, but her eyes swam with secret, hidden delight.
"Well, now that you are abroad," my mother announced, "your new bride is at your disposal. All that remains is to secure her Parisian look with a pin or two. Then she will join you in the garden." She moved forward, forcing me to step backwards out of the room. "Surely," she said, smiling at the women around her, "a prince's passions can be reined for fashion's sake." She nodded at one of the women who reached for the door. "And French fashion at that!" As they were shut away from me, I heard the laughter start up again and saw my princess giggling with the rest, one hand raised delicately to hide her mouth.
She spent most of that day with the queen. She stole back to me between her lessons in royalty, rushing to share each fresh marvel, each trinket or mannerism that removed her further and further from the sweet openness with which I had fallen in love. When dinner was over and night pried her from my mother's side, I proposed a different sort of lesson.
"Let us ride tomorrow, just the two of us," I said. "I know a stream that will take us far from courtly courtesies and gossip. A place made for whispers and long embraces."
"Oh, no, we cannot," she told me, alarmed. "We must not. Your mother has arranged for three of her finest seamstresses to fit me tomorrow. Besides, why on earth would we want to leave the castle?" Her question stung only a little, a tiny prick like a spring bumblebee's. "Who would ever want to leave such happiness?"
"My love, your heart and not your eyes should tell you where happiness lies." I took her in my arms, remembering the night we had met, the way she had laughed without affectation, had looked at me with the steady, direct gaze of a child. "Surely you know that gowns and perfumed lace conceal and deceive? Sweep them away, toss them aside, and there is truth."
She pulled back from me, her sparkle turned hard. "'Sweep them away'?" Her lips pursed as if she had tasted something bitter beyond words. "'Toss them aside'? Who are you to preach simplicity? I have done without your sweet deceptions my whole life, while you were playing at draughts and bending your knee to nothing more demanding than a dance tune!"
"My dear bride," I told her. "My mother is full of beguilements, but you must—"
"I dreamt of your despised courtesies while I lived a life of truth and ashes. Your gowns and your gossip kept me alive and warm with desire." She walked to the window, pulled back the curtain, and stared at the garden, frosted with moonlight. "Sweep them away? I would sooner die!"
Her back was as straight and narrow as a flame. From the bed, I spoke to that small, imperious spine. "Can you not see what the queen is doing?" I asked. "She wants to mold you, change you." Impossibly, her back grew straighter still. "She wants to put out your spark, to leave you cold and false. My love, you are to be a mirror in which she sees herself."
Cinderella let the drape fall back, pale fists at her sides. "I hope she can mold me! I pray she will!" She moved forward like a sleepwalker, her voice low, her eyes misted, unfocused. "When I lay by the hearth without a mother or father to warm me, when I scrubbed and slopped and hoed, when my hands and feet turned raw from the cold of the barn, I dreamt of a beautiful woman who would love me."
"But dearest—"
"And now I have found her at last. Your mother looks precisely like the fairy guardian I conjured out of loneliness and hurt. She has come back to me, more beautiful even than my childish hopes."
"Is it not time, my love, to put away your godmother's imaginary spells? To give up these sad old dreams?" I led her to the mirror beside our bed. I turned her to face the two of us in its glass. "Here is your present