Princess of Glass - Jessica Day George [40]
“Are you plotting something, Poppy?” Marianne looked up with a twinkle in her eye, her hands tangled in yarn.
Poppy had been trying to teach her to knit in order to distract Marianne from the two topics that obsessed her: her birthday ball and Lady Ella.
Marianne had awoken that morning with a pounding headache and a memory of the gala that differed from Poppy’s. She remembered Lady Ella being not just pretty, but devas-tatingly beautiful, and both Christian and Dickon dancing only with the mysterious charmer, ignoring Poppy and herself entirely. She was almost violent in her feelings toward Lady Ella, and no amount of correction on Poppy’s part would convince her that her memories were wrong.
Having given up trying to talk to her friend about enchantments and the truth behind Lady Ella’s identity, Poppy had instead gotten her to talk about her own ball. She had hinted about gifts, both from herself and Marianne’s parents, and even agreed to dance at least one dance, just to appease her friend.
Poppy explained all this in a rush to Roger as they took up a position by the window seat, half-hidden in the long purple drapes. Poppy found her eyes searching each passing carriage, as though she expected a familiar face to arrive and provide help. But the depressing truth was that no one was coming.
“But what about Eleanora?” Roger’s voice was low.
“Oh yes! Eleanora!” Poppy was almost as passionate about her as Marianne was. “I insisted on coming home as soon as she left the ballroom, hoping that we could catch her changing her gown or something. But having the carriage brought round took so blasted long that it was nearly one o’clock before we arrived. And there she was, waiting to help Marianne and me undress as though she hadn’t been throwing herself at Christian just an hour before!”
“The gown? The jewels? There was no sign of them?”
“None at all,” Poppy affirmed. “In fact, I stayed up until nearly dawn searching most of the house. And this morning I sneaked upstairs to look in the maids’ rooms.”
“Did you ask her about it directly? What did she say?”
“ ‘I don’t know what you mean, Your Highness,’” Poppy recited. “ ‘I never left the manor, Your Highness. I wouldn’t have a gown fit for a ball!’” Poppy gritted her teeth. “All sweet ignorance, and all of it a lie.”
“Now, Your Highness,” Roger said, flushing.
Poppy remembered belatedly that Ellen, no matter how trying, was Roger’s childhood friend, and checked her temper. Slightly.
“Call me Poppy,” she said. “And I’m afraid it’s true. There was none of the nonsense that my sisters and I went through. She didn’t start babbling incoherently, she didn’t suddenly lose her voice. She looked right at me with big eyes and lied. Just as she lied when I asked her why, then, was her hair so full of pomade? Why did she smell of exotic perfume? And, more tellingly, where were her stockings and why was she limping?”
“Limping?”
Roger looked concerned, and Poppy had to fight down another sigh. It would not do for him to be just as smitten with “Lady Ella” as the other gentlemen, with or without enchantment.
“I would imagine it was from dancing for hours in those impractical shoes,” she said. “I’m sure she’ll be fine. In the meantime, we really must figure out what is happening.”
“What is happening in here?”
Poppy and Roger looked up, startled, as Poppy’s words were echoed from the doorway. Lord Richard had just come into the room, and was surveying the assorted young people with his typical amusement.
“Rehashing last night’s gala? Gossiping about who danced with whom?”
Lord Richard had been in the garden with friends during most of the gala, and had not seen Lady Ella. But his ears had been filled with the story of how Poppy’s gown had been copied by the mysterious upstart, as Marianne labeled her, all the way back to the manor the night before. More speculation had occurred over breakfast, of course, which caused the gentleman to barricade himself behind a newspaper.
“Papa,” Marianne said peevishly. “There