“Thimble,” I mutter, casting about for where I left it. I can’t help but think of that gorgeous gown at the modiste’s atelier. The one I’m crafting isn’t anywhere near as beautiful, but it will serve. It’s pink on top with creamy tulle peeking out from a pale-green overskirt, draped to conceal the fact that these are two different dresses sewn together.
It takes me hours of work. Time I should have spent planting the spring garden, but that task will have to wait a few more days. I stay up well past midnight to finish my gown in secret.
While I work, I can’t stop thinking about him. The man who nearly ran me down. He was so handsome in his crimson jacket. I imagine he was an earl or even a duke. My father owned fine clothes like the ones he wore. I wonder if he will attend the ball. Don’t all the wealthy aristocrats know the prince?
If I can dance with the prince once, I will ask about the man on the white horse. I would never dream of being chosen by the prince himself—I know better than to expect much from life—but an earl would be more than sufficient. I am the daughter of an earl, after all. There is a rightness to the idea that appeals to me. A balancing of the scales.
The fantasy keeps me sewing furiously until my eyes burn and my fingers ache from making tiny stitches by candlelight. While my sisters return to Belterre City for fittings, I use the time to craft my own from their castoffs. Two weeks wasn’t very much time, considering all of my other obligations, but I make do with what I have.
On the morning of the ball, Tom awakens me rudely by leaping onto my stomach. I scratch his chin and smile at my gown. White, elbow-length gloves lay on the chair beside the dressmaker’s dummy. I wish I had proper jewelry, but Tremaine gave my mother’s collection to Cilla and Stacia.
Tremaine and my stepsisters will hate having to endure my presence, but they cannot deny me the opportunity to attend the ball if I’m properly outfitted. There is only one last task—to get my hands on that invitation. Without it, I won’t be permitted inside the castle.
I let Chompers out and go into the study to awaken Tremaine as usual, but for once, he isn’t in his worn leather chair. The unexpected opportunity sends my heart scrambling into my throat.
Where would he keep it?
Carefully, I close the door behind me. The click of its latch sounds louder than a cannon’s blast. I tiptoe behind the desk and ease open the drawers. They’re crammed with bills from creditors, old letters, odds and ends, and the tops of old bottles of booze. I shuffle them, but there’s no sign of the parchment square left by the royal messenger.
“Looking for something?”
Tremaine’s rough, mocking tone startles a yelp out of me. I press my palm to my chest. I was so intent upon finding it that I didn’t hear him come in.
“My key,” I blurt out.
“You don’t need it. Your dowry is in safe hands.”
Ha. “If by ‘safe hands,’ you mean ‘spent,’ then I suppose that’s true.”
His mouth ticks up in a smirk.
“Where would you go if you didn’t have a home, Elinor?”
“I…I’d go live with Maxine.”
He scoffs.
“If you were welcome at the witch’s cottage you’d have left years ago. You have nowhere to turn, Ellie. No one wants you.”
I swallow past the lump of hurt that clogs my throat. A suppressed sniffle stings my nostrils.
“Wrong, Tremaine.” Anger flares through my body like a dry pine catching a stray spark. “I stay because Cilla and Stacia wouldn’t survive a single day without my help. I remain here out of kindness. Out of duty. Out of?—”
Not love. I can’t lie about that.
“Out of shame,” he finishes for me. “You’re ashamed of your own family. You don’t want anyone to see how low we’ve fallen. You, more than anyone, need to maintain the image of a loving family. You create this fiction, Ellie.”
His words leave me gaping like a landed fish.
How can he mistake my kindness for ambition? Is his heart so rotten? Worse—how can he beright?
Fury and fear course through me with volcanic force. My skin frosts, but my heart settles into a fast, steady drumbeat, prepared for flight if I can get past him or fight if I can’t. I lunge left. Tremaine bares his teeth and lurches sideways to cut me off. He grabs my chin, squeezing my cheeks painfully.
“Admit it. You loved the way I touched you, little whore.”
“I hated every second of it,” I snarl through clenched teeth.
“Liar.”
