Stepsister, Page 3

  The grand duke bowed stiffly. He walked toward the prince and Ella, holding the velvet cushion out in front of him. When he was only a few yards away from them, the toe of his shiny black boot caught on something—a rock, he would later say—and he stumbled.

  The glass slipper slid off the velvet cushion. It hit the ground.

  And smashed into a thousand glittering pieces.

  The prince cried out in anguish.

  The grand duke apologized, hand to his heart.

  The soldiers shifted nervously, their swords clanking at their hips.

  Maman laughed. Isabelle gasped. Only Ella was calm. It soon became clear why.

  “It’s all right. I have the other one right here,” she said, smiling.

  As everyone watched, she pulled a second glass slipper from her skirt pocket. She placed it on the ground and lifted her hem. As she slid her small foot inside it, the blue light flared, and the slipper sparkled as if it were made of diamonds.

  It fit perfectly.

  The prince laughed joyously. He swept Ella into his arms and kissed her, not caring who saw. The soldiers cheered once more. The grand duke wiped sweat from his brow. Maman turned away, hands clenched, and walked into the house.

  Isabelle took it all in, wishing as she had a million times before that she was beautiful. That she was valued. That she mattered.

  “Ella won,” said a voice from behind her.

  It was Tavi. She’d limped out of the mansion and was leaning on the back of the bench, holding her injured foot off the ground. She walked around to the front and sat down.

  “Pretty always wins,” said Isabelle bitterly.

  As the two sisters were talking, a third person joined them—Ella.

  Tavi gave her an acid smile. “How perfect,” she said. “Here we are again. All three of us. Under the linden tree.”

  Ella barely heard her. She was staring at Isabelle’s and Tavi’s feet with a look of such deep sadness, it almost seemed like grief. “What have you done?” she asked, tears welling in her eyes.

  “Don’t you dare cry for us, Ella,” Tavi said vehemently. “Don’t you dare. You don’t get to. You got what you deserved and so did we.”

  Ella raised her eyes to Tavi’s. “Did we? Did I deserve your cruelty? Did you deserve these injuries? Is that what we deserved?”

  Tavi looked away. Then, with difficulty, she stood. “Go, Ella. Leave this place. Don’t come back.”

  Ella, her tears spilling over, watched as Tavi limped toward the mansion. Then she turned to her other stepsister. “Do you hate me so much, Isabelle? Still?”

  Isabelle couldn’t answer her; it felt as if her mouth were filled with salt. The memory she’d pushed down earlier surfaced now. She was nine years old again. Ella and Tavi were ten. Maman had been married to Ella’s father for a year.

  They were all together, under the linden tree.

  Sisters.

  Stepsisters.

  Friends.

  It was a summer afternoon.

  The sky was blue; the sun was bright.

  Roses tumbled over the stone walls surrounding the mansion. Birds sang in the spreading branches of the linden tree, and under them the three girls played. Ella fashioned daisy chains and made up stories about Tanaquill, the fairy queen, who lived in the hollow of the tree. Tavi did equations on a slate with a piece of chalk. And Isabelle fenced with an old mop handle, pretending to defend her sisters from Blackbeard.

  “Time to die, pirate scum! En garde!” she shouted, advancing on Bertrand the rooster, who’d wandered close to the tree. She much preferred Felix, the groom’s son, as a dueling partner, but he was busy with a new foal.

  The rooster pulled himself up to his full height. He flapped his wings, crowed loudly, and attacked. He chased Isabelle around the tree, then she chased him, and on and on they went, until an exasperated Tavi shouted, “For goodness’ sake, Izzy! Can’t you ever be quiet?”

  Unable to shake the rooster, Isabelle climbed up into the linden tree, hoping he would lose interest. Just as she’d seated herself on a branch, a carriage pulled into the drive. The rooster took one look at it and ran off. Two men got out of it. One was gray-haired and stooped. He carried a walking stick and a pink silk box with flowers painted on it. The younger had a leather satchel. Isabelle didn’t recognize them, but that was not unusual. Men often traveled from Paris to see her stepfather. Most were merchants, like he was, and came to discuss business.

  The men didn’t see Isabelle, or Ella, who was well in under the canopy of branches, only Tavi, who was sitting on the bench.

  “What are you doing there, little girl? Practicing your letters?” asked the older gentleman.

  “Trying to prove Euclid’s fifth postulate,” Octavia replied, her brow furrowed. She did not look up from her slate.

  The old man chuckled. He elbowed his companion. “My word, it appears we have a scholar here!” he said. Then he addressed Tavi again. “Now, listen to me, my little duck, you mustn’t trouble yourself with algebra.”

  “It’s geometry, actually.”

  The old man scowled at being corrected. “Yes, well, whatever it is, the feminine mind was not made for it,” he cautioned. “You’ll tax your brain. Give yourself headaches. And headaches cause wrinkles, you know.”

  Tavi looked up. “Is that how it works? Then how did you get your wrinkles? I can’t imagine you tax your brain very much.”

  “Well, I never … Not in all my days … What a rude girl!” the old man spluttered, shaking his walking stick at her.

  That was when Ella stepped forward. “Tavi didn’t mean to be rude, sir …”

  “Yes, I did,” said Tavi, under her breath.

  “… it’s just that Euclid vexes her,” Ella finished.

  The old man stopped spluttering. He smiled. Ella had that effect on people.

  “What a pretty girl you are. So sweet and pleasant,” he said. “I shall ask your papa to marry you to my grandson. Then you’ll have a wealthy husband and live in a fine house and wear lovely dresses. Would you like that?”

  Ella hesitated, then said, “Might I have a little dog instead?”

  The two men burst into laughter. The younger chucked Ella under the chin. The elder patted her blond curls, called her a pretty rose, and gave her a bonbon from the pink box he’d brought for Maman. Ella smiled and thanked him and eagerly ate the sweet.

  Isabelle, still up in the tree, watched the exchange longingly. She dearly loved bonbons. Mop handle in hand, she jumped down, startling the old man. He yelped, stumbled backward, and fell.

  “What the devil are you doing with that stick?” he shouted at her, red-faced.

  “Fighting Blackbeard,” Isabelle replied as the younger man helped him up.

  “You almost killed me!”

  Isabelle gave him a skeptical look. “I fall all the time. Out of trees. Off horses. Even out of the hayloft once. And it hasn’t killed me,” she said. “Might I please have a bonbon, too?”

  “Certainly not!” the old man said, brushing himself off. “Why would I give such a nice treat to such a nasty little monkey with grubby hands and leaves in her hair?”

  He picked up the pink box and his walking stick, and headed for the mansion, muttering to his companion the whole way. His voice was low, but Isabelle—who still had hopes of a bonbon—followed them and could hear him.

  “The one is a charming little beauty and will make a splendid wife one day, but the other two …” He shook his head ominously. “Well, I suppose they can always become nuns or governesses or whatever it is that ugly girls do.”

  Isabelle stopped dead. Her hand came up to her chest. There was a pain in her heart, new and strange. Only moments ago, she’d been happily slaying pirates, completely unaware that she was lacking. That she was less than. That she was a nasty little monkey, not a pretty rose.

  For the first time, she understood that Ella was pretty and she was not.

  Isabelle was strong. She was brave. She be
at Felix at sword fights. She jumped her stallion, Nero, over fences everyone else was afraid of. She’d chased a wolf away from the henhouse once with only a stick.

  These things are good, too, she’d thought as she stood there, bewildered and bereft. They are, aren’t they? I am, aren’t I?

  That was the day everything changed between the three girls.

  They were only children. Ella had been given a sweet and had preened under all the attention. Isabelle was jealous; she couldn’t help it. She wanted a sweet, too. She wanted kind words and admiring glances.

  Sometimes it’s easier to say that you hate what you can’t have rather than admit how badly you want it. And so Isabelle, still standing under the linden tree, said she hated Ella.

  And Ella said she hated her back.

  And Tavi said she hated everyone.

  And Maman stood on the terrace listening, a dangerous new light in her hard, watchful eyes.

  “Isabelle, I’m leaving now. I—I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again.”

  Ella’s voice pulled Isabelle back from her memories. She leaned down and kissed Isabelle’s forehead, her lips like a hot brand against Isabelle’s skin.

  “Don’t hate me anymore, stepsister,” she whispered. “For your own sake, not mine.”

  And then she was gone and Isabelle was alone on the bench.

  She thought about the person she once was, and the person she’d become. She thought about all the things she’d been told to want, the things she’d maimed herself to get, the important things. Ella had them now and Isabelle had nothing. Jealousy burned in her, as it had for years.

  Isabelle looked to her left and saw Tavi struggle up the steps to the mansion, limp across the threshold, and close the door. She looked to her right and saw the prince help Ella up into the carriage. He climbed in behind her, and then he, too, closed the door.

  The grand duke swung himself up next to the driver. He shouted a command at the soldiers ahead of him, all atop their horses now, and they started off. The driver cracked his whip, and the eight white stallions lurched forward in their harnesses.

  Isabelle watched the carriage as it rolled out of the long drive, headed down the narrow country road, and crested a hill. A moment later, it was gone.

  She remained where she was for quite some time, until the day grew cool and the sun began to set. Until birds flew to their roosts and a green-eyed fox loped off to the woods to hunt. Then she rose and whispered to the lengthening shadows, “It’s not you I hate, Ella. It never was. It’s me.”

  “Hand over the eyeball, Nelson. Now.”

  A lively little black monkey, his face ruffed with white, scampered across the ship’s deck. In one paw he clutched a glass eye.

  “Nelson, I’m warning you …”

  The man speaking—tall, well-dressed, his amber eyes flashing—cut a commanding figure, but the monkey paid him no attention. Instead of surrendering his treasure, he climbed up the foremast and jumped into the rigging.

  The ship’s bosun—one hand covering an empty eye socket—lumbered after the creature, bellowing for his pistol.

  “No firearms, please!” cried a woman in a red silk gown. “You must coax him down. He responds best to opera.”

  “I’ll coax him down, all right,” growled the bosun. “With a bullet!”

  Horrified, the diva pressed a hand to her ample bosom, then launched into “Lascia ch’io pianga,” a heroine’s aria of sorrow and defiance. The monkey cocked his head. He blinked his eyes. But he did not budge.

  The diva’s gorgeous voice, flowing over the ship’s deck down to the docks, drew dozens of onlookers. The ship, a clipper named Adventure, had made the port of Marseille only moments ago after three weeks at sea.

  As the diva continued to sing, another member of the amber-eyed man’s entourage—a fortune-teller—hastily consulted her tarot cards. One by one, she slapped them down on the deck. When she finished, her face was as white as the sails.

  “Nelson, come down!” she shouted. “This does not end well!”

  A magician conjured a banana, tossed the peel over her shoulder, and waved the fruit in the air. An actress called to the monkey beseechingly. And then a cabin boy ran up from belowdecks, brandishing the bosun’s pistol. The diva saw it; her voice shot up three octaves.

  As the bosun took his gun and cocked it, a group of acrobats, all in spangly costumes, cartwheeled across the deck and launched themselves into the rigging. The monkey raced up the mast to the crow’s nest. The bosun aimed, but as he did, a fire-breather spewed flames in his direction. The bosun stumbled backward, stepped on the banana peel, and lost his balance. He fell, hit his head on the deck, and knocked himself out. The gun went off. The shot went wide. And so did the flames.

  Their orange tongues licked the lower edge of the rigging, igniting it with a whoosh, then rapidly climbed upward, devouring the tarry ropes. Terrified, the monkey flung himself from the crow’s nest to the foremast. The acrobats leapt after him one by one like shooting stars.

  As the last acrobat landed, a flaming drop of tar fell onto the fuse of a cannon that had been primed and at the ready in case of a pirate attack. The fuse caught; the cannon fired. The heavy iron ball whistled across the harbor and blasted a hole in a fishing boat. Shouting and swearing, the fishermen jumped into the water and swam madly for the shore.

  Certain the Adventure was under attack, six musicians in lavender frock-coats and powdered wigs took their instruments from their cases and began to play a dirge. They were nearly drowned out a moment later by the city’s fire brigade, clanging down the street in a horse-drawn wagon.

  The diva, at the end of her aria now, hit a high note. The fire brigade, pumping madly from the dock, shot fountains of water into the rigging, putting out the flames and dousing her and everyone else on deck. And still the diva sang, arms outstretched, chin raised, holding her note. The crowd on the dock erupted into thunderous applause. Hats were tossed high into the air. Men wept. Women fainted. And in the captain’s cabin, every window shattered.

  The diva finished. Sopping wet, she walked to the ship’s railing and curtsied. Choruses of Brava! rang out.

  The monkey scrambled down the foremast and jumped into the arms of his master. The amber-eyed man extricated the eyeball from the creature’s grasp, polished it on his lapel, then gingerly put it back where it belonged. He had no idea whether it was right side up or upside down and the bosun, still unconscious, couldn’t tell him.

  The captain emerged from his cabin, brushing glass off his sleeves. He stood on the deck, clasped his hands behind his back, and surveyed the scene before him.

  “Mr. Fleming!” he barked at the first mate.

  “Sir!” the first mate barked back, snapping a salute.

  “Who is responsible for this? Please do not tell me that it’s—”

  “The Marquis de la Chance, sir,” the first mate said. “Who else?”

  Captain Duval was furious.

  And Chance was doing his best to look sorry. It was something he was quite good at, for he’d had a lot of practice.

  “What about the rigging you burned, the windows you broke, and the fishing boat you destroyed?” the captain thundered. “It will cost a fortune to replace it all!”

  “Then it will be a fortune well spent!” Chance said, flashing his most charming smile. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a more exquisite rendition of ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ in my entire life.”

  “That is not the point, sir!”

  “Pleasure is always the point, sir!” Chance countered. “It’s not burned rigging and broken windows you’ll remember on your deathbed, but the sight of a drenched diva, her gown clinging to every large and luscious curve, her magnificent voice soaring as the cannon fires and the flames climb. Let the bean counters count their beans, sir. You and I shall count moments of wonderment, moments of joy!”

  The captain, having endured many such speeches during the voyage, pinched the bridge of his nose. “Tel
l me, Marquis. How did the monkey come to have the eye in the first place?”

  “A bet was made on a hand of cards. I wagered the bosun five ducats against his glass eye. The foolish man took the eye out and placed it atop the coins. I ask you, Captain, have you ever met a monkey who could resist a glass eyeball?”

  The captain gestured at Nelson, sitting atop Chance’s shoulder. “Perhaps I should ask the monkey to pay for the damages?”

  Chance reached into his satchel, lying on the deck by his feet, and pulled out a fat leather purse. “Will this cover it?” he asked, dropping it into the captain’s hand.

  The captain opened the purse, counted the coins inside it, and nodded. “The gangplank will be lowered shortly,” he said. “The next time you decide to take a sea voyage, Marquis, please take it on someone else’s ship.”

  But Chance wasn’t listening. He’d already turned away to check that all the members of his retinue were above decks. Each and every person was needed. He was bound for the country. There were no opera houses there. No grand theaters or concert halls. Why, there were hardly any coffee houses, and very few patisseries, bookshops, or restaurants. He would not survive five minutes without his musicians, his acrobats and actors, his diva, ballerinas, magician, fortune-teller, fire-breather, sword-swallower, scientist, and cook.

  “Wait! The cook is missing!” Chance exclaimed as he completed his head count. He looked at Nelson. “Where is he?”

  The monkey pressed his paws over his mouth and puffed out his cheeks.

  “Not again,” Chance muttered.

  A moment later, a short, bald man in a long black leather coat with a red kerchief tied around his neck staggered up from the aft deck. He was rumpled and bleary-eyed. His face was as gray as week-old porridge.

  “Seasickness,” he said, as he joined Chance.

  “Seasickness, eh? Is that how one says ‘I drank too much gin last night’ in French?” Chance asked, arching an eyebrow.

  The cook winced. “Do you have to be so loud?” He leaned his head on the gunwale. “Why the devil are they taking so long with the gangplank? Where are we going anyway? Tell me it’s Paris.”