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afterandalasiaTitle: A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes (So This Is Love)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
afterandalasia
Fandom: Cinderella
Pairing: Cinderella/Prince Charming
Rating: Teen
Word count: 6,765 (Total 17,050)
Summary: Abandoned to work at the Palace by her stepmother after the death of her father, Cinderella bows to what seems like the inevitable. But when she meets a man named Christopher, and falls in love, she never expects where their relationship will take them, what they will lose, and what they will find in each other.
Part One
Part Two
Notes: As prompted bytudorgirl123 at the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
disney_kink kink meme. This is based on an AU scenario in which Lady Tremaine sells Cinderella to the Palace as a servant before moving with her daughters. For the name of the Prince, I have used that given in the Broadway musical; the setting of the piece is approximately 1860s Europe, with influences from Britain and the Continent, although it can also be considered ahistorically.
Without words, they seemed to know what was to come. Days and weeks crept by, and she did not see Christopher again, save for from a distance when the servants crept down to see the great balls and celebrations that were being held. Cinderella withdrew into herself, returning to her work as if she could clean away her own pain, and for all that Mary or Hettie or Benson would question her she did not reply.
In the May, Hettie left the service of the Palace to be married, and Cinderella left the Palace for one more Sunday afternoon in order to be at the wedding. Hettie, radiant in her best dress and with a bouquet of early blossoms, hugged her just once, very tightly, before disappearing into the crowd that were to celebrate at her new house. Cinderella, although invited, returned early to the Palace and sat with her book open on her lap, not seeing the words and barely knowing that the pictures were there. The next week, Hettie’s replacement arrived, a scrawny girl of nine with a birthmark on her cheek and a foul-tempered reticence that Cinderella, in her hopelessness, did not have the time to gently break down.
Midsummer neared. She watched the flowers in the gardens multiply, the roses pruned, the castle cleaned more thoroughly than ever in preparation for the announcement of the Prince’s betrothal. Whispers flew through the Paris that a ball was to be held on the first of July for the announcement to be made, although covert preparations for the wedding itself were already being arranged. Magdalena had yet to return to the Palace, but all knew already that it was to be she, and girls were vying for the position of lady’s maid to the new Princess.
Sometimes the work became so heavy that even on Sundays Cinderella was forced to work from sun-up to sun-down, sweeping and polishing, lighting fires and doing laundry, even running errands in the town as it dawned on her that there were fewer and fewer female servants older than she. On one such day, in a horse-drawn carriage with two other maids, she passed Hettie in the street and forced a smile and faint wave in return to her friend’s enthusiastic smile.
It was that night that the dreams began.
Dreams of dancing and music, of lights and beauty. Dreams of beautiful dresses and jewels and just beauty, abstracted and distilled. She dreamt of dancing through light that flowed like water around her, and of Christopher, and of being gathered into his arms once again. She dreamt of Christopher reaching down in a halo of light to her darkness and drawing her, so gently, so easily, out of it to stand beside him. She dreamt of hope.
And awoke in despair.
The dreams continued for two weeks. June peaked, and began to fade, and the reality of the Ball came closer and closer as an ache grew in Cinderella’s heart. And yet, somehow, something inside her was changing. The fear and misery within her began to dull, to change, to emerge as a fire of determination. Her wistful longing for Christopher’s face became a determination again. And at night she would take out the letter he had sent her, almost a year ago now, and remembered what they had promised to each other.
That a way would be found.
The day before the Ball arrived, a Sunday, and the Palace was more abuzz than ever. Cinderella rose in the small hours, before light had even started to emerge in the sky, and fought through the morning with a relentless speed that shocked even Mary. By noon her chores were not yet done, and frustration was beginning to channel through her, but bowing her head once again she finished her work and fled the Palace with a coat undone on her shoulders and hope and a small purse clutched in her hands.
She made her way down into the city, to Hettie’s house, and hammered at the front door with a fist still red raw from scrubbing walls and floors. It was Hettie’s husband that opened the door, a sweet man and older than her, with a young child from his previous wife whom Hettie adored. Cinderella asked for Hettie, and she appeared, her face glowing with domesticity and her clothes worn but well done so.
“Cinderella? What on Earth is it?” she asked.
Cinderella swallowed, then clenched her fists. “I need your help,” she replied.
She told Hettie everything. With what she planned, there was no point in pretending otherwise, and for all that the woman stared in slack-jawed amazement it was plain to see that she could not imagine Cinderella, of all people, fabricating such a story. The words tumbled furiously as the rickety coach they were in made its way through town, out to the leafy suburbs where once, and only once, had Cinderella recently been sent on one of the errands which she had been given.
She started with Christopher. With meeting him, with their falling in love, and she disguised the truth only in making it seem later than in reality that his rank came out. Hettie sat in astonishment as Cinderella charted in words their affair, its ending, the desperate love which she knew that they still had for each other. And then her plan: in all her years she had not told Hettie of her youth, before the Palace, and like most there it had been assumed that she was a child of poor family who had no option but to send her into servitude. When she told her true story, Hettie’s eyes went wide and she gripped the girl’s arm.
“My mother used to work for the Tremaines! Dear lord above, Ella, why did you not say before?”
“Would you have believed that this girl with rough hands and pauper’s clothes was a noblewoman?” replied Cinderella. “Besides, I did not understand. How could I have? I was a child of seven when they bought me here!”
The coach rattled to a stop as she spoke, and she looked through the window with hope flowering in her eyes. “Here,” she said, leaning across to open the door. “Come on, this is where I need you.”
Hettie followed her from the carriage and watched in astonishment as Cinderella pressed coins into the coachman’s hand. He nodded, sat back in his seat, and started preparing a pipe from his pocket. Cinderella took hold of her friend’s hand and tugged her up the driveway, fine gravel crunching beneath their feet, sun blazing down through thick green foliage. Finally they came up to an ornate pair of gates; beyond, they could see a continued driveway, a courtyard, and the front of a mansion-house.
“Good God,” said Hettie. “Where on Earth is this place?”
Cinderella had stopped before the gates, one hand wrapped around the wrought iron, eyes dimmed with nostalgia. A sad smile spread across her features as she looked into the overgrown grounds, the stone façade of the house still warm pale gold in the summer sun.
“This is the Tremaine Estate,” she replied. “This is where I grew up.”
“How are you going to get inside?” Hettie reached out and rattled the thick iron chain that bound the gate closed. It had rusted slightly with the years, but still stood staunch. “Do you still have keys?”
“No,” Cinderella said. She nodded her head to the side, along the high stone walls that surrounded the house. “This way.”
“Oh, honestly...” Hettie sighed, but dutifully followed the girl round to the right of the gateway, for what seemed like an age in the two yards’ gap between the wall and the woodland surrounding it. Cinderella, in her servant’s dress, did not have to lift her skirt over mud or thorns, but more than once Hettie caught her hems and muttered a curse beneath her breath as she continued.
Finally, Cinderella stopped, pressing at stones in the wall. Around a few of them, mortar had crumbled away, and she pushed a couple to reveal that they slid back a couple of inches into the wall.
“This must be some elaborate prank.”
“My father showed me when I was very young,” replied Cinderella. She put her foot against one, reached up for another, and rocked as if testing them for a moment. “It was our secret way in and out. None of the servants knew about it, nor my Mother... well, Mother probably knew about it, but we pretended that she didn’t. There’s a ladder on the far side that we can use to get down again.”
With that she drew herself up and started climbing, struggling with the unfamiliar moves but with enough strength in her to do so. Every so often she would pause, test a few bricks to find one that moved or slid aside, and then continue up.
“You’re mad!”
“A fool in love!” replied Cinderella, reaching the top of the wall and sitting astride it, hands on the top. “Come on, Hettie. Please!”
Hettie hesitated for a moment, then rolled her eyes and picked up the hems of her skirts to tuck into her waistband. “The things that I do... you could teach the servant boy’s a thing or two for mischief at this rate, Cinderella! Clearly the lack of my influence... oh, good grief... has had bad effects on you.”
All Cinderella did in response was laugh, slipping over to the ladder on the far side. She half expected the wood to have gone rotten with age, but somehow it was intact enough for her to climb down, the steps creaking a little but the paint and varnish on them holding up well. Hettie continued her grumbling all the way up to the top, over and back down again, brushing lichen and dust off her hands as she set foot on solid earth again.
“When I wake up, I’ll have one treat of a dream to tell you about, I swear.”
Cinderella was not listening. She walked across to the lawn, now calf-height and ragged, overgrown with wildflowers, and then hopped in onto one of the stepping stones that had been placed there. For a moment she was a child again, long ago, having to jump from one to another because her legs were not long enough to step. Now, though, she could stride from one to the next, in her head surrounded by trimmed lawns, kept roses, the chatter of people and smell of her father’s smoke. Hettie followed as a distance as the girl crossed the area of lawn, stopped in the courtyard to run her hand around the stone of a fountain long since gone dry, then turned to the steps and the front doors.
Each step up them felt like the ascent of a mountain. Finally Cinderella reached the front doors, their great heavy locks, and drew from her pocket a key that had warmed with her body heat. She could remember her sixth birthday, her father presenting it to her as if it was the greatest gift in the world, and she had thought it was at the time because it made her a grown up. She had hidden it from her stepmother, folded it into her skirt, forgotten for so many years what it was. And now...
It slid into the lock perfectly. Was harder to turn, but then she heard the sound of the tumblers falling open and a smile spread across her face.
She stood staring at the door for a while, her hand resting on the doorknob. Then Hettie reached past and pushed the door open, and what had started as a gasp turned into a cough as dust assaulted her senses.
“Go on,” said Hettie softly. “Go inside.”
Cinderella’s eyes watered, from the dust she told herself, as she crossed the stoop to stand in the hall once again. Stairs swooped to the upper balcony, doors opened to other rooms; she could still imagine the colour beneath the thick dust on the carpets, the shining wood the banisters had once been. “They really did leave,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“When my stepsisters said that they were leaving... I didn’t think that they were telling the truth.” She walked to the foot of the stairs, gently touching the newel. Dust came off on her fingers to show the rich dark oak beneath. “They used to lie to me a lot. But I suppose... they really have gone.”
“How long has it been?”said Hettie.
“Nine years.” She started to walk up the stairs, her footsteps – however soft – echoing in the empty room. At the top of the flight, a portrait: a handsome man, dressed smartly, standing with a knowing smile on his face and his hand on the shoulder of his wife. She was pretty, delicate, with pale blonde ringlets and a delicate frame. And then the babe in arms; she had lived to see her daughter’s fifth birthday, but no further, succumbing just days later to a fever that Cinderella had never known the name of. “And I should still have been in mourning clothes.”
To this, Hettie said nothing, but followed Cinderella through the dull hallways, cut with shafts of light that crept between heavy curtains. To the very end of the house, up another flight of stairs; Cinderella did not have to think twice, or to look round. Finally they came to a room with a pretty plaque upon the door, the word Ella in curling font and surrounded by small flowers. A pause, a smile, and then Cinderella pushed open the door to another dark room.
“I need some light,” she murmured, crossing hastily to the windows. She threw them open, letting bright sunlight wash into the room, and Hettie had to blink and let her eyes adjust.
By the time that they did, Cinderella was standing in the middle of the room again, her arms hugged tightly around herself. “This was my mother’s room,” she said softly. “She loved the sunlight, so my Father had this room made up for her... when she was ill.” Tears came into her eyes, and she had to swallow them back. “For a while, we all thought it would work, and then...”
She brushed at her eyes with the back of her hand, and looked around again. The bed, the armoire, the nightstand, the screen... all untouched. As if not even ghosts had been in this room since her mother had died.
“Is this what you came for?” said Hettie.
“No, not exactly... perhaps,” Cinderella conceded. If she closed her eyes she could smell the lavender her mother used to fill vases with to sweeten the air in the room. She opened the doors of the armoire, then stepped back in horror. “No... no!”
Hettie crossed to stand beside her. “What is it?”
“They’re gone! Her dresses, her things...” She looked around desperately, as if the clothes she had expected to find there would magically appear again, then tears came to her eyes. Suddenly she knew. “Oh no, oh no... my stepmother...”
This time there was nothing to say. A hand settled on her shoulder for a moment, but she threw it aside, all but storming to the bed. A white sheet still covered it, and dust rose as she sat down heavily, putting her head into her hands. “Oh, fool indeed...”
Hettie stood before her for a moment, then knelt down, patting her on the knee as Cinderella buried her face in her palms. “Now, come on, surely there’s... ow!” Frowning, she drew away slightly from the object against which her knee had bumped, then she pushed aside the sheet. “Tch, a travelling case.”
She was about to push it away, when a hand covered hers. “Stop,” said Cinderella gently. She got to her feet again, motioning for Hettie to back away, then drew out the travelling case and set it upright. She hesitated for a moment, then opened it, giving a gasp – this one not of horror – as she looked inside. A relieved expression came to her, a look of salvation, and she reached in to draw out the dress inside.
“Her wedding dress.”
The words were barely audible. Cinderella held the dress against herself, the white silk falling against her body, sweet lace around the neckline.
“It’s all here... all her wedding things...”
“This is what you came for,” said Hettie finally, understanding dawning in her eyes. Cinderella turned to face her, still holding the dress against herself, cheeks flushed though her eyes were red with tears or the holding back of them. Then further insight: “You’re going to the Ball.”
“A servant can do nothing... but perhaps a noblewoman would be worthy.”
They paused for a moment longer, looking at each other in utter astonishment at their own fortune, then Hettie was the first to break the silence with a peal of laughter. “Cinderella, I will never know another like you. Come on! We’ve only got tonight to ensure that the dress will fit you! And how we’re going to get that travelling case over the wall remains to be seen...”
Somehow they had wrestled it back out over the wall, with the help of some rope. The driver of the carriage looked at them strangely, but more coins in his palm quelled the questions on his tongue, and he returned them to Hettie’s house just long enough for her to kiss her husband goodnight before they both continued on up to the Palace. Benson, of all people, was in the night kitchen, and though he shook his head in astonishment he waved them quickly on before Mary could catch them, and they made it to Cinderella’s room, case still intact, with nothing more than sore arms and quick breathing to chastise them.
“Do you have a tailor’s dummy?” asked Hettie. Cinderella looked at her pointedly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I forget already what it was like to work here... come on then, put the dress on and we’ll have a look.”
Since leaving the Palace, Hettie sewed for a little money to supplement her husband’s income, and in her brief visit home had collected her sewing equipment. Now she stood Cinderella on a box in the centre of the room, the beds pushed up against the walls, and set to work with pins and tape as the light outside began to dim, pausing only to light the candles in order to better see what she was doing.
“You’ll never have the latest fashion in this, Ella,” she said through the needle and thread in her mouth, touching up a fragment of hem that had fallen loose. “It’s twenty years old and more!”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Cinderella. “I’m not a servant in this dress.”
“That’s true,” said Hettie, more softly this time. “Now keep still whilst I work out what we’re going to do with this bustle... I can move the fabric round, but there’s only so much I’ll be able to change.”
“Please, keep it.”
Hettie looked up, brows moving slightly, to see a pained look on Cinderella’s face.
“It’s my mothers. I... don’t really want to change it too much. Just make it fit.”
A nod. “All right, then.” Hettie went back to her pins, shifting the fabric round Cinderella’s narrow waist, noting how it was straining a little at the bust and would need to be let out, when the door to the room opened. Both women looked round, shocked and guilty, to see Victoria, dark shadows under her eyes and a scowl on her lips, staring at them from the doorway.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, with a shrewishness far beyond her years. “You aren’t supposed to be in here.”
“Hettie is a friend of mind,” said Cinderella quickly, clasping her hands together in front of her. Even with her hair simply pulled into a bun, she looked ethereal in the old dress, like a ghost herself. “She’s helping me with the dress... oh please, Victoria, don’t tell anyone.”
The girl closed the door behind her, still glaring. “Why are you messing with that dress? We’ve got work to be doing tomorrow.”
“It’s... a long story,” said Cinderella with a sigh. For a moment she thought that she saw a softening in Victoria’s expression, a hint of interest, and she licked her lips before adding: “Though perhaps I should get used to telling it. I was sent to the Palace after my parents died, by my stepmother. But I was not always a servant, and, well...” she hesitated for a moment, but this time there was definitely a flicker of curiosity. “I’m going to reclaim my birth right,” she said, surprised to find her voice trembling slightly. “And the man I love.”
For the first time in the month and more that she had been here, Victoria’s expression softened. It took years away from her as she stared up at Cinderella, the wraith-like figure in white. “Like something out of a fairytale?” she asked.
“I suppose so,” said Cinderella, smiling shyly.
“Not if we don’t get this dress done by morning,” said Hettie, breaking the moment between the two. “Don’t mind us, Victoria, you get some sleep. We need to get this done.”
They worked until dawn, the light coming in at the window a relief for eyes that had spent the whole night working by candles. Finally, though, the dress was finished, the headdress cleaned, the shoes prepared. Hettie had marvelled at how beautiful, and how delicate, it all was, and Cinderella had hugged her and almost cried in relief that there seemed to be even a chance. Even Victoria, on waking from her deep sleep, had looked at the dress hung from the beams in the ceiling and smiled. Cinderella yawned and rubbed at her tired eyes, only for a knock to come at the door and all three to look round sharply.
“I’d best get that...” said Cinderella slowly, stepping away from the dress and opening the door just a crack. “Hello?”
Mary was outside, looking more tired than ever with the increasing pressure of arranging things for the Ball. “Oh, you’re awake, mercy me. Cinderella, I’m so sorry to say this, but the Lady Magdalena has insisted that you be her maid for the Ball this evening. She will not have any other, says that after what happened last time you’re the only one she can trust.”
“Mary, I can’t, I—”
“Cinderella, she is throwing things around her room. You will go to her, and you will do what she says, and Lord have mercy do not make this the first time in all of your years here that you have been wilful. Do you understand me?”
Cinderella looked at her open-mouthed, fear crashing down upon her.
“Do you understand me, Cinderella?”
She nodded, and replied in a small voice: “Yes, Mary.”
Without even an acknowledgement of it, Mary nodded, whirled and walked back down the corridor, leaving Cinderella to turn back to Hettie and Victoria with shock written across her face.
“Oh no,” said Hettie. “Not when we’ve done all this work. You go and tend to this Magdalena, and then you come right back here, do you hear me?”
“You don’t understand,” Cinderella said, fists balled and hands held to her chest. “Lady Magdalena is the woman that the Prince is supposed to marry!”
This time it was Hettie who wore the expression of disbelief. Then she stopped, shook her head and pointed to the door. “Do not think of it. Go, do your job, and no matter what comes to pass I have no doubt this will be the last day of it. And this evening, you shall see your Prince again.”
The lights were low, the room dimmed as the fire started to go out. Christopher sat before it, elbows on his knees and chin resting against his folded hands, staring sightlessly into the flames. He knew what was to pass this evening; it was nothing short of an open secret now. The Lady Magdalena de Calôn, beautiful, eligible elder daughter of the Duke of Calôn, was to be officially betrothed to him at the stroke of midnight tonight, in order that they be wed before the month was out.
There was a time, of course, when he would have assented quite willingly. This time last year, perhaps, or just before his eighteenth birthday had come to pass. He had known his duty then, and observed it above all else; his father needed him to marry before too long, to become King himself, and to produce an heir. In that order, of course. And then some day he would need to rule the Kingdom, and would need to do so with a Queen at his side. That was how things worked.
But now... all that he could think of were blue eyes, and fair skin, and a sweet heart in a lost nobleman’s daughter. And no matter how eligible the Lady Magdalena was, he knew that he could not love her.
He buried his face in his hands, wondering how the actions of the last year could have led to this, and sat in silence even as the door to his chambers opened.
“Your Highness?”
The Grand Duke, of course. Christopher raised his head, but did not answer, as the Grand Duke came within the circle of weak firelight.
“Your Highness, the Ball is about to begin. It is required that you are present.”
“Of course, of course,” he said softly. The Grand Duke was looking at him with suppressed concern, an expression that Christopher had become used to seeing in these passing months. How to explain that he had fallen in love? Such was not supposed to happen to a man in his position; he was supposed to marry first, and discover love afterwards, and thus ensure that he was to be happy. “I am coming.”
The Grand Duke fussed and flapped slightly at his shoulder until Christopher waved him away, entering the ballroom to find his father waiting. And then came the usual rigmarole: the introductions, the beginning of the music, the calling of titles and announcements of entrances.
Eventually Lady Magdalena arrived, just late enough to draw attention to herself without appearing rude. Christopher forced a smile to his face as she entered, the music dipping low so that her name could be announced above them before she swept down the stairs. She was wearing deep blue, the colour of the sapphires at her neck and ears, her dress the very height of fashion with its bustled skirts, low neckline showing a sweep of dusky skin, and the neat white lace gloves upon her hand. She walked like nobility, even like royalty, even he had to admit that; her dark hair, dark eyes and rich skin garnered her looks of desire and envy from every angle. But that this had been last year, and he would have been willing to wed her.
She walked straight to him, and curtseyed deeply; he bowed in return, grateful for an excuse to break eye contact. Then he straightened, assumed his role of Prince, and graciously extended one hand to her.
“May I have the honour of dancing the next minuet?”
A ripple of whisper ran through the room; he carefully took no heed of it. Magdalena smiled, and he suspected it was a real smile, and inclined her head.
“Certainly, your Highness.”
A nod to the orchestra, and music gently began to swell again. Christopher took hold of Magdalena’s hand, missing how another hand had sat in his, and led her to the dance floor. It was effort to maintain the smile upon his face as his feet followed the steps of the minuet: forwards and backwards, delicate steps to the side, a bow in the appropriate places. He had been dancing since a child, though he had only more recently developed any sort of taste for it; it took no effort at all to dance through the music, come to an end, bow deeply to the polite smattering of applause that followed.
For the next dance there was another partner, this woman nervous and little and flustered with his attention, and his smile grew a little more true at the thought of how well she would remember her night of dancing with the Prince. He could not begrudge her such. Then a third dance, with another woman, and as he steeled himself to ask Magdalena to dance again the music hushed once more.
Surely there were no more guests to come. Christopher stopped mid-sentence in conversation with the Grand Duke, paused, then turned to face the doorway.
“The Honourable Ella Tremaine,” came the announcement, “daughter of Baron Tremaine.”
The room hushed.
It was not for some time that he realised his mouth had dropped open at the sight of Cinderella at the top of the stairs. She wore a white gown, not bustled as was the fashion but with wide skirts; gold and pearls glimmered at the hem, the bodice, the lace flounced collar. Her shoulders were bare, neckline thrown low, to reveal her soft skin and the delicate line of her neck, unframed by jewellery. Long white gloves clad her arms, white shoes her feet. A fine net of silver filigree, again strewn with pearls, held her hair in place, crowned with white ribbon.
A dream, walking into the room. For the first time in oh, so long, he found himself smiling, warmth spilling around his heart as she looked straight across the room and into his eyes. Whispering filled the room again as she descended the stairs, eyes lowered, hands not touching the hem of her skirt. Who was she, he could hear them whisper. Too arrive to late, and without escort, and wearing a dress that went out of style at least twenty years ago. And now she walked straight towards the Prince with her head held high! Well, he could hear them say, whoever this Ella Tremaine is, she will be the talk of the Kingdom before the week is out.
And Cinderella smiles at him across the room, and he does not care. Because they have found each other once again.
They danced too much that night. So much that those whispers became more than whispers, that the Prince is dancing too often with the same girl, that there is a scandal afoot. But neither could care less; though Magdalena grew visibly angry and the King bewildered, though the Grand Duke attempted to reprimand the Prince for his behaviour, though it had been so long since Cinderella danced that more than once she forgot which steps to tread, they danced until her feet ached and the evening had worn well on.
Only then did Cinderella retire to a chair, flushed, breathless and exultant, whilst the Prince – no, whilst Christopher – sought out a glass of wine to refresh her somewhat. She put one hand to her cheek, unable to feel through her glove the old powder and rouge that she and Hettie had found, but knowing that it was there all the same.
“Ella Tremaine,” sneered a voice behind her. Cinderella started, turning in her chair before jumping to her feet with her heart pounding in her chest. She should have known; of course she should have known, with such a grand occasion and such a great Ball. She did not recognise either of the two women standing right behind her chair, at least for a moment, but their mother behind... oh yes, Lady Tremaine was unforgettable, burnt into her nightmares. Which meant that the girls behind her chair, Anastasia and Drizella, wearing identical looks of hatred, could only be darker in their intentions than they had been a decade before.
“Such is my name,” she said, voice trembling slightly. She drew herself up as best she could, but the sight of her stepmother made her want to do nothing more than run. Suddenly she felt seven years old again. “And I will no longer go without answering to it.”
The dark-haired girl sneered, the red-haired one folded her arms across her chest and looked across haughtily. Lady Tremaine looked sternly at Cinderella, hands folded on the head of the walking stick that she carried. “Indeed? Well, personally I would not have a serving girl,” this with a curl of her lip and her voice both at once, “in a hand-me-down dress sullying the name of my husband.”
“Do not speak so of my father,” said Cinderella. Her voice was quiet, but it surprised even her with its coolness. “Do not besmirch his name.”
“My my, what educated words for such a lowly girl,” said Lady Tremaine. “Did you learn them from eavesdropping on those whom you serve?”
Her throat tightened. Cinderella could taste bile in her throat as she stood before them, searching for any words to reply with, when there were footsteps behind her and Christopher appeared. “Is there a problem, ma’am?”
The sudden appearance surprised her too much to do anything, but Anastasia and Drizella immediately spread wide curtseys – ones which, Cinderella could not help but note, seemed a little too obsequious – whilst Lady Tremaine with the stiffness of one hemmed by age dipped at the knee and inclined her head.
“Your Highness,” she said. “It is such an honour to make your acquaintance. May I introduce to you my daughters? Drizella, Anastasia.” She motioned for the two girls to step forwards, suddenly all fluttering fans and coy eyes and quivering bustles. “We returned from abroad in order to attend this Ball, your Highness.”
“May I express my gratitude for your doing so,” Christopher replied calmly. “And I would ask, if I may make so bold, that you pass on to your daughters my appreciation of their rare beauties. If I may interrupt, however, I came to ask Miss. Tremaine for the honour of this waltz.”
Both of the girls seemed to perk up, then their looks of glee turned to horror as the Prince turned to Cinderella and held out his hand to her. All but forgetting the pain in her feet, she quickly took his hand with a bob and a bow of her head, and allowed him to sweep her away from her step-mother and –sisters.
“Your hand is shaking,” he said quietly as he drew her into hold.
“That is my stepmother,” she replied. A glance round to his face caught he frown that spread there. “She is the one who bought me here.”
“I remember.” His voice was lowered, becoming more dangerous, and she felt the vibrations of his words through her chest, burring against her sternum. “How long were she and your father wed?”
“Less than two years,” Cinderella replied.
He nodded. “Very well. You have more claim to the house than she.”
“I would not see them destitute.”
Christopher did not reply for a moment, but his hand squeezed hers. Weakness and tiredness welled in her, and despite the swirling music she wanted for a moment to rest her head upon his shoulder somewhere far from here and quiet. Her feet were aching from the dancing and the day’s work and the shoes that fitted her less than perfectly, and even Christopher’s hand on her shoulder and around her hand could not hide that all from her.
The music swelled to a crescendo, then declined, and she swirled into a deep curtsey, bowing her head in exhaustion. To run, to run far from here, and forget that this had ever occurred...
“Cinderella,” said Christopher, and she looked up a little more sharply than she had intended. “Will you be my wife?”
“What?” she could not believe her ears, and would have forgotten to rise to her feet again had he not reached out, taken hold of her hand once more, and drawn her upright. “Your High-”
“I am but Christopher,” he said. Brown eyes met blue, her hand trembled in his, but before she could draw away he held it more tightly. “Cinderella, Ella Tremaine, whatever name you would use. It is to be announced tonight that I am to be wed. Can I say that it is to be to you?”
She thought she was about to awaken once again, then with tears in her eyes that made the light in the room form a halo around his head she smiled.
“Yes.”
He kissed her hand, before them all, earning shocked whispers afresh. Then whispered, “Go,” and she ran from the room, before anyone could stop her. Holding her skirts aloft and leaving one shoe behind upon the stairwell, heart so light that it felt as if she was going to fly from it. One of the soldiers at the door tried to stop her, but she knew this Palace better than they and slipped into the servant’s passage to run to her room.
Hettie was asleep upon her bed, but awoke as the door was flung open and Cinderella, laughing, blushing, shaking, burst into the room.
“What is it?” she declared, getting to her feet.
Cinderella swooped her into an embrace, despite her squeak of protest. “It... we...” she broke off into more laughter, unable to complete a full sentence. Hettie steered her down onto the bed, where she lay back with her arms thrown above her head, staring up towards the ceiling. “We are to wed,” she said finally, sweetly, her voice like singing.
“You are what?” said Hettie bluntly.
“Wed! Christopher asked me... oh, if this is a dream, let it continue for all eternity.”
There was a moment’s silence, uncomfortable, and Cinderella’s smile faded slightly. She propped herself up on her elbows to look across to Hettie, strands of hair starting to fall free from her hairnet to curl around her cheeks. “What is it?” she asked.
“Daughter of a Baron or no, I do not know what chance you could have, Cinderella. He was supposed to be wed to a Lady, and...”
In an instant, Cinderella was on her feet again. “I have done what I can,” she cried. And for a moment she thought that she might fall to tears once again, but in a deep shuddering breath she controlled herself once again. Her voice became lowered, calm. “I have done what I can. Now it is his turn.”
Hettie looked uncertain, but moved to hug her friend once again. They stood there in the darkened room for a while, perhaps praying in some silent way, until the knock at the door came that they had known was coming all along.
Midsummer. The gardens of the Palace had been thrown open the wedding, white roses and pink dahlias blooming, lavender filling the air with its intensely sweet scent. At the edge of the lake, the Prince waited, dress in his finest regalia, finally with a smile upon his face after so long.
Cinderella wore her mother’s dress. She had not been sure whether she had wanted a Lady’s maid or not, but the Prince had insisted, and it had been the strangest thing in the world to awaken before dawn but to not have to rise. Christopher had promised that their honeymoon would be spent in her father’s house, bought from Lady Tremaine and now being cleaned and aired ready for use.
The only difference in clothing were the shoes, this time perfectly fitting her feet. Even so, as she descended from the pagoda in a cloud of flower petals, her arm looped through Christopher’s, one slipped from her foot. She turned with a surprised laugh to find the King kneeling before her, silver silk slipper cradled in his hands.
Blushing, she proffered her foot for him to slide the slipper onto. “Your Majesty,” she said softly, bobbing as if about to curtsey again, when he looked up with a smile in his eyes and stopped her with the barest raising of his hand.
“You are my daughter now,” he said.
Cinderella smiled afresh, and bent slightly to kiss him on the forehead. “Then I have two fine fathers,” she replied.
Then Christopher took her hand again and, in a further whirl of petals, whisked her away. To a world just far enough from, and just close enough to, her past.
...and they lived happily ever after.
Author:
afterandalasia Fandom: Cinderella
Pairing: Cinderella/Prince Charming
Rating: Teen
Word count: 6,765 (Total 17,050)
Summary: Abandoned to work at the Palace by her stepmother after the death of her father, Cinderella bows to what seems like the inevitable. But when she meets a man named Christopher, and falls in love, she never expects where their relationship will take them, what they will lose, and what they will find in each other.
Part One
Part Two
Notes: As prompted by
tudorgirl123 at the disney_kink kink meme. This is based on an AU scenario in which Lady Tremaine sells Cinderella to the Palace as a servant before moving with her daughters. For the name of the Prince, I have used that given in the Broadway musical; the setting of the piece is approximately 1860s Europe, with influences from Britain and the Continent, although it can also be considered ahistorically. Without words, they seemed to know what was to come. Days and weeks crept by, and she did not see Christopher again, save for from a distance when the servants crept down to see the great balls and celebrations that were being held. Cinderella withdrew into herself, returning to her work as if she could clean away her own pain, and for all that Mary or Hettie or Benson would question her she did not reply.
In the May, Hettie left the service of the Palace to be married, and Cinderella left the Palace for one more Sunday afternoon in order to be at the wedding. Hettie, radiant in her best dress and with a bouquet of early blossoms, hugged her just once, very tightly, before disappearing into the crowd that were to celebrate at her new house. Cinderella, although invited, returned early to the Palace and sat with her book open on her lap, not seeing the words and barely knowing that the pictures were there. The next week, Hettie’s replacement arrived, a scrawny girl of nine with a birthmark on her cheek and a foul-tempered reticence that Cinderella, in her hopelessness, did not have the time to gently break down.
Midsummer neared. She watched the flowers in the gardens multiply, the roses pruned, the castle cleaned more thoroughly than ever in preparation for the announcement of the Prince’s betrothal. Whispers flew through the Paris that a ball was to be held on the first of July for the announcement to be made, although covert preparations for the wedding itself were already being arranged. Magdalena had yet to return to the Palace, but all knew already that it was to be she, and girls were vying for the position of lady’s maid to the new Princess.
Sometimes the work became so heavy that even on Sundays Cinderella was forced to work from sun-up to sun-down, sweeping and polishing, lighting fires and doing laundry, even running errands in the town as it dawned on her that there were fewer and fewer female servants older than she. On one such day, in a horse-drawn carriage with two other maids, she passed Hettie in the street and forced a smile and faint wave in return to her friend’s enthusiastic smile.
It was that night that the dreams began.
Dreams of dancing and music, of lights and beauty. Dreams of beautiful dresses and jewels and just beauty, abstracted and distilled. She dreamt of dancing through light that flowed like water around her, and of Christopher, and of being gathered into his arms once again. She dreamt of Christopher reaching down in a halo of light to her darkness and drawing her, so gently, so easily, out of it to stand beside him. She dreamt of hope.
And awoke in despair.
The dreams continued for two weeks. June peaked, and began to fade, and the reality of the Ball came closer and closer as an ache grew in Cinderella’s heart. And yet, somehow, something inside her was changing. The fear and misery within her began to dull, to change, to emerge as a fire of determination. Her wistful longing for Christopher’s face became a determination again. And at night she would take out the letter he had sent her, almost a year ago now, and remembered what they had promised to each other.
That a way would be found.
The day before the Ball arrived, a Sunday, and the Palace was more abuzz than ever. Cinderella rose in the small hours, before light had even started to emerge in the sky, and fought through the morning with a relentless speed that shocked even Mary. By noon her chores were not yet done, and frustration was beginning to channel through her, but bowing her head once again she finished her work and fled the Palace with a coat undone on her shoulders and hope and a small purse clutched in her hands.
She made her way down into the city, to Hettie’s house, and hammered at the front door with a fist still red raw from scrubbing walls and floors. It was Hettie’s husband that opened the door, a sweet man and older than her, with a young child from his previous wife whom Hettie adored. Cinderella asked for Hettie, and she appeared, her face glowing with domesticity and her clothes worn but well done so.
“Cinderella? What on Earth is it?” she asked.
Cinderella swallowed, then clenched her fists. “I need your help,” she replied.
~
She told Hettie everything. With what she planned, there was no point in pretending otherwise, and for all that the woman stared in slack-jawed amazement it was plain to see that she could not imagine Cinderella, of all people, fabricating such a story. The words tumbled furiously as the rickety coach they were in made its way through town, out to the leafy suburbs where once, and only once, had Cinderella recently been sent on one of the errands which she had been given.
She started with Christopher. With meeting him, with their falling in love, and she disguised the truth only in making it seem later than in reality that his rank came out. Hettie sat in astonishment as Cinderella charted in words their affair, its ending, the desperate love which she knew that they still had for each other. And then her plan: in all her years she had not told Hettie of her youth, before the Palace, and like most there it had been assumed that she was a child of poor family who had no option but to send her into servitude. When she told her true story, Hettie’s eyes went wide and she gripped the girl’s arm.
“My mother used to work for the Tremaines! Dear lord above, Ella, why did you not say before?”
“Would you have believed that this girl with rough hands and pauper’s clothes was a noblewoman?” replied Cinderella. “Besides, I did not understand. How could I have? I was a child of seven when they bought me here!”
The coach rattled to a stop as she spoke, and she looked through the window with hope flowering in her eyes. “Here,” she said, leaning across to open the door. “Come on, this is where I need you.”
Hettie followed her from the carriage and watched in astonishment as Cinderella pressed coins into the coachman’s hand. He nodded, sat back in his seat, and started preparing a pipe from his pocket. Cinderella took hold of her friend’s hand and tugged her up the driveway, fine gravel crunching beneath their feet, sun blazing down through thick green foliage. Finally they came up to an ornate pair of gates; beyond, they could see a continued driveway, a courtyard, and the front of a mansion-house.
“Good God,” said Hettie. “Where on Earth is this place?”
Cinderella had stopped before the gates, one hand wrapped around the wrought iron, eyes dimmed with nostalgia. A sad smile spread across her features as she looked into the overgrown grounds, the stone façade of the house still warm pale gold in the summer sun.
“This is the Tremaine Estate,” she replied. “This is where I grew up.”
“How are you going to get inside?” Hettie reached out and rattled the thick iron chain that bound the gate closed. It had rusted slightly with the years, but still stood staunch. “Do you still have keys?”
“No,” Cinderella said. She nodded her head to the side, along the high stone walls that surrounded the house. “This way.”
“Oh, honestly...” Hettie sighed, but dutifully followed the girl round to the right of the gateway, for what seemed like an age in the two yards’ gap between the wall and the woodland surrounding it. Cinderella, in her servant’s dress, did not have to lift her skirt over mud or thorns, but more than once Hettie caught her hems and muttered a curse beneath her breath as she continued.
Finally, Cinderella stopped, pressing at stones in the wall. Around a few of them, mortar had crumbled away, and she pushed a couple to reveal that they slid back a couple of inches into the wall.
“This must be some elaborate prank.”
“My father showed me when I was very young,” replied Cinderella. She put her foot against one, reached up for another, and rocked as if testing them for a moment. “It was our secret way in and out. None of the servants knew about it, nor my Mother... well, Mother probably knew about it, but we pretended that she didn’t. There’s a ladder on the far side that we can use to get down again.”
With that she drew herself up and started climbing, struggling with the unfamiliar moves but with enough strength in her to do so. Every so often she would pause, test a few bricks to find one that moved or slid aside, and then continue up.
“You’re mad!”
“A fool in love!” replied Cinderella, reaching the top of the wall and sitting astride it, hands on the top. “Come on, Hettie. Please!”
Hettie hesitated for a moment, then rolled her eyes and picked up the hems of her skirts to tuck into her waistband. “The things that I do... you could teach the servant boy’s a thing or two for mischief at this rate, Cinderella! Clearly the lack of my influence... oh, good grief... has had bad effects on you.”
All Cinderella did in response was laugh, slipping over to the ladder on the far side. She half expected the wood to have gone rotten with age, but somehow it was intact enough for her to climb down, the steps creaking a little but the paint and varnish on them holding up well. Hettie continued her grumbling all the way up to the top, over and back down again, brushing lichen and dust off her hands as she set foot on solid earth again.
“When I wake up, I’ll have one treat of a dream to tell you about, I swear.”
Cinderella was not listening. She walked across to the lawn, now calf-height and ragged, overgrown with wildflowers, and then hopped in onto one of the stepping stones that had been placed there. For a moment she was a child again, long ago, having to jump from one to another because her legs were not long enough to step. Now, though, she could stride from one to the next, in her head surrounded by trimmed lawns, kept roses, the chatter of people and smell of her father’s smoke. Hettie followed as a distance as the girl crossed the area of lawn, stopped in the courtyard to run her hand around the stone of a fountain long since gone dry, then turned to the steps and the front doors.
Each step up them felt like the ascent of a mountain. Finally Cinderella reached the front doors, their great heavy locks, and drew from her pocket a key that had warmed with her body heat. She could remember her sixth birthday, her father presenting it to her as if it was the greatest gift in the world, and she had thought it was at the time because it made her a grown up. She had hidden it from her stepmother, folded it into her skirt, forgotten for so many years what it was. And now...
It slid into the lock perfectly. Was harder to turn, but then she heard the sound of the tumblers falling open and a smile spread across her face.
She stood staring at the door for a while, her hand resting on the doorknob. Then Hettie reached past and pushed the door open, and what had started as a gasp turned into a cough as dust assaulted her senses.
“Go on,” said Hettie softly. “Go inside.”
Cinderella’s eyes watered, from the dust she told herself, as she crossed the stoop to stand in the hall once again. Stairs swooped to the upper balcony, doors opened to other rooms; she could still imagine the colour beneath the thick dust on the carpets, the shining wood the banisters had once been. “They really did leave,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“When my stepsisters said that they were leaving... I didn’t think that they were telling the truth.” She walked to the foot of the stairs, gently touching the newel. Dust came off on her fingers to show the rich dark oak beneath. “They used to lie to me a lot. But I suppose... they really have gone.”
“How long has it been?”said Hettie.
“Nine years.” She started to walk up the stairs, her footsteps – however soft – echoing in the empty room. At the top of the flight, a portrait: a handsome man, dressed smartly, standing with a knowing smile on his face and his hand on the shoulder of his wife. She was pretty, delicate, with pale blonde ringlets and a delicate frame. And then the babe in arms; she had lived to see her daughter’s fifth birthday, but no further, succumbing just days later to a fever that Cinderella had never known the name of. “And I should still have been in mourning clothes.”
To this, Hettie said nothing, but followed Cinderella through the dull hallways, cut with shafts of light that crept between heavy curtains. To the very end of the house, up another flight of stairs; Cinderella did not have to think twice, or to look round. Finally they came to a room with a pretty plaque upon the door, the word Ella in curling font and surrounded by small flowers. A pause, a smile, and then Cinderella pushed open the door to another dark room.
“I need some light,” she murmured, crossing hastily to the windows. She threw them open, letting bright sunlight wash into the room, and Hettie had to blink and let her eyes adjust.
By the time that they did, Cinderella was standing in the middle of the room again, her arms hugged tightly around herself. “This was my mother’s room,” she said softly. “She loved the sunlight, so my Father had this room made up for her... when she was ill.” Tears came into her eyes, and she had to swallow them back. “For a while, we all thought it would work, and then...”
She brushed at her eyes with the back of her hand, and looked around again. The bed, the armoire, the nightstand, the screen... all untouched. As if not even ghosts had been in this room since her mother had died.
“Is this what you came for?” said Hettie.
“No, not exactly... perhaps,” Cinderella conceded. If she closed her eyes she could smell the lavender her mother used to fill vases with to sweeten the air in the room. She opened the doors of the armoire, then stepped back in horror. “No... no!”
Hettie crossed to stand beside her. “What is it?”
“They’re gone! Her dresses, her things...” She looked around desperately, as if the clothes she had expected to find there would magically appear again, then tears came to her eyes. Suddenly she knew. “Oh no, oh no... my stepmother...”
This time there was nothing to say. A hand settled on her shoulder for a moment, but she threw it aside, all but storming to the bed. A white sheet still covered it, and dust rose as she sat down heavily, putting her head into her hands. “Oh, fool indeed...”
Hettie stood before her for a moment, then knelt down, patting her on the knee as Cinderella buried her face in her palms. “Now, come on, surely there’s... ow!” Frowning, she drew away slightly from the object against which her knee had bumped, then she pushed aside the sheet. “Tch, a travelling case.”
She was about to push it away, when a hand covered hers. “Stop,” said Cinderella gently. She got to her feet again, motioning for Hettie to back away, then drew out the travelling case and set it upright. She hesitated for a moment, then opened it, giving a gasp – this one not of horror – as she looked inside. A relieved expression came to her, a look of salvation, and she reached in to draw out the dress inside.
“Her wedding dress.”
The words were barely audible. Cinderella held the dress against herself, the white silk falling against her body, sweet lace around the neckline.
“It’s all here... all her wedding things...”
“This is what you came for,” said Hettie finally, understanding dawning in her eyes. Cinderella turned to face her, still holding the dress against herself, cheeks flushed though her eyes were red with tears or the holding back of them. Then further insight: “You’re going to the Ball.”
“A servant can do nothing... but perhaps a noblewoman would be worthy.”
They paused for a moment longer, looking at each other in utter astonishment at their own fortune, then Hettie was the first to break the silence with a peal of laughter. “Cinderella, I will never know another like you. Come on! We’ve only got tonight to ensure that the dress will fit you! And how we’re going to get that travelling case over the wall remains to be seen...”
~
Somehow they had wrestled it back out over the wall, with the help of some rope. The driver of the carriage looked at them strangely, but more coins in his palm quelled the questions on his tongue, and he returned them to Hettie’s house just long enough for her to kiss her husband goodnight before they both continued on up to the Palace. Benson, of all people, was in the night kitchen, and though he shook his head in astonishment he waved them quickly on before Mary could catch them, and they made it to Cinderella’s room, case still intact, with nothing more than sore arms and quick breathing to chastise them.
“Do you have a tailor’s dummy?” asked Hettie. Cinderella looked at her pointedly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I forget already what it was like to work here... come on then, put the dress on and we’ll have a look.”
Since leaving the Palace, Hettie sewed for a little money to supplement her husband’s income, and in her brief visit home had collected her sewing equipment. Now she stood Cinderella on a box in the centre of the room, the beds pushed up against the walls, and set to work with pins and tape as the light outside began to dim, pausing only to light the candles in order to better see what she was doing.
“You’ll never have the latest fashion in this, Ella,” she said through the needle and thread in her mouth, touching up a fragment of hem that had fallen loose. “It’s twenty years old and more!”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Cinderella. “I’m not a servant in this dress.”
“That’s true,” said Hettie, more softly this time. “Now keep still whilst I work out what we’re going to do with this bustle... I can move the fabric round, but there’s only so much I’ll be able to change.”
“Please, keep it.”
Hettie looked up, brows moving slightly, to see a pained look on Cinderella’s face.
“It’s my mothers. I... don’t really want to change it too much. Just make it fit.”
A nod. “All right, then.” Hettie went back to her pins, shifting the fabric round Cinderella’s narrow waist, noting how it was straining a little at the bust and would need to be let out, when the door to the room opened. Both women looked round, shocked and guilty, to see Victoria, dark shadows under her eyes and a scowl on her lips, staring at them from the doorway.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, with a shrewishness far beyond her years. “You aren’t supposed to be in here.”
“Hettie is a friend of mind,” said Cinderella quickly, clasping her hands together in front of her. Even with her hair simply pulled into a bun, she looked ethereal in the old dress, like a ghost herself. “She’s helping me with the dress... oh please, Victoria, don’t tell anyone.”
The girl closed the door behind her, still glaring. “Why are you messing with that dress? We’ve got work to be doing tomorrow.”
“It’s... a long story,” said Cinderella with a sigh. For a moment she thought that she saw a softening in Victoria’s expression, a hint of interest, and she licked her lips before adding: “Though perhaps I should get used to telling it. I was sent to the Palace after my parents died, by my stepmother. But I was not always a servant, and, well...” she hesitated for a moment, but this time there was definitely a flicker of curiosity. “I’m going to reclaim my birth right,” she said, surprised to find her voice trembling slightly. “And the man I love.”
For the first time in the month and more that she had been here, Victoria’s expression softened. It took years away from her as she stared up at Cinderella, the wraith-like figure in white. “Like something out of a fairytale?” she asked.
“I suppose so,” said Cinderella, smiling shyly.
“Not if we don’t get this dress done by morning,” said Hettie, breaking the moment between the two. “Don’t mind us, Victoria, you get some sleep. We need to get this done.”
~
They worked until dawn, the light coming in at the window a relief for eyes that had spent the whole night working by candles. Finally, though, the dress was finished, the headdress cleaned, the shoes prepared. Hettie had marvelled at how beautiful, and how delicate, it all was, and Cinderella had hugged her and almost cried in relief that there seemed to be even a chance. Even Victoria, on waking from her deep sleep, had looked at the dress hung from the beams in the ceiling and smiled. Cinderella yawned and rubbed at her tired eyes, only for a knock to come at the door and all three to look round sharply.
“I’d best get that...” said Cinderella slowly, stepping away from the dress and opening the door just a crack. “Hello?”
Mary was outside, looking more tired than ever with the increasing pressure of arranging things for the Ball. “Oh, you’re awake, mercy me. Cinderella, I’m so sorry to say this, but the Lady Magdalena has insisted that you be her maid for the Ball this evening. She will not have any other, says that after what happened last time you’re the only one she can trust.”
“Mary, I can’t, I—”
“Cinderella, she is throwing things around her room. You will go to her, and you will do what she says, and Lord have mercy do not make this the first time in all of your years here that you have been wilful. Do you understand me?”
Cinderella looked at her open-mouthed, fear crashing down upon her.
“Do you understand me, Cinderella?”
She nodded, and replied in a small voice: “Yes, Mary.”
Without even an acknowledgement of it, Mary nodded, whirled and walked back down the corridor, leaving Cinderella to turn back to Hettie and Victoria with shock written across her face.
“Oh no,” said Hettie. “Not when we’ve done all this work. You go and tend to this Magdalena, and then you come right back here, do you hear me?”
“You don’t understand,” Cinderella said, fists balled and hands held to her chest. “Lady Magdalena is the woman that the Prince is supposed to marry!”
This time it was Hettie who wore the expression of disbelief. Then she stopped, shook her head and pointed to the door. “Do not think of it. Go, do your job, and no matter what comes to pass I have no doubt this will be the last day of it. And this evening, you shall see your Prince again.”
~
The lights were low, the room dimmed as the fire started to go out. Christopher sat before it, elbows on his knees and chin resting against his folded hands, staring sightlessly into the flames. He knew what was to pass this evening; it was nothing short of an open secret now. The Lady Magdalena de Calôn, beautiful, eligible elder daughter of the Duke of Calôn, was to be officially betrothed to him at the stroke of midnight tonight, in order that they be wed before the month was out.
There was a time, of course, when he would have assented quite willingly. This time last year, perhaps, or just before his eighteenth birthday had come to pass. He had known his duty then, and observed it above all else; his father needed him to marry before too long, to become King himself, and to produce an heir. In that order, of course. And then some day he would need to rule the Kingdom, and would need to do so with a Queen at his side. That was how things worked.
But now... all that he could think of were blue eyes, and fair skin, and a sweet heart in a lost nobleman’s daughter. And no matter how eligible the Lady Magdalena was, he knew that he could not love her.
He buried his face in his hands, wondering how the actions of the last year could have led to this, and sat in silence even as the door to his chambers opened.
“Your Highness?”
The Grand Duke, of course. Christopher raised his head, but did not answer, as the Grand Duke came within the circle of weak firelight.
“Your Highness, the Ball is about to begin. It is required that you are present.”
“Of course, of course,” he said softly. The Grand Duke was looking at him with suppressed concern, an expression that Christopher had become used to seeing in these passing months. How to explain that he had fallen in love? Such was not supposed to happen to a man in his position; he was supposed to marry first, and discover love afterwards, and thus ensure that he was to be happy. “I am coming.”
The Grand Duke fussed and flapped slightly at his shoulder until Christopher waved him away, entering the ballroom to find his father waiting. And then came the usual rigmarole: the introductions, the beginning of the music, the calling of titles and announcements of entrances.
Eventually Lady Magdalena arrived, just late enough to draw attention to herself without appearing rude. Christopher forced a smile to his face as she entered, the music dipping low so that her name could be announced above them before she swept down the stairs. She was wearing deep blue, the colour of the sapphires at her neck and ears, her dress the very height of fashion with its bustled skirts, low neckline showing a sweep of dusky skin, and the neat white lace gloves upon her hand. She walked like nobility, even like royalty, even he had to admit that; her dark hair, dark eyes and rich skin garnered her looks of desire and envy from every angle. But that this had been last year, and he would have been willing to wed her.
She walked straight to him, and curtseyed deeply; he bowed in return, grateful for an excuse to break eye contact. Then he straightened, assumed his role of Prince, and graciously extended one hand to her.
“May I have the honour of dancing the next minuet?”
A ripple of whisper ran through the room; he carefully took no heed of it. Magdalena smiled, and he suspected it was a real smile, and inclined her head.
“Certainly, your Highness.”
A nod to the orchestra, and music gently began to swell again. Christopher took hold of Magdalena’s hand, missing how another hand had sat in his, and led her to the dance floor. It was effort to maintain the smile upon his face as his feet followed the steps of the minuet: forwards and backwards, delicate steps to the side, a bow in the appropriate places. He had been dancing since a child, though he had only more recently developed any sort of taste for it; it took no effort at all to dance through the music, come to an end, bow deeply to the polite smattering of applause that followed.
For the next dance there was another partner, this woman nervous and little and flustered with his attention, and his smile grew a little more true at the thought of how well she would remember her night of dancing with the Prince. He could not begrudge her such. Then a third dance, with another woman, and as he steeled himself to ask Magdalena to dance again the music hushed once more.
Surely there were no more guests to come. Christopher stopped mid-sentence in conversation with the Grand Duke, paused, then turned to face the doorway.
“The Honourable Ella Tremaine,” came the announcement, “daughter of Baron Tremaine.”
The room hushed.
It was not for some time that he realised his mouth had dropped open at the sight of Cinderella at the top of the stairs. She wore a white gown, not bustled as was the fashion but with wide skirts; gold and pearls glimmered at the hem, the bodice, the lace flounced collar. Her shoulders were bare, neckline thrown low, to reveal her soft skin and the delicate line of her neck, unframed by jewellery. Long white gloves clad her arms, white shoes her feet. A fine net of silver filigree, again strewn with pearls, held her hair in place, crowned with white ribbon.
A dream, walking into the room. For the first time in oh, so long, he found himself smiling, warmth spilling around his heart as she looked straight across the room and into his eyes. Whispering filled the room again as she descended the stairs, eyes lowered, hands not touching the hem of her skirt. Who was she, he could hear them whisper. Too arrive to late, and without escort, and wearing a dress that went out of style at least twenty years ago. And now she walked straight towards the Prince with her head held high! Well, he could hear them say, whoever this Ella Tremaine is, she will be the talk of the Kingdom before the week is out.
And Cinderella smiles at him across the room, and he does not care. Because they have found each other once again.
~
They danced too much that night. So much that those whispers became more than whispers, that the Prince is dancing too often with the same girl, that there is a scandal afoot. But neither could care less; though Magdalena grew visibly angry and the King bewildered, though the Grand Duke attempted to reprimand the Prince for his behaviour, though it had been so long since Cinderella danced that more than once she forgot which steps to tread, they danced until her feet ached and the evening had worn well on.
Only then did Cinderella retire to a chair, flushed, breathless and exultant, whilst the Prince – no, whilst Christopher – sought out a glass of wine to refresh her somewhat. She put one hand to her cheek, unable to feel through her glove the old powder and rouge that she and Hettie had found, but knowing that it was there all the same.
“Ella Tremaine,” sneered a voice behind her. Cinderella started, turning in her chair before jumping to her feet with her heart pounding in her chest. She should have known; of course she should have known, with such a grand occasion and such a great Ball. She did not recognise either of the two women standing right behind her chair, at least for a moment, but their mother behind... oh yes, Lady Tremaine was unforgettable, burnt into her nightmares. Which meant that the girls behind her chair, Anastasia and Drizella, wearing identical looks of hatred, could only be darker in their intentions than they had been a decade before.
“Such is my name,” she said, voice trembling slightly. She drew herself up as best she could, but the sight of her stepmother made her want to do nothing more than run. Suddenly she felt seven years old again. “And I will no longer go without answering to it.”
The dark-haired girl sneered, the red-haired one folded her arms across her chest and looked across haughtily. Lady Tremaine looked sternly at Cinderella, hands folded on the head of the walking stick that she carried. “Indeed? Well, personally I would not have a serving girl,” this with a curl of her lip and her voice both at once, “in a hand-me-down dress sullying the name of my husband.”
“Do not speak so of my father,” said Cinderella. Her voice was quiet, but it surprised even her with its coolness. “Do not besmirch his name.”
“My my, what educated words for such a lowly girl,” said Lady Tremaine. “Did you learn them from eavesdropping on those whom you serve?”
Her throat tightened. Cinderella could taste bile in her throat as she stood before them, searching for any words to reply with, when there were footsteps behind her and Christopher appeared. “Is there a problem, ma’am?”
The sudden appearance surprised her too much to do anything, but Anastasia and Drizella immediately spread wide curtseys – ones which, Cinderella could not help but note, seemed a little too obsequious – whilst Lady Tremaine with the stiffness of one hemmed by age dipped at the knee and inclined her head.
“Your Highness,” she said. “It is such an honour to make your acquaintance. May I introduce to you my daughters? Drizella, Anastasia.” She motioned for the two girls to step forwards, suddenly all fluttering fans and coy eyes and quivering bustles. “We returned from abroad in order to attend this Ball, your Highness.”
“May I express my gratitude for your doing so,” Christopher replied calmly. “And I would ask, if I may make so bold, that you pass on to your daughters my appreciation of their rare beauties. If I may interrupt, however, I came to ask Miss. Tremaine for the honour of this waltz.”
Both of the girls seemed to perk up, then their looks of glee turned to horror as the Prince turned to Cinderella and held out his hand to her. All but forgetting the pain in her feet, she quickly took his hand with a bob and a bow of her head, and allowed him to sweep her away from her step-mother and –sisters.
“Your hand is shaking,” he said quietly as he drew her into hold.
“That is my stepmother,” she replied. A glance round to his face caught he frown that spread there. “She is the one who bought me here.”
“I remember.” His voice was lowered, becoming more dangerous, and she felt the vibrations of his words through her chest, burring against her sternum. “How long were she and your father wed?”
“Less than two years,” Cinderella replied.
He nodded. “Very well. You have more claim to the house than she.”
“I would not see them destitute.”
Christopher did not reply for a moment, but his hand squeezed hers. Weakness and tiredness welled in her, and despite the swirling music she wanted for a moment to rest her head upon his shoulder somewhere far from here and quiet. Her feet were aching from the dancing and the day’s work and the shoes that fitted her less than perfectly, and even Christopher’s hand on her shoulder and around her hand could not hide that all from her.
The music swelled to a crescendo, then declined, and she swirled into a deep curtsey, bowing her head in exhaustion. To run, to run far from here, and forget that this had ever occurred...
“Cinderella,” said Christopher, and she looked up a little more sharply than she had intended. “Will you be my wife?”
“What?” she could not believe her ears, and would have forgotten to rise to her feet again had he not reached out, taken hold of her hand once more, and drawn her upright. “Your High-”
“I am but Christopher,” he said. Brown eyes met blue, her hand trembled in his, but before she could draw away he held it more tightly. “Cinderella, Ella Tremaine, whatever name you would use. It is to be announced tonight that I am to be wed. Can I say that it is to be to you?”
She thought she was about to awaken once again, then with tears in her eyes that made the light in the room form a halo around his head she smiled.
“Yes.”
~
He kissed her hand, before them all, earning shocked whispers afresh. Then whispered, “Go,” and she ran from the room, before anyone could stop her. Holding her skirts aloft and leaving one shoe behind upon the stairwell, heart so light that it felt as if she was going to fly from it. One of the soldiers at the door tried to stop her, but she knew this Palace better than they and slipped into the servant’s passage to run to her room.
Hettie was asleep upon her bed, but awoke as the door was flung open and Cinderella, laughing, blushing, shaking, burst into the room.
“What is it?” she declared, getting to her feet.
Cinderella swooped her into an embrace, despite her squeak of protest. “It... we...” she broke off into more laughter, unable to complete a full sentence. Hettie steered her down onto the bed, where she lay back with her arms thrown above her head, staring up towards the ceiling. “We are to wed,” she said finally, sweetly, her voice like singing.
“You are what?” said Hettie bluntly.
“Wed! Christopher asked me... oh, if this is a dream, let it continue for all eternity.”
There was a moment’s silence, uncomfortable, and Cinderella’s smile faded slightly. She propped herself up on her elbows to look across to Hettie, strands of hair starting to fall free from her hairnet to curl around her cheeks. “What is it?” she asked.
“Daughter of a Baron or no, I do not know what chance you could have, Cinderella. He was supposed to be wed to a Lady, and...”
In an instant, Cinderella was on her feet again. “I have done what I can,” she cried. And for a moment she thought that she might fall to tears once again, but in a deep shuddering breath she controlled herself once again. Her voice became lowered, calm. “I have done what I can. Now it is his turn.”
Hettie looked uncertain, but moved to hug her friend once again. They stood there in the darkened room for a while, perhaps praying in some silent way, until the knock at the door came that they had known was coming all along.
~
Midsummer. The gardens of the Palace had been thrown open the wedding, white roses and pink dahlias blooming, lavender filling the air with its intensely sweet scent. At the edge of the lake, the Prince waited, dress in his finest regalia, finally with a smile upon his face after so long.
Cinderella wore her mother’s dress. She had not been sure whether she had wanted a Lady’s maid or not, but the Prince had insisted, and it had been the strangest thing in the world to awaken before dawn but to not have to rise. Christopher had promised that their honeymoon would be spent in her father’s house, bought from Lady Tremaine and now being cleaned and aired ready for use.
The only difference in clothing were the shoes, this time perfectly fitting her feet. Even so, as she descended from the pagoda in a cloud of flower petals, her arm looped through Christopher’s, one slipped from her foot. She turned with a surprised laugh to find the King kneeling before her, silver silk slipper cradled in his hands.
Blushing, she proffered her foot for him to slide the slipper onto. “Your Majesty,” she said softly, bobbing as if about to curtsey again, when he looked up with a smile in his eyes and stopped her with the barest raising of his hand.
“You are my daughter now,” he said.
Cinderella smiled afresh, and bent slightly to kiss him on the forehead. “Then I have two fine fathers,” she replied.
Then Christopher took her hand again and, in a further whirl of petals, whisked her away. To a world just far enough from, and just close enough to, her past.
~
...and they lived happily ever after.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Dee
Date: 2011-09-20 07:31 pm (UTC)Perfection
Date: 2013-05-05 03:00 pm (UTC)