Ash & Bramble (22 page)

T
HE DANCE ENDS AND MY TEA SHOP MAN TAKES MY HAND.
“I will return you to your godmother now, Lady Ash,” he says formally.

“Thank you, Prince Cornelius,” I say. I see him wince just a little as I say his name.

As the prince and I leave the dance floor, Lady Faye is returning to the ballroom from a hallway. She seems flustered, if such a thing is possible, her ice-blue eyes burning with something that looks like fury. Seeing me approaching with the prince, she puts on a glittering smile. “You enjoyed the dance, Lady Ash?” she asks me.

“Oh, immensely,” I answer. “He didn't step on my toes even once.”

The prince gives me his charming smile. “If only I were
half as graceful as my partner.”

At that, I see Lady Faye give a little nod as if the prince's courtly words have reassured her.

The prince bows. “Enjoy the rest of your evening, Lady Ash.” As he raises his head, he whispers, “Until midnight.”

I swallow down the flutter in my stomach and nod. He bows once more to Lady Faye and rejoins the cluster of his friends and courtiers while Lady Faye takes my arm and leads me away. “You made quite an impression,” she says, a smug tone in her voice.

“So did he,” I answer.

And then we are standing before my stepmother, who is resplendent in blue and flanked by blondly brilliant Dulcet and midnight dark Precious.

“Lady Faye,” Stepmama fawns. “And your mysterious and lovely companion. Three dances with the prince! It will give us something to talk about for weeks.” She gives me an ingratiating nod. “Manners, girls,” she hisses through a fixed smile, and my stepsisters sweep into graceful curtsies, though I can see the jealousy rising off them in waves.

“This is my goddaughter,” Lady Faye begins. She's about to introduce me again as Lady Ash.

“Hello Precious,” I interrupt. “Dulcie. Your hair is coming down in the back.” I give them my brightest smile.

They recognize my voice at once. Their eyes go wide and their mouths drop open; Stepmama's face turns bright red. “
Penelope?
” she hisses.

It is almost as wonderful a moment as my grand entrance.

Lady Faye steps back, as if to watch the fun.

“So pleasant to see you this evening,” I say, and give them a wink from behind my mask.

Stepmama's face has pale blotches on it now, and all of her teeth are bared in a smile. Her bosom swells, and I see her hand clench into a fist—but she is in a ballroom, and she doesn't forget herself. “May I speak to you for a moment, Lady Faye?” she asks in a choked voice. Lady Faye gives a graceful nod, and they step away from my stepsisters and me.

Precious is staring at my dress. “That is the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen,” she breathes.

“Isn't it nice?” I turn my hips, making the skirt swirl around my ankles. “It fits perfectly.”

“I would kill for a dress like that,” she says, and this time I know she means it.

“The fashion won't be blue anymore, will it, Precious?” Dulcet asks.

Precious looks me up and down again. “No,” she says shortly. “Embers.”

Dulcet gives a little sigh. “I look terrible in orange.”

I can't help but laugh at that. Poor Dulcie! Maybe it's the thrill of the evening, but suddenly I like everybody in the room, even them. I reach out to pat her gloved hand, and she and Precious smile tentatively back at me. It's a quick, unexpected moment of sisterly kinship. Then I decide to show them how comfortable I am moving in such an exalted social
circle. I survey the ballroom. “I expected to see my friends Lord and Lady Meister here this evening.”

Precious stares. “Who?”

“Lord and Lady Meister,” I repeat.

Dulcet steps closer and grips my arm. She casts a nervous glance at Stepmama and Lady Faye, who are deep in conversation. “Do not say those names,” she whispers.

“What?” I say blankly. “Why ever not?”

Precious steps closer. “She hasn't heard, Dulcie, it's obvious.”

“Shh, I'll tell you,” Dulcet says, and we put our heads together to hear Dulcie's whispers over the music and talking. “Lady Meister is dead, Pen,” she says. I can see her gloved hands twisting nervously together. “She fell from a balcony and died.”

“It was an accident,” Precious adds.

A horrible sinking feeling settles in my stomach. Fell from a balcony? “No,” I say slowly, seeing again Lady Meister's fixed smile and hearing her desperate pleas:
kill me, please kill me
. “She didn't fall. She jumped.”

Dulcet and Precious stare at me in shock, and I sense the outline of some grim secret, something always present yet never spoken of. Suddenly the ballroom seems gaudy and overbright and thick with the stench of heavy perfume and sweat; the laughter is too shrill and the music too loud. I feel certain that I shouldn't be here; I don't belong here; I have to leave. I am looking frantically for a doorway—for
an escape—when I feel a cool draft, and Lady Faye is at my shoulder.

“My dear Penelope, it is nearly midnight,” she says. “Don't you have someplace you're supposed to be?” She touches my shoulder, and I see the glitter of her thimble on her finger. It strokes icy cold against my skin.

I catch my breath and feel the pull of something huge and inevitable.

Yes.

Midnight.

I don't want to be late.

W
HEN
I
GO OUT TO THE TERRACE IT IS NOT YET TIME FOR
my meeting with the prince, and I am glad of it, for I need some fresh air to clear my head. I close the glass doors behind me, shutting away the sound of the ball and the heavy scent of sweat barely covered by perfume. My stepsisters had said something upsetting, hadn't they? I rub my temples. Nothing. It was nothing. The evening has been a whirl of fizzing excitement, but as midnight approaches I feel wound tighter and tighter, as if something awful is about to happen, even though I know it's more likely to be something wonderful.

The terrace is a wide stretch of smooth stone with two steps at its edge leading down into a garden. I pace across the stones to the steps and look out. I untie the mask and take it off, letting it fall to the stones; there's no point in disguise
anymore. The chilly air feels good against my bare face. Tendrils of fog twist along the garden path, but above, the sky is crystalline. The huge clock face in the castle's central tower looms at my back like a full moon. Its hands have almost come together, pointing straight up. Just a minute or two and it will be midnight.

There is a rustling in the bushes, and a shadowy shape steps onto the path. For a moment I think it might be Prince Cornelius, but as the shape steps closer I see that it is the shoemaker's servant. He is dressed all in stealthy black and gray, but his fair hair gives him away. He looks up at me, two steps above him.

“You again,” I say.

“Yes, it's me,” he answers.

“What do you want, thimble thief?”

He takes a shaky breath and I realize that he's wound even more tightly than I am. “I know you don't remember any of it, Pin, but can't you feel the wheels turning? You're caught in Story, and it's going to pull you into a terrible ending.”

I blink. I have felt the wheels, and I do feel the pull. But somehow it doesn't seem to matter. I feel as if I'm standing beside myself, separate from what is happening. “It's not so terrible,” I find myself telling him. “If it happens the way it's supposed to, I get to marry the prince, and I like him well enough. That is what I want.”

“No you don't,” he says.

“Oh really,” I say. “What do I want, then? You?” Despite myself I can't help but think of the feel of his lips against mine in the bare moment we had in the hallway before Stepmama caught us. I suppose it's because his is the only kiss I can remember.

“You probably don't want me,” he says steadily. “You don't have to want anybody, and if you did you should at least get to choose. I know you, Pin—” He opens his mouth to go on when I hear the gears in the enormous castle clock turn and a heavy clicking of the hands into place. The first strike of midnight rolls out with a heavy
boom
that makes the ground tremble under my feet.

At the sound, I click into place, too. I know exactly what I am going to say.

Shoe goes as pale as chalk. “Pin—” he starts again.

“My name is Penelope,” I remind him. “You don't know me at all, and I certainly don't know you.”

Boom
comes the second strike.

Shoe comes closer so he's just one step below me; before I can pull away, he grabs my wrist. As the third
boom
rings out, he reaches out and roughly strips the glove from my hand; fire-opal buttons pop off and go rattling away over the veranda stones. I try to jerk my hand back, but he holds it tightly.

A fourth ringing
boom
rolls out from the clock over our heads.

He turns my hand and runs shaking fingers over the livid
scar on the inside of my wrist. “I know how you got this,” he says, his voice urgent. “We were escaping—”

A fifth
boom
drowns him out.

“—from the Godmother's fortress,” he goes on. “You were climbing the wall and thorns slashed your wrist. It's how the trackers were able to follow us.”

“I don't believe you,” I say, and try to jerk away again. I don't like this story he's telling me. “It didn't happen.”

“Pin,” he says, “we almost escaped once; we can try again.”

The sixth
boom
, and he flinches, but he still doesn't let me go. I am trembling now, my heart pounding. He's wearing a pack, I realize. He's ready to escape, and he wants me to go now. “No,” I say.

Relentless, the clock strikes again. Seven.

“We're almost out of time,” he says desperately.

“
No!
” I insist, and jerk away from him.

He releases my hand and I stumble backward, trip over the step, and land sprawling on the terrace.

Boom
comes the eighth strike.

I sit up, the skirt of my dress billowing around me.

A slim shadow, Shoe is quick to leap the last step to crouch beside me. He touches the flaming silk. “Where did you get this?” he asks.

The question shakes me; it is so unexpected. “What?”

The clock strikes again—
boom
. Nine.

Shoe's face is intent. “Where did you get the dress? No
seamstress in the city could stitch a dress like this, Pin.
Who made this dress?
”

“It was a gift—” I begin, but I am interrupted by the roaring
boom
of the tenth strike. “From Lady Faye,” I finish, as the echoes ring around us.

“The Godmother,” he corrects. “You're wearing a dress made by the Godmother's seamstresses,” he says. “That's irony for you, Pin.”

“What?” I say.

“Never mind.” He shakes his head. “Please come with me. This is the only chance we'll have.” His voice turns ragged. “I won't be able to ask again.”

The eleventh strike.
Boom
.

Shaking off Shoe's help, I climb to my feet, brushing a lock of hair out of my eyes, arranging my skirts. He waits, pale down to his lips.

“No,” I say.

Shoe flinches as if I've hit him.

The clock strikes twelve. The triumphant sound rolls over us and out over the city. I find myself trembling, as if the ground is moving under my feet.

Shoe steadies me and then he takes my hand; no, he puts something into my palm that feels small and round, like an acorn, and closes my fingers around it. He bends to kiss my clenched fist. Then he steps back and slips away.

My ears ring in the sudden silence.

F
ROM THE SHADOWS,
S
HOE WATCHES AS
P
IN LOOKS DOWN
and sees that he's given her the thimble. She holds it up, inspecting it.

He knows he should run, to try to get away before the Godmother has him captured and taken to the post for his bitter ending, but he has to see what happens next.

He gives a wry shake of his head. That was part of Story's power, wasn't it? People always wanted to find out what happens next.

But Pin's got the thimble, and the thimble holds some kind of magic. Maybe she can use its power to resist the pull of Story.

The glass door leading out to the wide stone area cracks open. “Lady Ash?” calls a low voice.

Pin's head jerks up. With a frown, she clenches the thimble in her bare hand.

The tall man she was dancing with before crosses the stones to her. The prince, Shoe assumes. “You've lost your glove,” he says to her, and takes her fist in his hand.

She shivers at the touch. But she holds on to the thimble.

Shoe steps closer, out of the darkness.

Neither the prince nor Pin notices; it's as if they are caught up in an inevitable scene, intent on acting their parts in service to Story. The thimble is not working, he thinks, with a cold shiver.

“Are you going to tell me your name now?” the prince asks.

When Pin speaks, her voice is uncharacteristically hesitant. “Ye-es. Um. No. What is happening here, exactly?”

The prince shakes his head, looking suddenly less sure of himself. “I think, perhaps, I am falling in love with you.”

Shoe is close enough to them now that he could reach out and touch Pin's bare shoulder. “No you're not,” he whispers. It's Story at work, not true love.

The prince looks up, straight at Shoe, but his face doesn't change; he doesn't even see him there not two paces away; he doesn't hear Shoe's words. It's just like the servant in the drawing room, Shoe realizes. Story is forcing things onward, and the Godmother was right—he doesn't have a part to play. He has no more substance here than a shadow and can only watch as the scene unfolds. He feels a sharp stab of despair.

The prince strokes Pin's hand and murmurs, “May I kiss you?”

She gazes up at him, her face quizzical. “I suppose so,” she says, and tips her head back. Her lips part.

The prince puts his hands on Pin's bare shoulders, brings his face down to hers, and kisses her.

“Well, that's it,” Shoe mutters to himself. “It's all over after this.”

Pin reaches up and twines her arms around the prince's neck, deepening the kiss, as if she's seeking something. Then she turns her face away. “No,” she says with a puzzled frown. “That wasn't the same at all.” The prince, his eyes closed, bends his head to place gentle kisses down her neck.

“The thimble,” Shoe whispers, the merest breath of a reminder.

She doesn't look at him when he speaks. But raising her clenched fist—at last—she takes the thimble and slips it onto her finger. She blinks and shakes her head.

She looks over the prince's shoulder, straight at Shoe, as if realizing he's still here. “This is entirely your fault,” she whispers.

What? He stares.

“You shouldn't have kissed me.”

Their kiss in the hallway, she means. “You kissed me back, Pin,” he reminds her.

She gives a huff of irritation and pulls away from the prince. “Let me go,” she tells him. But his hands hold her
shoulders, keeping her close to him. Suddenly she wrenches herself out of his grip, and as she steps back, the heel of her shoe catches in her hem. There is a tearing sound. “Oh, bother this dress,” Pin says, and stumbles.

“Lady,” the prince says, stepping after her. “Tell me your name.”

She jerks away from him. “No—” she blurts. “I have to go.” She looks past the prince, shooting Shoe a special glare. “I have to, um, be home by midnight. I'm late.” The torn edge of her skirt tangles around her legs and the shoe twists off of her left foot. “Oh, curse it.” Hopping, she yanks her dress up to her knees. “Don't follow me, either one of you.” She jumps the two steps down and into the garden and flees, hop-stepping on one shoe and one stocking-clad foot. The fog closes around her and she is gone, leaving one jeweled high-heeled shoe on the stones behind her.

“Either one?” the prince says aloud, blinking and shaking his head as if waking up after a long sleep. He turns and sees Shoe. “Where did you come from?” His eyes widen as he takes in Shoe's dark clothes and pack. “Thief!”

“No, wait,” Shoe says, backing away.

“Guards!” the prince shouts. In response, the glass doors leading to the ballroom crash open. Four castle guards in red uniforms burst outside. “Catch him!” the prince orders, and points.

Shoe makes it three steps into the garden before two of the guards bring him down hard on the gravel path. He
struggles against their grip, but iron-hard hands drag him to his feet and wrench his arms behind his back. He catches a glimpse of the prince bending to pick up Pin's lost shoe.

“To the prison, Your Highness?” one of the guards asks him.

“No!” Shoe twists, and a guard elbows him hard in the stomach. He gasps for breath, but keeps struggling. From there it'll be straight to the post and the bloody, lonely death the Godmother has planned for him.

The prince is examining Pin's shoe. He glances aside at the guards. “Yes, of course the prison,” he says, and turns to go back into the castle.

“No—wait,” Shoe says, and desperation wrenches the next words out of him. “I know her name!” The moment he says it, he regrets it.

The prince freezes. “What?” He turns. “Hold,” he says to the guards, and paces toward Shoe.

He swallows down his fear and goes still in the guards' iron grip. The prince is taller than he is, so Shoe has to tip his head back to meet his eyes. “I know who she is,” he says.

“What is her name?” the prince asks. He rests his hand on Shoe's neck where it meets his shoulder and gives a threatening squeeze. “Tell me now.”

From the corner of his eye, Shoe glimpses a figure in blue at the ballroom doors. He shakes his head. “Not here.”

The figure steps outside, her skirts swirling. The Godmother.

Shoe lowers his head. “I'll tell you everything,” he promises, knowing himself for a coward, hating the feel of the words in his mouth. “Just don't let her have me.”

A frown creases the prince's forehead. “What?”

“Did she leave her shoe behind?” the Godmother asks as she approaches.

At the sound of her voice, Shoe shudders. “
Please
,” he grates out, and then she is there.

“Ah, I see she did. And you've got it. Well done!” The Godmother bestows a smile on the prince, who nods. She turns her ice-cold eyes on Shoe, and he reads triumph there. “And I see you've caught a thief, as well.” She reaches out to tap Shoe's cheek with a finger as cold as marble; he flinches away from her touch. “Let me have him, will you, Your Highness?” she asks. “I think he needs to be made an example of.”

The prince frowns.

Shoe closes his eyes. It's all over; he's as good as dead.

“Lady Faye, I thank you for your offer of assistance,” the prince says politely. “But I don't wish to trouble you. I will deal with this.”

Shoe's eyes pop open. The Godmother is staring at him with icy hatred.

“Guardsman, if you would be sure Lady Faye returns safely to the ballroom?” the prince says. One of the guards bows and holds out his arm to the Godmother.

Her nostrils flare and then, ignoring the guard, she whirls and stalks back into the castle.

The guards haven't let Shoe's arms go; he's not out of this yet.

“Talk,” the prince orders.

Shoe shakes his head. “Not here, I told you. Someplace quiet.”

One of the guards cuffs him on the side of the head. “You refer to your prince as ‘Your Highness,' boy.”

“Someplace with no guards,
Your Highness
,” Shoe adds, shaking off the blow.

A hint of a smile lights the prince's eyes. “Yes, all right,” he agrees. He is still holding Pin's shoe; he taps it absently against his leg. He addresses the guards holding Shoe. “I have to be present until the ball ends. Take him to my chambers and stand guard outside the door until I get there.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” the guards holding Shoe say.

The prince goes back to the ball.

Shoe goes to stew for a few hours in the juices of his own self-loathing.

A
S ORDERED, THE
guards lock Shoe into the prince's chambers.

It is a surprisingly nonprincely room, at least as Shoe thinks of princes. It is huge and cavernous, but there is no gilding in sight, no velvets or silks, just a massive four-poster bed made of some dark and heavy wood and hung with ancient-looking embroidered cloth. There are comfortable chairs and a low table stacked with books with scraps of paper
left in them to mark where the prince has left off reading. The prince must be a sporting man as well as a scholarly one, because there are a pair of gaiters hung by the fire to dry and two long-eared hunting dogs by the hearth. Both dogs come to Shoe as he's shoved into the room, their tails wagging.

He pets them absently. For a while he paces, working off the energy of his abandoned flight and the confrontation with the Godmother, and enumerating to himself his many faults and failures, starting with cowardice and including stupidity and blindness, not to mention cowardly blind stupidity. He can't help think of Pin, too. The dress, yes, but even more the curve of her breasts, her quick, graceful movements. The silken skin of her shoulders. He'd longed to run his hands over that silk, and trace the line of her collarbone with his fingers, and kiss his way up her neck . . .

“Stop it,” he mutters roughly to himself. It wasn't fair to her—she didn't even know him anymore.

He paces some more, until a wave of exhaustion knocks him over and he takes off the pack and sprawls on one of the comfortable chairs.

When the prince comes in, he can barely muster the energy to sit up.

“Stay there,” the prince orders. The dogs wag over to him, and he greets them and sends them back to their bed on the hearth. He sighs and takes the golden circlet off his head and tosses it into a drawer in a massive wardrobe that takes up one full wall of the room.

Then he pulls off his boots—well made, Shoe notes, though he could do better—and tosses them into the wardrobe too, and unbuttons the top of his tunic. In his socks, he comes to stand before Shoe's chair.

“Thank you,” Shoe says, getting wearily to his feet.

The prince raises his eyebrows.

“For not letting her have me,” Shoe explains.

“I didn't do it for you,” the prince says briefly. “I don't like the post.”

“I don't either,” Shoe agrees wholeheartedly. “Why don't you have it taken down?”

The prince rubs his forehead as if it aches. “I—I don't know.” Then he frowns at Shoe. “Who are you?”

“I'm a shoemaker. My name is Shoe.”

“A shoemaker. Named . . . Shoe,” the prince repeats slowly, and shakes his head. “What exactly is going on, Shoe? And no more delays or deals. Just the truth.” He looks tired, but there is steel in his voice.

Shoe can tell from the room that the prince is no idiot and has figured out that this is not just about him and Pin. “How much of it do you want to know?” he asks.

“From the beginning.” The prince goes to lean against the mantel by the hearth. “Speak,” he orders.

Shoe sits and puts his elbows on his knees. “Pin and I—”

“Pin is her name?” the prince interrupts.

“Yes,” Shoe answers. “Well, no. Not really. We were slaves in the Godmother's fortress. You know her as Lady Faye,” he
adds. The prince raises his eyebrows, and Shoe goes on. “Pin was a Seamstress and I was the Shoemaker.”

He tells the whole story, describing the fortress and the slaves, and his escape with Pin over the wall and into the forest, and her thimble—skipping the part about their kiss. Then he goes on to explain about Pin's capture by the Godmother and his by the Huntsman—not mentioning the Huntsman's rebels hiding in the forest—and his journey to the city and attempts to find Pin and help her escape. “She doesn't remember any of it,” Shoe says bleakly. “The Godmother took it all away.” Then he tells about Pin's role in Story, about her awful stepmother and stepsisters and how he'd gone with Natters to get into the house—skipping the part about the second kiss—and how he'd come to the castle to ask Pin to leave the city with him.

“You're in love with Pin,” the prince observes.

Shoe's voice is hoarse from the telling. “Yes,” he says shortly.

“But she doesn't remember you. And I seem to be falling in love with her myself.” The prince half smiles, as if thinking of Pin. “She is quite extraordinary, isn't she? She sees right inside you. What is her name now?”

“Penelope,” Shoe says, giving it all away. After all this, he feels certain the prince isn't going to hand him over to the Godmother, not if he can help it. “Lady Penelope. She lives in a house two streets away from here. That's probably where she's gone.”

“Thank you,” the prince says.

Shoe puts his head in his hands. “I shouldn't have told you,” he confesses. “It's the worst kind of betrayal of her. I did it because I'm afraid of the post.”

“You've experienced it before?” the prince asks. “At the fortress you told me about?”

Shoe can't find the words. He nods.

“Don't blame yourself too much,” the prince says morosely. “I behaved just as badly.”

Shoe looks up. Standing there in his socks, without his crown and without his mask of formal nobility in place, the prince looks like a much more ordinary person, one who might make the same mistakes as a shoemaker.