Five Glass Slippers: A Collection of Cinderella Stories Read online

  The afternoon light was fading as Drusilla got home, a little tired but happy. So she faced a life of spinsterhood. What of it? She could be useful and spread joy.

  Anastasia, grinning mysteriously, met her as soon as she entered the house. “Someone important came,” she said.

  “Oh?” Drusilla raised an eyebrow as she unbuttoned her coat. “The butcher, I suppose?”

  Anastasia’s grin grew wider. “Prince Frederick himself.”

  Her news carried the intended surprise. Drusilla looked up, startled. “What did he want?”

  “Does he want,” Anastasia corrected. “He’s been locked in a private conference with Mother since right after you left. And you’re to join them at your earliest convenience.”

  Drusilla wrinkled her brow. If he’s here for more courtship advice, I refuse, she thought stubbornly. Then, with a sigh, Though I suppose he’s my future sovereign, so I’ll aid him in any way I can.

  “Well?” Anastasia prompted.

  Drusilla looked at her, startled.

  “Don’t you think you should change out of that wet coat?”

  “Oh yes. Of course.” Drusilla looked down at her outfit.

  “After all,” Anastasia reminded her, “you’ll want to look your best for your audience with the prince!”

  Frederick rose when Drusilla finally entered the room.

  “Your Highness,” she said, bobbing a curtsy. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”

  “Not at all,” he replied. “I’ve been having a very pleasant visit with your mother.”

  Duchess Germaine beamed at them and bowed her way out of the room. Drusilla tried to mask her curiosity. “You will sit down?” she asked, indicating a nearby chair with a gracious wave of her hand.

  Frederick sat, but his hands fiddled in his lap. He cleared his throat. “Miss Drusilla,” he began. “I . . . came today to discuss something with you.”

  Drusilla waited.

  “Actually, you may remember my asking advice from you a few weeks ago,” he continued. “You know, about whom I should marry.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.” Not again . . . .

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about it.” He shifted in his chair. “And I’ve been trying to look deeper than just outward things this time.” He met her gaze, but Drusilla couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “Whomever I marry will have to be queen someday, so I want to marry a special woman—if she’ll have me,” he added quickly. “Someone who is kind and wise and gentle and good. Someone I trust.” He paused and looked at her again.

  “Yes, Your Highness?” Drusilla prompted.

  Frederick took a deep breath. “Someone, in short, like . . . you.”

  Drusilla felt her breath catch in her throat. Could her ears have deceived her? But no, there sat the prince before her, gazing at her with a mixture of earnestness and fear. She turned quite pink, refusing to meet his eyes now.

  “I know that it comes as a surprise,” Frederick hurried on, rather red himself, “and I know that you could probably choose from many better men than I”—Drusilla would have laughed had she not been so surprised—“but, well, I thought about marrying someone else and I just didn’t want to. I would like to marry you.”

  Drusilla stared at her own hands, her eyes very round.

  Frederick stopped, uncertain whether or not to go on. Drusilla glanced up at him briefly. Encouraged, he continued. “You don’t have to give me an answer now if you don’t want to, and I’ll understand if you cannot accept my offer,” he assured her, “but, Drusilla, I would be honored if you would consent to be my wife. I don’t know a lot about love, you know that. But . . . I’d like to learn. With you.”

  Drusilla couldn’t quite suppress the pull at the corners of her mouth. Prince Frederick finished his speech, out of breath, hoping against hope, hardly daring to look at her but determined not to look away. Why wouldn’t she meet his eyes? Was she laughing at him?

  Blushing, Drusilla finally looked up and smiled at him.

  He startled. How did I ever think her plain?

  ELISABETH BROWN has always loved words. The third of seven children, she enjoyed being homeschooled through her senior year of high school, and is now studying piano performance at Appalachian Bible College. When she’s ignoring the fact that she should probably be practicing more or doing Greek homework, you’ll find her sewing, baking, reading, singing along to basically any musical ever created, hiking through the woods, or laughing at incredibly silly puns.

  What Eyes Can See is her first published story, but she also rambles at www.metaphoricalcello.wordpress.com

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  To my wonderful mom: I am so grateful for all the time, energy, and love you give me every single day. You’ve taught me so much and have always been there for me when I needed you. Thank you so much!

  1

  “It’s not me, I promise!” Lady Rosalind Copper glared fiercely at the palace attendants before her. Then her glare shifted to her foot, which wore a glass slipper bearing a delicate, swirling R. “Yes, this is my shoe, but I wasn’t wearing it last night!”

  “All the evidence points to you, miss,” one attendant responded hastily, giving her a sympathetic smile. But when Rosalind’s eyes narrowed, he shrank into his silk livery and backed away.

  “It wasn’t me.” Too outraged to care about proper grammar, she crossed her arms. “I went to the ball with Henry last night. I didn’t wear these shoes! I don’t know how they ended up at the palace. Tell them, Henry. It wasn’t me!”

  The young gentleman standing beside her wasn’t acting like his normal, cheerful self. Even his curly brown hair seemed to droop. “My father’s orders are pretty much law,” he mumbled, and shrugged lamely. “Sorry, Roz.”

  Rosalind flung her hands into the air. “So what if your father is a king! You’re a prince! Doesn’t that amount to something?”

  “Not really.” Henry’s gaze remained fixed on the floor, intently studying the toes of his boots. “I’m his third son, you know.”

  “You are all hopeless!” Rosalind shrieked. “Doesn’t my word count for something? Isn’t there anything you can do?”

  “Goosie,” her father said in a soothing voice, patting her on the back, “I’m sure the king will understand. Just go with them to the palace, explain what happened, and it will all turn out well. Am I right, Helena?” Lord Copper turned to his wife, who nodded and offered a dainty smile.

  But Rosalind, a high-minded young woman of eighteen, only scowled at her father. “Don’t try coddling me. I know the king won’t listen.”

  “Miss?” the guard began cautiously.

  “What?”

  “We . . . um . . . are allowed to use force, if necessary.”

  The other attendant snorted. “To think we’d ever have to force a girl to marry the crown prince. All the other girls in Arcadia are lining up to try this shoe on!”

  “You’re going to drag me out of here?” Rosalind’s bright green eyes widened; she latched onto her father. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Rosalind. Rosalind.” Her father gently patted her hand before prying it off his arm. “Just go quietly, and things will turn out better.”

  “Now you’re taking their side!”

  Henry mustered up his last bit of confidence. “Roz, come on.”

  With as much reluctance as possible and with more glares all around, Rosalind followed Henry out of the house. Her house—the house she was being forced to leave! To marry a prince she didn’t want.

  I already have a prince. She sniffed to herself. What has the kingdom come to? It would almost be better to be a cinder-girl.

  This was an exaggeration, of course. A cinder-girl had the lowest job in the factories of Arcadia: cleaning the ashes from the furnaces and keeping the fires burning. It was practically slave labor; protests over the conditions
in which cinder-girls worked happened all the time. As a member of higher society and the daughter of a factory owner, Rosalind tried not to have an opinion on the subject, but that nasty little thing called her conscience wouldn’t let it go. She participated in monthly clothing and food donations to cinder-girl charities; wasn’t that enough?

  All these thoughts and more swirled around in the boiling stew of Rosalind’s mind as she marched down the front steps of her home. Neighbors crowded on the sidewalk, eager to catch a glimpse of their future queen. Rosalind knew they were all wondering why on earth she looked so cross.

  If only they knew, Rosalind thought, her mind whirling with thunderous anger. Our king is a tyrant, that’s what.

  Rosalind shoved past the attendants who tried to help her into the steam carriage. A very meek Henry clambered in across from her. She acknowledged him with a sniff and crossed her arms. Moments later the steam carriage sputtered to life and began bumbling down the road.

  As Rosalind expected, several minutes passed before Henry spoke.

  “It’s all right with me if you danced with my older brother,” he offered in a quiet voice.

  Rosalind shot him a glare prickling with daggers. “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “No . . . not exactly. But you can be honest with me.” He gave her the cute little smile that had stolen her heart only a few months ago.

  But she wasn’t in a susceptible sort of mood now.

  A dramatic sigh burst from her carefully painted lips. “So you are calling me a liar. Even you, Henry; even you. Why does everybody doubt me?” She flopped back in her seat and stared balefully out the window. Their carriage pulled away from the lower city, leaving behind the conglomeration of metal smokestacks and shingled roofs.

  “But how did your shoe end up on someone else’s foot?”

  Rosalind moaned and rubbed her face. “I don’t know.”

  The twisting topiaries in the palace garden sailed past. Gardeners paused their trimming to catch a glimpse of their future queen. But their future queen did not care to catch a glimpse of them.

  “Should we tell my father about us?” Henry suddenly asked.

  Rosalind’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean? Have you never mentioned that you are courting me?”

  Henry took his turn at studying the scenery outside. His answer came slowly, after he had carefully mulled it about in his head. “He never asked. He never asks anything about me.” He laughed, yet Rosalind thought she heard a hint of bitterness in his voice.

  No, she must have imagined it. Henry wasn’t capable of bitterness. He was too weak. The thought almost made her smile, but she repressed it with the self-control of a well-born lady. Instead she continued to glare. “He’s your father,” she persisted.

  “He’s the king,” Henry corrected. “And the king worries about the future king.”

  “Marius.” Rosalind sniffed. “Whom I’m being forced to marry. What has this kingdom come to?”

  “Now, now, I’m sure Father will understand,” Henry started, but her shrill voiced sliced through.

  “Oh, really? And that’s so likely. What are you going to do? Stand up for yourself? You could’ve done that back at my house. Aren’t attendants supposed to listen to the king’s sons? You don’t even have the guts to stand up to your own attendants; you’d never be able to stand up to your father.”

  “I . . .” Henry floundered. “I just don’t like to cause trouble.”

  Rosalind groaned. “This is your future we’re talking about! My future! Our future! Don’t you love me?”

  “Of course I do,” Henry hastened to assure her. “But I can’t go against my father’s wishes.”

  She gave him another wilting glare. “You have no imagination sometimes.”

  Henry opened his mouth to reply, but the steam carriage interrupted him by jerking to a halt. Moments later, a pair of scurrying attendants opened the door and bowed to them. Rosalind swept past them without so much as an acknowledging glance, but Henry muttered a quick “Thanks.”

  Fists clenching her silk skirts, Rosalind marched along the halls of the palace and through the yawning double doors of the throne room. The guards and courtiers parted before her, opening a walkway to the throne.

  Rosalind got her first good look at King Cygnus. She’d glimpsed him at the ball, of course, but not up close. She wasn’t impressed. To be sure, he wasn’t the pleasantly plump little man her childhood imagination had always pictured; he wasn’t stuffed in a comical silk suit overflowing with lacy ruffles. No, in reality he was disappointingly normal. His close-cropped graying hair, hard face, and dark eyes made her hate him even more.

  The king’s stony face twisted into an expression that took Rosalind several moments to decipher. Then she realized—he was smiling. “Ah, well done, Henry! You’ve found her.”

  Rosalind thrust her chin into the air. “No, he hasn’t. I’m not the girl you’re looking for.”

  The king’s eyebrow slid up. “Really? Then who are you?”

  “Lady Rosalind Copper,” she pronounced with a stiff curtsey. “And Henry is courting me.”

  “Is he?” King Cygnus’s uninterested gaze shifted to his youngest son. “He never mentioned it.”

  The courtiers began to chatter, ladies tittering to each other from behind their lacy fans. Rosalind scowled around at the lot of them, taking in the size and scale of the throne room as she did so—two rows of vast marble columns soared up to the vaulted, gold-tiled ceiling. This very spaciousness might have daunted another, but to Rosalind it simply meant she’d have to talk louder to be heard. This had never been a problem for her.

  The king rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he studied Henry’s chosen love. “You do realize that Henry is only the third son, yes?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then I don’t understand,” the king continued just as though she weren’t speaking. “Why don’t you want to marry Prince Marius? Every other girl does. He is the crown prince, after all. If you need reminding.”

  Rosalind exploded with a shriek worthy of a tea-kettle. “I’m courting Henry! I love Henry! What is so hard to understand about that concept?”

  Waves of whispering rippled over the courtiers and guards. What was this girl thinking? Snubbing the crown prince, yelling at the king—Who did she think she was? But Rosalind’s mind was a rock amidst the sea of others’ opinions, impervious to the crashing waves of gossip. They broke and ebbed on her determination.

  One voice, however, spoke louder than the rest. “The shoe belonged to her; it fit perfectly,” one of the attendants from the steam carriage called timidly.

  “Indeed?” The king’s face turned back to Rosalind with an unreadable expression she liked less and less.

  “I’m not the right girl,” Rosalind insisted. “Ask your son Marius. He’ll agree with me.”

  For a moment she thought the king was displeased with this statement. After all, she was practically giving him a command. But did she care? Not a jot. It was actually kind of fun.

  “Father?”

  A new voice drifted to Rosalind’s ears like a cold draft. She almost shivered. A young man slid out of the shadows behind the king’s throne. He glided across the floor as if his boots were made of oil instead of black leather. His smile was equally greasy. Black hair, with the slightest suggestion of waves, fell artfully around his face. A few rebellious strands dared to cover his left eye. The other eye glittered brightly at Rosalind. She glared back at him. The man paused beside King Cygnus’s throne.

  “Shall I fetch Marius?” he asked and, though he spoke in almost a whisper, his voice carried across the hall.

  Cygnus didn’t spare his second son so much as a look. “Yes, Darcy. Your assistance is most welcome.”

  Darcy’s thin lips stretched into a smile. “It is my pleasure.”

  The doors of the throne room barely creaked as Darcy slipped out. A minute or two passed before the quiet chatter resumed.

  “Courting Hen
ry?” the king mused, a small smirk curling his lips. “Who would’ve thought? Tell me, how long has this arrangement been going on?”

  “Since last winter,” Rosalind replied, raising her head proudly. “And it’s not going to end.”

  “Indeed? We’ll see about that.”

  Any further conversation was cut short by the loud banging of the double doors.

  “What now, Father?” a sharp voice rang across the room, matched by the clack of a pair of boots on the marble floor. Rosalind turned to glimpse her supposed future husband. She’d heard much of the crown prince but had never seen him up close. He was the sort of person God had blessed with good looks and not much else. Honey-gold hair, blue eyes, a well-shaped face; yes, he was attractive. But he wore an expression of utter contempt.

  He took one look at Rosalind. “That’s not her,” he growled.

  “I told you!” Rosalind cried. She whirled around to smile triumphantly at the king. “May I go now, Your Majesty?”

  The king laughed. “Of course not, my dear! You’ll do.”

  “What?” Marius and Rosalind yelled at the same time. Henry might have mumbled something as well, but nobody heard; frankly, nobody cared.

  “But Father!” Marius protested.

  “What?”

  “You promised.”

  “Promised what?”

  Marius crossed his arms. “To get me the girl I danced with!”

  “And you promised to marry the girl I found.”

  “But Father! This isn’t the right girl!”

  “Your Majesty!” Rosalind snapped. “See here—I don’t like him. He doesn’t like me. Why on earth would you force us to marry?”

  Darcy gave them both a dark look that Rosalind interpreted to be a smile. “You’ll make an amusing couple,” he said.

  But King Cygnus waved a dismissive hand. “What don’t you like about my son? He is crown prince, after all.”

  The entire court stared at her in disgust for snubbing Marius, for he was the court favorite. But to Rosalind, the courtiers were no better than paintings or nice vases. They were excess ornaments in an already over-trimmed room. “I don’t dislike him. I just like Henry better,” she answered, staring the king squarely in the face.