Just Ella (10 page)

Her eyes were already half closed.

“All right.”

But after she left, I paced the floor, so full of nervous energy I would have liked to scream too.

Up. Back. Up. Back. What was I going to do? I absolutely could not live the way everyone wanted me to. I would go mad.

Except—I remembered Madame Bisset's threat: “You open that tent, and you will never marry the prince.” If I loved the prince, couldn't I adapt? Couldn't I change? Maybe I could get a little more freedom, force Madame Bisset and her cronies to bend some, after I was married and had some power. They could give a little, I could give a little. Surely it was worth it, for the sake of loving the prince.

I waited to be swept up in my usual rosy glow of love for Charm. I waited for my heart to speed up, the way it always did at the thought of him. I waited for the flush to creep up my face, the delicious shiver to crawl up my back.

Nothing happened.

I tested myself again.

Charm? Prince Charming? I conjured up the image of his perfect face, his perfect hair, his perfect body. I pictured him kissing me, touching me, holding me.

I felt nothing. Except—bored.

I paced faster, almost running, as if I could escape the thought I didn't want to think. It caught me anyway. I stood still, overcome with dread, knowing what I didn't want to know.

I didn't love Prince Charming.

The clock ticked. I watched the hands move, almost to eight, almost marking the time when the door would open and I'd see the prince for the first time since I'd—what? Fallen out of love with him? Realized I'd never loved him? Just plain gotten confused?

It had been two long days since the tournament and my fainting spell and my lonely, late-night realization. During those days, I'd debated again and again what I should do. I couldn't marry a man I didn't love, even if he was the prince. Especially if he was the prince. It wasn't fair. There were hundreds of girls in the kingdom who would love to marry him. How could I, the only girl who didn't want him, be the one he vowed to keep forever?

On the other hand, how could I back out now? The wedding was barely a month away. I tried to picture my mouth forming the words, “Prince, you must release me from our betrothal.” I pictured the news spreading through the castle, the gossip throughout the kingdom. I told myself I didn't
care about gossip. But what would I do then? What would the prince do? How could I hurt him like that?

What if I was wrong? What if I'd just had an off night, and I truly did love him after all?

I really, really, really hoped that was true. Surely seeing him again, in the flesh, would bring everything back. Surely I hadn't had a failure of love, only a failure of imagination.

The clock struck the first
Dong!
of eight and I jumped. Behind me the chaperon made a small sound—it could have been a dry laugh at my expense, or just a cough.

At the second
Dong!
I shifted my gaze to the prince's door. I held my breath, remembering to release it only when my eyesight began to blur. I had no intention of ever fainting again. This time I wouldn't even be able to blame it on my clothing. For once, I'd won a battle—no one had attempted to put one of the newfangled corsets on me since the tournament. See, see, I told myself, you shouldn't feel so trapped. You are in control of your own life.

The door opened, and there was the prince.

I put on what I hoped was a gracious smile, but inwardly I was frantic, checking my response. Heart rate? A little fast, but that seemed to be mainly because I was nervous. Flushed face? No. Shiver up the back? None.

The prince smiled back at me. He was breathtakingly handsome. Wasn't that enough?

He kissed my hand, and I felt only numbness.

“Prince—,” I blurted. “Why did you fall in love with me? Why do you want to marry me?”

He blinked, my hand still caught in his.

“You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen,” he said.

I waited for a long time. Then I asked, “Is that all?”

He looked confused.

“You're so beautiful,” he murmured again, and brushed a kiss against my cheek. I'd spent every previous moment with him longing for him to do that very thing. Tonight the kiss didn't move me.

“But—” I pulled away, ever so slightly. “What if I had an accident, and my face were hideously disfigured?”

“Oh, Princess,” he laughed. “What do you ever do that could hurt you?”

It was true. Needlepointing was hardly likely to lead to facial scars.

“What if I got disgustingly fat?”

The prince laughed again.

“Is
that
what this is about? My dear, surely you've gained only a few pounds. I'm certain you'll lose them before the wedding. Madame Bisset told my mother she'd watch what you eat very carefully—”

“My weight is not a problem!” So many angry responses sprang to my tongue that I choked on my own words. I began coughing, and the prince gingerly patted me on the back. When I finally regained control, the prince took my hands again and peered soulfully into my eyes.

“You should not fret your pretty head about these matters,” he said. “You are a princess.”

But I'm not,
I wanted to say.
I don't want to be.

But was I sure?

I spent the next week biting my tongue. I wanted so badly to confide in somebody—anybody—that I even considered sneaking out of the castle and going to talk to Mrs. Branson, my next-door neighbor back in the village. But I didn't want to involve her, maybe getting her in trouble.

That was the same reason I had to watch what I said to Mary and Jed. And yet, they were my only possible sources of information. So I was like a spy, asking questions I didn't want to know the answer to, in hopes that they'd drop some tidbit I longed for.

“What do you think love is?” I asked Jed.

He got a dreamy look in his eye.

“Love is a wondrous thing. It moves mountains and stills a baby's cries. It beats inside every human's heart, yet is more precious than gold. It cannot be bought or sold or stolen. It keeps us alive.”

I wondered why he looked sad when he turned his gaze back to me.

“Whom do you love?” I persisted.

“Oh, Princess, you do wander so from your lesson,” he said with a laugh.

And because he'd called me “Princess,” I knew that meant: subject closed. Lately, more and more subjects seemed to be closed with Jed.

I tried a different tack with Mary.

“How did people respond when they learned the prince was going to marry me?”

“Oh, la, Princess, as soon as they saw you, they understood,” she answered as she dusted my mantel.

“That beauty thing again,” I said sulkily. I looked at Mary carefully. “There was something you wouldn't tell me before. . . . Why does beauty matter so much?”

“Me mum says 'tis because men have eyes,” Mary said stiffly. I saw that we were treading on dangerous territory. Mary was far from beautiful. I had to be wary lest I hurt her feelings. But I had to know.

“The prince seems especially concerned about it . . . ,” I said.

“Surely you know—the Charmings must always have beautiful children. It's like the law or something.”

“So it's more important to have a beautiful wife than a royal one.”

Mary's expression didn't change, so I knew she'd known all along that I wasn't truly a princess. She waited so long to reply that I wondered what else she knew.

“It's so strange the way the prince picked me—just out of the crowd, at the ball . . . ,” I said, watching Mary's face. She kept her head down, dusting a particularly crevice-filled stone in my wall.

“I heard the king's advisers talking, before the ball,” she finally said. “They didn't know I was there, polishing the woodwork. Being ugly is like being invisible sometimes, you know? No—I guess you wouldn't know. Anyhow,
they were talking about how the prince had to marry before he turned twenty-one, but none of the eligible princesses met all the requirements for beauty. So one of them decided to have a ball, for everyone, and they would rate all the women and pick the best one for the prince.”

I remembered the setup at the ball, with some women sent into one ballroom, some into another. Had the less attractive ones been shunted away? For once, I felt a pang of compassion for Griselda and Corimunde. I remembered the way I'd been announced, as though I were a beauty contestant. Wait—I had been a beauty contestant. And the prince had been the prize.

“So he didn't even choose me. He just did what he was told,” I muttered. “He wasn't in love with me. He isn't.”

Mary gave her dust cloth an extra-vigorous shake.

“The prince isn't really smart enough to know how to fall in love, is he?” she quipped. “He wouldn't know how to get out of bed in the morning if he didn't have advisers telling him which foot to put on the floor first.”

Immediately, Mary got a stricken look on her face and clapped her hand over her mouth.

“Oh, Princess, I'm sorry. I forgot who I was talking to. I was thinking about what we say below-quarters. That's just . . . servants' talk. You know how servants talk.”

Yes, I knew how servants talked. They told the truth when no one else would.

I waited for anger to sweep over me—not at Mary, but at the prince and his royal advisers. Or even at myself, for not
understanding the contest I'd unwittingly entered. But no anger came. Instead, I felt relieved.

If the prince didn't really love me, then it was okay that I didn't love him. It was okay if I broke our engagement.

I could escape.

I wasn't hasty. I waited a week, trying to figure out how I'd tell the prince I didn't want to marry him. But it wasn't easy to hold my tongue.

On Monday, Madame Bisset told me that I was to begin having fittings for my wedding gown every morning, instead of once a week.

“But—” I started to protest. I stopped in time, remembering I couldn't call off the wedding gown fittings before I called off the wedding. And no matter how much I felt like screaming from the rooftops, “I'm not going through with this! I'm getting out of here!” I owed it to the prince to tell him first, not Madame Bisset.

Madame Bisset continued talking, as if whatever I might say was beneath her notice.

“The fittings will take the place of your religion lessons,” she announced.

I felt panicked. If I had no religion lessons, when would I ever get a chance to talk to Jed?

“So a dress is more important than religion?” I asked.

Madame Bisset only looked at me.

“I'm sure that you've hardly been getting quite the caliber of instruction you need since His Excellency, the Lord Reston, ah, took ill,” she said. “If you're so interested in the subject, perhaps you can continue lessons after the wedding, when he recovers his health.”

I was glad to hear someone thought he might recover. But I couldn't stand the insult to Jed.

“Jed's a wonderful teacher!” I proclaimed fiercely.

“I meant no offense to the young
Lord
Reston,” Madame Bisset said. “But he's not his father.”

No, thank God,
I thought. Still, as ridiculous as Madame Bisset's reasoning was, I felt a slight moment of relief at not seeing Jed. If I continued having lessons with him, I'd be too tempted to confide in him, to ask his advice about how to break the news to the prince—and about what to do when I left the castle. And those were things I needed to figure out on my own. So far I was sure only that I couldn't hurt the prince, and I couldn't go back to living with Lucille.

I wondered, that week, that nobody said to me, “Princess, you're very quiet. What's on your mind?” But nobody seemed to notice that I moved through the days like an automaton, without feeling, without thought. Maybe that was all they'd ever expected of me. I stood like a statue every morning while yards of satin and lace were pinned around me. I sat like a porcelain doll every afternoon while the royal hairdresser piled curls atop my head and combed and brushed and braided until my hair looked more like a woven basket than real hair.
I smiled like a fool every evening while the ministers and officials around me pontificated about the Sualan War.

I paid attention only during my every-other-night meetings with the prince—and then, all I could think about was how much he repulsed me. How had I ever thought I'd loved him? Now when I looked into those perfect blue eyes, I saw only the vacancy behind them. Had he ever had a thought in his entire life? I'd even give him credit for the dull ones, like,
I think I'll wear my blue waistcoat instead of the green one today.
But no, he even had people to pick out his clothes for him.

Now that I no longer made an effort to talk, we mostly sat in silence.

“Good evening, Princess,” he'd say.

“Good evening, Your Highness,” I'd say.

And then there was a half hour filled with nothing but an occasional “You're so beautiful” from the prince.

I came to hate those words.

Now?
I'd think.
Do I tell him now?

The sentences ran through my head: “Your Highness, I—”

“Prince, I—”

“Look, unCharming, I can't stand you, and there's no way I'm going to marry you!”

I held my tongue and kept practicing in my head. I wasn't ready yet. I vowed that even if I did only one thing with grace and dignity my whole time in the castle, this would be it.

The clock struck eight. The candles flickered. The prince opened the door and came to sit next to me. He kissed my hand, and I had to concentrate on not recoiling.

But after tonight, I wouldn't have to pretend anymore. It was time to tell.