Midnight Falls: A Thrilling Retelling of Cinderella (30 page)

Miles’ temper was allayed by his ally’s altruistic, yet cardinal tone. He may have had little influence on Thurlow or the king, but Miles was certain his role in the arena on politics and statesmanship had sired a legacy he had never imagined. His confidence was buoyed and he was grateful for Hubert.

“Hubert,” Miles said, “I give you my word that your guess is as good as mine. I have tried to reach King William but he is devoted to Thurlow on a nonsensical level. I do not understand it. I wish I could offer more assurance but I cannot. I can only request that you give me more time. Please. I’ll figure this out somehow.”

“Sergeant,” David remarked, “you stated that your men will, under no circumstances, defy their king. Will you?”

Miles was struck like a ram to his chest. Perhaps the answer would be swift or otherwise agreeable to another man. But Gamely was not another man. His parents had been, arguably, as pious and strict as Sergeant Halsty’s had been; certainly never having spared the rod if they felt it prudent to their son’s matriculation in the gospel. But where Halsty despised his parents, Miles had battled for years to accept his. He’d learned upon forgiving their many mistakes that his vision was made clearer and he could see the threads of wisdom in their conservative tapestry. Those threads were all that Miles had left of his childhood and his family; he could not abandon them so easily. But he could not ignore his instinct. By his parent’s purist insistence, Miles had ascertained that to be God fearing, he must also listen to the voice of the Lord in his own head, not just by the admonition of those ordained to hear it.

Still, Miles could not answer. David waited many seconds but knew, at that point, that the answer was irrelevant. Miles could not even admit to the possibility of defying his king.

“Then, like I said,” David declared, “we will have no choice but to respond in kind to your—“

“Wait!” Miles exclaimed, anxious for David’s sermon to be damned. “Hear me out. This may end up being nothing more than an exercise in our alliance’s resiliency. For have you forgotten that King William is exhaling his last breaths as we speak? At any moment, he will cease to be king.”

“What are you saying?” Hubert beseeched.

“I am saying that Leopold is the solution to our problems. I do not know why I did not think of it sooner! Leopold will listen to me; he listened to me for almost two years in his deployment. I’ve been wasting my breath with, as you said it, the ‘senile old man and the lunatic.’ God, how could I have been so stupid?!”

“I could not tell you,” replied David and it was all Miles could do not to pummel the bald man’s shiny head. Hubert raised his hand and pressed it at his brother’s chest, gently compelling him to remain silent.

“What makes you think that Leopold will act differently than his father or that he will undo anything that Thurlow has done?” Hubert inquired.

“Because Leopold is not like his father,” replied Miles eagerly. “He is stubborn and will not allow anyone, least of all Captain Thurlow, to bully him into anything. He is anxious to prove himself and his individuality.”

“So he is stubborn and arrogant,” declaimed David.

“He is also honorable,” asserted Miles. “I have seen it with my own eyes. My friends, bide your time. Give me a chance to meet with Leopold and explain to him the truth of Thurlow’s insidiousness.”

“What if you do explain it and nothing changes?” asked David. Miles could not answer truthfully so he did not answer at all. He’d been wrong about people before (King William, Thurlow.) How could he be so sure he was not mistaken about Leopold?

“So be it,” said Hubert, after whispering something in his brother’s ear. “We will, like you, put our faith in this young prince. But heed my words, Gamely, that if something happens whereupon Leopold either carries out Thurlow’s insane agenda or
somehow
does not take William’s place on the throne and usurp Thurlow’s ridiculous scope of authority, then we will have no choice but to act preemptively against Gwent. It does not give us pleasure to say this to you Sergeant Gamely. But rumors of Thurlow’s ruthlessness have reached our ears as well. He is a dangerous man; we will not wait for him to strike first.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

From the moment Ella took her first step out of the coach into the brisk, cold air, she felt her nerves begin to tingle with anticipation. She had never been so close to the castle of Gwent in her life. There were no words Ella could formulate to describe its majesty. How could such enchantment be engineered by mortal imagination? As Gabriel took her hand and escorted her down the footpath toward the castle moat, below a regal barbican, Ella reeled with images and sensations of this radiant new world. First with her mother’s dress and now the glitz and pomp of majesty, her entire moral code was becoming unhinged. She was finally beginning to understand that the sin of worldliness might be one that God forgave liberally, he himself mindful that it was to the mortal simply a conquest for heaven on earth. No matter how keenly Ella peered into the eastern and western flanks of the landscape, she could not see where the castle fortress ended and the mountainous backdrop began. There were levels upon levels of stone parapets and towers reaching skyward from every possible corner. Instead of being engineered in a tapering design that ascended upward until it steepled symmetrically in the center, it seemed to be built forward with each new plane breaching away from the hills and bluffs and toward the spellbound eye like a mirage.

It took several minutes for the couple, the Duke of Ebersol and his niece, to climb the immense stone staircase to the main balcony, which must have measured over one hundred meters from one side to the other. Already, there were more bodies on the balcony than Ella could count and she had not even entered the ballroom.

Gabriel slowed his step as they closed the gap between Ella’s magnificent new world of possibility and sublimity and the entire realm that existed outside of it:
his world
. It was the same world in which the man who pretended to be noble had been born and raised, where he’d learned to work for his very survival and where he’d sacrificed his youth, and his only family, to the expectations of those that knew nothing of him and cared even less. Gabriel felt derision seep into his spirit. How could what he’d gone through be called sacrifice when it was at the whims of another—of someone who didn’t even know he existed? Gabriel looked upon the reality that Ella found so very entrancing and was blitzed with the knowledge that his sacrifice had been for naught, because it was never his own. Not until Ella entered his life had he finally learned what it meant to have something so extraordinary that to give it up was tantamount to death.

Ella strolled down the hallway and into the massive, breathtaking ballroom. Gabriel observed the bounce in her step and he grinned, though it pained him to do so. Once inside the cavernous entity of the golden lined ballroom, hundreds of men and women dotted the panorama. And at the apex of everything golden,
everything breathtaking,
was Prince Leopold. He stood tall and proud upon a slightly elevated platform, one arm to his side and the other bent sharply at the elbow and resting against his waist. His attire was that of soldier and a prince: white pants that tapered only slightly at the ankle, a deep burgundy jacket that boasted golden buttons up the front and, as it opened right below his neck, a perfectly tied cravat.

Bastard
, thought Gabriel furiously.

This is where I belong.

Isolda inhaled the atmosphere of the ballroom and felt it tease her lungs like a scrumptious meal that roasted in the fire, tantalizing the taste buds. She knew, as much as she had ever known anything, that she was standing in her future home. The future home of her daughter, that was.

Aislinn was, to Isolda’s chagrin, rather distant toward her mother that evening. Even though she anticipated the prince’s attention, she could not keep herself from reviewing the scene that had gone down only an hour before at their home. Why had Bethany said those things about their mother? If she were leaving, where would she go? Would she stay with Ella?

Aislinn grew cross. Why did everyone presume that she and her twin sister were cantankerous with one another because they did not like each other? Aislinn had spent the first years of her life adoring her ‘baby’ sister; they were best friends. But Isabella and Ella came around and suddenly one sister was not enough for Bethany. Thus the drifting away began, and Aislinn always hated Ella for it. Isolda believed herself to be the steward of all things that pertained to Ella’s deviousness but she was mistaken. Aislinn had learned from her own experiences that her cousin was the representation of all things contrary to Aislinn’s happiness.

Aislinn loved her twin sister. Why had she never told her as much?

“He is looking at you!” Isolda exclaimed, startling her distracted daughter. Aislinn looked over toward the prince and, sure enough, he was watching her fixedly. How could he distinguish anything in this sea of taffeta and silk, and of pretension and pride? Most likely it was due to her obscenely bright dress. Even in its illustriousness, it was quite a lovely ensemble that Bethany had pieced together, what with the tiara and the slippers so transparent, they might have well been made of glass.

She would have looked lovelier in this than I, Aislinn reflected.

“It will not be long before he makes his way to you,” Isolda stated, staring at the prince like a prowling predator. “It will take some time for him to decide who he wants to spend his time with. Just stay in plain view. Don’t lose sight of the prince or the queen. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, Mother,” Aislinn replied, her dream of meeting the prince, falling in love, and making the castle her first home that truly belonged to her and
not
her mother, the only comfort she could derive for that evening thus far. She shook off her gloominess and attempted to re-focus her attention toward her goal. But it was short lived. Ella had entered the ballroom, Peter by her side, and Aislinn cursed her mother for not permitting her to wear pink. Undoubtedly,
pink
would be the color of the evening.

They had been at the gala for over an hour. Countless people had taken notice of Ella, but the prince had not moved from his pedestal. Gabriel wasn’t overly worried; he was annoyed.

Ella is the most stunning woman here without equal! How can you not see what is right in front of you, Your Highness?!

“You look as though you might burn a hole through the wall with your eyes,” said the creeping, sinister voice behind Gabriel. He turned, exhaled deeply, and watched as Sergeant Halsty took position only centimeters from Gabriel’s boots. Halsty was considerably shorter than Peter, the Duke of Ebersol, but he was no less large in presence. Gabriel knew who James Halsty was; he knew everything about Thurlow’s number-two man.

“Sergeant Halsty,” Gabriel said in ice-cold formality. “To what do I owe this honor?”

“I am simply acting on behalf of my commander, Captain Thurlow,” Halsty replied, “to see to it that you are, how do I say this, living up to the stipulations of your…contract.”

“That was certainly a mouthful, Sergeant. Are you certain you did not injure yourself?”

Halsty chortled, unencumbered. “We can’t all be so learned as the aristocrats of this land,” he said, inconspicuously. “Some of us are more talented with our hands than we are with the spoken word.”

“Some of us aren’t talented at all,” Gabriel declared blankly.

“Have I done something to offend you, sir?”

“Offend is so contentious a word. Let’s just say you, and your friends, do things that
puzzle
me.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want that. Is there something I can clear up for you?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. Why are you here?”

“Pardon?”

“Why are you standing here speaking to me? You expect me to believe that Captain Thurlow, the unchallenged despot of Gwent’s seedy underbelly, cares to follow up on threats he gave to a man whose opinion and blessing mean nothing to him? You must be joking. Thurlow wants Ella. He only asked my blessing in their ‘courtship’ to make himself appear more appealing to her. When he learned that I would not speak on behalf of my niece, his ego was bruised and he tried to save face by threatening to reveal my less-than-stellar reputation. There was no contract; there were no stipulations.”