Midnight Falls: A Thrilling Retelling of Cinderella (44 page)

She fell against the window. He laughed and helped her up. It had been quite unfair to have sprung such a confession on her with so little warning. He simply couldn’t help himself. And he had little time. It was past midnight. He was the King of Gwent. He needed his queen. Before she could make a sound, he brought her face to his and kissed her, softly at first and then eagerly. He slid both his hands down her neck and shoulders and wrapped them firmly around her waist. He released her lips and rested his head into the space between her neck and her right shoulder. He was holding her, breathing her in and stealing all the oxygen that she so desperately needed.

She could have melted into their embrace and died right then and there a happy woman.

He whispered into her ear. It was all over after that.

“Will you marry me?

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Gabriel watched as two women, dressed in white with gold crosses hanging from their necks, placed another blanket over Ella’s shoulders. The air was warm, but the women believed that with all that the poor girl had been forced to suffer, they could take no chances. Gabriel had carried Ella back into the hallways where he’d seen Leopold and demanded direction to some kind of hospital or clinic.

Leopold recognized Ella and his heart was heavy. He’d called her to the castle that night. Had he been the reason she was so badly hurt? He instructed Miles Gamely to personally escort Gabriel to the royal family’s own hospital, which sat as a separate building from the castle, but still within the posterior gate.

The building was very small, but immaculately clean. There were six beds and each featured a starched, gleaming white sheet. Two women quickly led Gabriel to set Ella’s body on one of the beds. He was then told to leave. Ella watched him as he left. When he looked back, she even smiled at him.

Before he’d taken a seat to rest his own aching body, Gabriel told Miles Gamely to send word immediately to the Delaquix household. Ella’s friends would never forgive him if he failed to summon them. Commander Gamely, to whom Gabriel took quite quickly, swore that he would see it done.

Gabriel fell back against the cold, sterile wall. He pressed into it with his spine several times, each time more aggressively then before. He wanted to break it down. He needed to feel it crumble beside him. When it became too taxing, Gabriel slid to the floor, letting his feet stretch out in front of him.

He thought of Benjamin. Would his brother forgive him for not killing Thurlow when he had the chance? Would he understand why Gabriel could not do it? Perhaps if Ella had been there, strong and unwavering, he would have been able to do it in spite of what would have most certainly been her pleading requests for him not to. But she was alone, hurt, and she needed him. Somehow, because of that, Gabriel could not kill his greatest foe. He could not end the life of one that deserved death more than any other human being Gabriel could envision.

He was beginning to comprehend the powers of life that loomed all around him, independent of his own agenda or the weight of his desires, be they selfish or righteous. If he’d followed through with his actions, his original plan, it meant that he would not be there with Ella. He could not kill Thurlow and gloat over his dead body and still stand alongside the woman he loved in her own hour of need in the way she deserved. He could have tried to delude himself into believing there was time for both eventualities. Gabriel was beginning to comprehend…

Hope and revenge could never co-exist.

It was close to five o’clock in the morning and Gabriel had fallen asleep on the cold, unforgiving floor. He was awakened by a warm, gentle hand on his face. He opened his eyes and saw Marion smiling at him.

“Ella is still sleeping,” she said calmly, “but she is well. You don’t need to be afraid for her.”

Gabriel shot to his feet. Several hours of immobility had taken its toll on his bones and muscles and a new kind of throbbing set upon his body. It hurt to even move. Still, he passed Marion and ran into the infirmary. There was a man there, wearing a long brown robe. The man examined Ella’s face. A long, off-white strip of gauze was stretched across her left cheek from the temple to just a few centimeters from the corner her mouth. The bandage had been applied with topical honey and Gabriel could smell the earthy sweetness as he sat at the chair to Ella’s side. She was sleeping quite soundly and was still, at least to Gabriel, breathtakingly beautiful.

Several of the castle guards were in the background, peeking their heads through the gaping doors to the hospital’s main foyer. Amongst the gawkers was the dynamic teacher/apprentice duo of Samuel and Timothy. They all wanted to catch a glimpse of what had to be one more piece of the chaotic puzzle that was the last five hours in Gwent’s royal castle.

There had been an assassination attempt that had been foiled before it truly started, countless arrests, and inexplicable damage to the castle’s interior. There was also the crushed, lifeless body of their former superior, Captain Thurlow, heaped at the base of the eastern wing’s outer wall. When ogling bystanders such as Samuel and Timothy also considered King William’s death and Prince Leopold’s inauguration, the last twelve hours had yielded more excitement for the citizens of Gwent then they had seen for at least fifteen years. Samuel wished he had a cold beer to accompany the spectacle.

“I am ecstatic that the barbarous lunatic is finally dead,” Frome declared from Marion’s side. “How could he have hurt an innocent girl like this.”

“When can she accompany us home?” Marion inquired of the robed man that she correctly assumed was a physician.

“When she awakens,” replied the man. “Her wounds are all quite superficial. Even the laceration on her face. I would like to ask her a question or two about it before she goes, however.”

“Such as?” Marion asserted, feeling a maternal defensiveness arising within her.

“I am wondering if she observed the instrument that was used to cut her.”

Gabriel’s head lifted.

“What do you mean?” Marguerite beckoned, dabbing at her weepy eyes with a dark blue handkerchief. “Wouldn’t Thurlow have just used a knife? Surely he had a knife.”

“No,” the doctor explained, “it was not a regular blade that cut her. It was thick and haphazardly jagged, like a slivered stone or a shard of glass.”

Gabriel shot to his feet, the wooden chair flung to the ground behind him. Everyone, including the doctor, was startled. “It was not Thurlow who did this,” Gabriel announced.

“What?” Frome exclaimed. “If not that bastard then whom?”

Gabriel dropped his head to his chest, his eyes furrowed in severe contemplation. He didn’t know. It tortured him to admit it. There had to be someone who saw something or could provide some kind of clue. There had to be…

Gabriel’s head turned like a hawk toward the clinic doorway where two oafish guards were watching the situation like overgrown teenagers. He recalled the annoyingness of having to pass the two guards that night on his way into the castle to find Ella. He had tried to be polite when he requested entrance, but the older guard would not yield. He yammered on about having already allowed too many people in already. Just before Gabriel struck the impertinent guard in the face, he heard the younger and slower guard utter to his partner:

“
Yes, but those were all just ladies. And one of them was looking for her daughter. We didn’t do anything wrong, did we Samuel?”

As Samuel watched the large, diabolical beast that had already broken his nose stride toward him that morning in the clinic, he feared the worst. He tried to flee, but there were too many bodies to mull through.

“You there!” Gabriel hollered to guard who had been so very impertinent, “Don’t move!”

Gabriel forcibly took Samuel by his arm. As he was about to depart with the nervous guard through the rapidly dissipating swarm of spectators, Gabriel turned back to Marion.

“When Ella awakens,” he beseeched, “tell her I will be back. I have something very important to tend to.”

Chapter Forty

Isolda had barely been able to undress before she’d collapsed on her bed. She could not recall ever having been so exhausted as she was in those wee small hours of the morning. Her head spun in a collage of the previous night’s activities. Had it all been a dream? Isolda recalled so many images, but she could not piece them together. Where was Aislinn? Had her daughter preceded Isolda home? She knew, as the mother, she should have looked in on both of her daughters before she retired herself hours before. But she’d failed to fulfill her maternal obligations. There was no opulent excuse that Isolda could concoct. She simply had not done it.

Perhaps she was afraid of what would happen when her twin daughters inevitably woke and began flooding their mother with questions. What would she say? How could she explain to them that they all might as well have just been dead?

Could she confess to them the lengths she had gone to preserve their honor?

You have no idea how unfair, Ella.

A horrific pounding echoed through her room, rattling the thin walls. Isolda hated that about her home: such thin walls. She clutched her forehead in her hand, willing it to become impervious to any and all distraction. She could simply stand no more.

Bethany excused her servant kindly and made her way to the front door. She was dressed quite nicely and her hair was even remarkably fashioned for so early in the morning. She’d woken up revitalized. She felt like a new person.

Bethany opened the door and was taken aback by such an unusual and eclectic party of callers. In the front, none other than King Leopold. He was flanked on both sides by two guards. On the right, Miles Gamely. To Leopold’s left was Oli Roget, Miles Gamely’s best friend and the king’s new bodyguard. As if that were not enough, behind the three men stood another guard whom, whilst indeed a uniformed officer, could not have looked more misplaced. Bethany giggled a little below her breath at the guard who appeared so oblivious and wholly embarrassed by his swollen nose. When she’d last seen him, his nose was undamaged.

“Your Highness, please do come in,” she said, stepping back, her head bowed. “To what does my family owe so wonderful a surprise?”

Leopold led his company forward until they were all standing resolutely in the narrow but spacious vestibule of the Armitage’s splendid estate. Bethany was rendered speechless. Leopold had only been the king of Gwent for less than a day and he already carried himself with a stateliness that she had never seen before in anyone. Only as she was about to close the door did she notice the fifth caller standing a few paces from the front steps. The man who Bethany only recognized as ‘
not
Ella’s uncle’ was standing fixedly, watching the entire exhibition like a mysterious spy. He did not make a sound but somehow Bethany knew not to close the door completely.

“Your Ladyship,” Leopold said, returning Bethany’s greeting as she approached him, “I apologize for the early hour. There are two purposes for our visit here this morning.”

Bethany waited. Lord Henry Armitage emerged from a private study just adjacent to where Leopold was standing. His face was glazed in shock and amazement.

“Will you be so kind as to fetch your mother, the baroness,” Leopold requested, so politely that it made both Bethany and her father somewhat suspicious. There hinted an air of nefariousness in his majesty’s tone.

“Of course,” Bethany said and she turned toward the staircase.

“That won’t be necessary, Bethany,” Isolda said from the summit of the tapered staircase, donned in nothing but her exquisite and impenetrably thick satin robe. “I am already here.”

Henry looked up at his wife. He’d always known her to be a haughty woman, but what could possibly have been her motivation for exuding such arrogance in the presence of so dignified an audience?

“Baroness,” Miles Gamely spoke for the first time, “may we please see your hands?”

“What?” Isolda sued, wrapping her arms around her torso and taking a slight step backwards.

“It seems your niece was viciously assaulted in the castle last night by an unknown assailant,” Miles went on, “and it appears as though the weapon was a piece of glass from a broken window. Examination of the evidence revealed that there was indeed a long shard of glass near where Ella Delaquix was lying. There was blood, as expected, on the tip where her face was cut. But there was also some on the other end of it. We can only conclude that whoever attacked her was also wounded in the process. Now I must insist: please let us see your hands, Baroness.”

Isolda’s face had turned pale white. She stared down angrily at the man who spoke to her so presumptuously. “How dare you!” Isolda spat. “Ella is my family and I would never hurt her. I wasn’t even at the castle last night.”

Leopold severed his trancelike stare at Isolda, his future mother-in-law, and turned his attention to Samuel. The man, who at that point was willing to sell his own mother for a bottle of rum, looked back at the king before he spoke.

“I saw you there, Baroness, outside the gate,” Samuel revealed ineloquently. “You went in with Captain Thurlow. I saw you with my very own eyes.”