Princess of the Midnight Ball (9 page)

A week later, the second son of the king of La Belge arrived.

The second son of the king of La Belge was handsome enough, Rose thought as he bowed, if you liked dark hair and blue eyes. Which Jonquil did, judging by the look on her face. As for Rose, she was indifferent, reclining on a sofa in their sitting room, propped up by pillows and draped in shawls. She nodded her head graciously.

“I am Prince Bastien,” he said in heavily accented West-falian. “It is a pleasure to meet you. All of you.” His eyes flickered appraisingly over the rest of the girls.

Pansy and Petunia shared a sofa to Rose’s right; Daisy was on the sofa to her left, with her twin, Poppy, curled up at her feet. None of them were at their best: red noses and watery eyes still abounded. Half of them were racked with lingering coughs, and Rose was too weak to stand for long. But her fever had cooled, so she had agreed to greet the Belgique prince formally.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Prince Bastien,” Rose said, very softly. If she talked any louder, she would cough.

Jonquil, who had recovered almost as fast as Poppy had, came to the rescue and introduced her sisters. Rose could see the prince’s eyes glaze over as Jonquil rattled off the twelve flower names to him, and suppressed a sigh. From experience she knew that he would remember her name, since she was the oldest, but she steeled herself for Poppy’s complaints about being called Daisy, or worse: Pansy. Few visitors could tell the twins apart, and fewer still bothered to sort out the names of anyone younger than fifteen-year-old Hyacinth.

True to form, Prince Bastien barely spared a moment on the younger girls after the introductions were made. He pulled a chair up to Rose’s sofa and proceeded to regale her with the story of his journey from La Belge to Bruch. He was quite comical in his descriptions of his riverboat’s captain, who spit after every sentence. Rose noticed that he didn’t focus entirely on her, though, also including Jonquil and Lily in his conversation.

Later, as they dressed for dinner, Lily wryly agreed. “Oh, yes, he has his heart set on Father’s throne all right. He’s flirting with all three of us equally.”

“Why is that?” Jonquil fussed with her hair, trying the effect of a scarlet ribbon threaded through her brunette curls. “In case one of us proves to be stupider than the others?”

“In case one of us forms a
tendre
for him and tells him the secret, is my guess,” Rose said. She blew her nose into a
handkerchief, relieved to be alone among her sisters where she could do so without looking unladylike. “Why did I get out of bed?”

Rose’s head had been spinning by the time Prince Bastien had finished his narrative, and the effort of holding in a fit of coughing was making her breath come in gasps. One of their maids, seeing the eldest princess’s distress, showed Bastien out and then hastened to get Rose out of her tea gown and into bed.

She had hoped to be able to attend the state dinner that night but sent a maid to inform her father that Lily would once more be playing hostess. She decided that Petunia, Pansy, and Daisy should stay in bed as well.

“The bow looks better at the back,” she told Jonquil. “Now stop primping.”

“Going to lecture me on vanity, like Hya?” Jonquil arched an eyebrow at Rose in the mirror.

“I don’t care if you’re vain, but you’re bothering me with your rustling and humming.”

“I’m not humming!”

“You are, too. You always hum when you do your hair. It’s annoying.”

“She’s right, you know,” Lily said as she put on a pair of amethyst earrings. “You hum when you do your hair, and just before you fall asleep.”

Stunned by the knowledge that she had a bad habit, Jonquil finished her hair in silence and went out of the room. Rose had just closed her eyes and was starting to drift off
when she heard her younger sisters squealing and chattering in the sitting room.

Iris burst in, a huge bouquet in her hands. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

She spread out the flowers, and Rose realized that there was not one large bouquet, but three small ones. One was all lilies, another all miniature irises, and the third was a cluster of deep scarlet roses.

Oddly enough, each bundle was tied with a knitted cord of black wool, but Rose thought it was quite a pretty effect as Iris handed her the scarlet roses. She held the flowers to her stuffy nose and tried to breathe in some of the scent. Only the faintest trickle of the flowers’ perfume came through, so she gently stroked her cheek with the soft petals instead, savoring the exquisite feeling. She sometimes felt guilty that her father spent so much money on the gardens, especially on heating and watering the hothouses, but right now it all seemed worth it.

“Greta told me the new under-gardener brought them,” Iris burbled. “He gave them to her in a big basket, and asked her to bring them to us as a special treat. I’m going to put a ribbon to match my gown around mine, and carry it at dinner.” She went out, still admiring the deep purple and gold flowers of her bouquet.

“The new under-gardener?” Lily looked over her own white flowers at Rose. “Isn’t he the one who made you fall in the fountain?”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Rose said staunchly. She had blamed Galen rather a lot in the first week of her illness, but she had felt
more charitable toward him recently, watching him work so tirelessly in her mother’s garden. Holding the beautiful flowers to her cheek helped soothe her mood a great deal as well.

Poppy, her bouquet of bright red blooms showing up wildly against the pale pink gown she wore, stepped into the room next. “Lily, it’s time for dinner. I could only just hear the gong over the sound of them gabbling out there.” She jerked her dark head toward the sound of their other sisters, who were in the sitting room comparing bouquets.

“Just let me put a nicer ribbon on mine,” Lily said, hurrying to her dressing table to find something to match her gown. “Why do you think he sent them? Do you suppose he got permission first?”

“I’m sure he did,” Poppy said airily. “He escorted me back from the garden the other day, when Fernand arrived. He’s very kind. And handsome.” She wiggled her eyebrows at Rose, who chose to ignore her. “Don’t get a new ribbon; they look more interesting this way,” she told Lily, adjusting the cord twisted around the slim stems of her namesake. “Galen made the cord, too, I think. He sits on the rocks just beneath our windows to eat his lunch and knit. I think he knits his own socks.”

“He does?” Lily looked up from the dressing table.

“Yes, but Rose would know better than I,” she said mischievously. And she wandered out with her nose in her flowers.

Lily looked at Rose, who just shrugged, hoping she wasn’t blushing. “He’s an odd young man,” she said.

“But handsome,” Poppy shouted through the door.

Her two older sisters rolled their eyes.

After those who were well enough had gone to dinner, Rose closed her eyes and took a nap. She slept better than she had in weeks, months even, with the bouquet of roses propped up on the pillows near her cheek. Like Poppy, she liked the little knitted cord that held the flowers together, fingering it as she drifted off.

When she woke, Prince Bastien was leaning into her bedroom, leering at her. Startled, she clutched at the bouquet too hard, and pricked her finger on a thorn. Most of them had been stripped away, but Galen had missed one.

“Ouch!” Rose sucked at her finger, then sneezed into a handkerchief.

“Oh, poor princess,” Prince Bastien said from the doorway. “You are still the sick?”

“Yes, I am still the sick,” Rose retorted, irritated. She blew her nose, hard, not caring if it wasn’t attractive or ladylike. She was in her nightgown; what was he doing leaning into her bedroom and staring at her like that?

“Prince Bastien?” The ever-conscientious Lily appeared at his elbow, an apologetic look in her eyes for Rose’s benefit. “Why don’t you show us that card game you spoke of at dinner?”

“Will not the Rose join us?”

“No, I’m afraid the Ro—my older sister is too tired,” Lily said.

Lily artfully guided Prince Bastien away, and Rose spent the remainder of the evening listening to the merriment through
the open door of her bedroom. At ten o’clock, their maids readied them all for bed and prepared a cot for Prince Bastien in the sitting room. At a quarter to eleven, the maids and the Belgique prince were all fast asleep.

They would not wake until dawn, no matter what sounds the girls made. The hounds of Hell could run baying through the sitting room, but the sleep that had come over Bastien and the servants could not be disturbed.

Leaning on Lily’s arm, Rose looked down at Prince Bastien as she passed him. With his mouth hanging open and a line of drool trickling onto the satin pillow, he was not as handsome as she had thought earlier. She shook her head and sniffed her flowers as Lily opened the secret passage and they went to the Midnight Ball.

Three days later, Prince Bastien left in disgust.

I’m not sure how many more princes they can find,” Walter said. He and Galen were in the tropical hothouse, pruning exotic fruit trees that were too delicate to grow outside in Westfalin during any season. “We’ve gone through, what, six now?”

“Seven,” Galen said.

He had been keeping careful count. Poppy, and some of the younger princesses who were feeling better, had occasionally stopped in the gardens to whisper their unflattering opinions of the princes to Galen. Rose had not come out, though Galen often saw her at the windows. She looked so pale, with her golden-brown hair crowning her wan face. He had wanted to send more bouquets, but there were rather too many princesses for such a thing to go unnoticed, and it wouldn’t be proper for Galen to be sending flowers to Rose alone. He had excused his first gift by saying that they were the flowers from the hothouse that needed to be thinned out anyway.

“And every one of them arrogant and self-serving,” Walter
said, clucking his tongue. “Without a care for the princesses beyond getting the throne.”

And all seven had left without solving the mystery of the worn-out dancing slippers. The king could be heard shouting at all hours of the day and night to anyone who would listen. Relations were even more strained with their neighbor nations than they had been before. If King Gregor had thought that a contest to win his throne would bring the countries of Ionia closer together, he had been wrong.

“It’s been three months,” Galen said suddenly.

Walter just grunted.

“Princess Rose has been ill for three months.”

“She’s on the mend,” Walter assured him. “Pneumonia is never easy, even on the young.” Walter patted Galen’s arm. “You’re a good lad to worry about them, Galen. A very good lad.”

Just then the door at the far end of the hothouse opened, and a pair of figures came through. They were heavily bundled against the cold, and all Galen could say for sure was that they were female. The two figures divested themselves of their bonnets and cloaks, steaming in the sudden heat, and Galen saw that it was Princess Rose herself, leaning on the arm of the musically inclined princess—Violet, he thought her name was.

Violet helped Rose to a little bench beneath a banana tree, and then wandered off to look at some flowering vines. Galen put down his pruning shears. Walter raised an eyebrow, and Galen grinned. He picked an orange from a nearby tree, winked at Walter, and strolled down the aisle to the bench.

Now that he had spent more time working around the palace, running into princesses and ministers of state, ambassadors, and the occasional prince, his manners were much more refined. “Good morning, Princess Rose,” he said gallantly, and offered her the orange with a flourish.

In truth, he was a little shocked by her appearance. At her window she appeared romantically pale and slender, but up close she was too thin and hollow cheeked, with dark circles under her eyes. Her thick golden-brown hair was pulled back tightly in a simple braid, which emphasized the taut whiteness of her skin against the dark-colored dress she wore.

Still, Galen did not let his smile slip. She was even more beautiful now, he thought, with an otherworldly quality to her and a maturity that had not been there before.