5. Chapter 5
Chapter 5
Kat
Mary drags me out of bed the next morning at the ungodly hour of eleven o’clock.
“My eyes don’t work anymore,” I protest. “And neither do my legs. I’m stiff as a hairbrush after all that running and dancing and ugh my shoes were a torment! I still cannot believe the man proposed to me during a dance by casually suggesting we marry in a fortnight . Just in time to steal my fortune! The nerve of some men. At least pretend you’re in love with me!”
“You’d better get downstairs,” says Mary in a tone that shuts up my groaning immediately.
I sit upright, suddenly wide awake. “What’s the matter?”
Mary helps me dress and pulls my dark hair back into a tight bun matching her own. “It’s not good. I tried to stop it. The mistress is not pleased by your refusal of Lord Boreham.”
Dread sinks into my stomach. “She’s come up with another punishment, hasn’t she? I don’t see why she should care who I marry! It’s not as though she is going to get any of the money.”
Mary gives me a sharp look, and my stomach sinks even more. I shut my mouth, straighten my skirts, and pretend I’m oblivious as I march out of my bedroom, down the stairs, and to the dining room.
No one is seated at the long table spread with a fine, laced runner, a bowl of fruit, and steaming plates of biscuits, eggs, sausages, and porridge. My stepmother and two stepsisters are, instead, circled around the end of the table that isn’t set for breakfast, exclaiming over something in a box. A box that looks . . . familiar .
“What’s all the excitement for?” I ask uneasily, trying to sound natural.
“Kat! There you are!” cries Bridget. She is bright and golden and lovely—her hair coiffed and curled, her cosmetics perfectly applied, her gown fresh as though she wasn’t up all night. “Look what one of the maids found!”
Edith traces the faded velvet of the box and the scalloped edges of its lid on the table. Eyebags hang from beneath her lower lashes, her hair slightly frizzed and her dress a simple mud brown frock. “I want the box.”
Bridget slaps her hand with a laugh. “You selfish creature! I think it’s Kat’s.”
I finally get close enough so I can see inside the box. A pair of perfect, gleaming slippers of cut glass rests in a bed of tissue and cloth. My heart drops all the way to the floor and pounds there like a drum. “Those are my mother’s! They were her wedding slippers! Where did you find these?”
Every instinct in me demands to grab the box and run. So few pieces remain of my mother by now, and nothing like this. Nothing that carries the memory of both my parents in its shining, crystalline cut.
“A few servants were cleaning through the attic for things that might be sold. The upkeep of the house is expensive and the allowance your father left us is hardly enough,” says Agatha, who holds the edge of the box as though prepared to wrench it away should I try to grab it.
“Things that might be sold?” I cry, fury rising like a tumultuous wave in my chest. “You sold everything of my mother’s the moment you married Father! And now you would sell this too?”
“Would you have asked me to stand by and watch my newly married husband sigh over all the remnants of his first wife? Truly, Katherine, you would have had no such patience if you stood in my shoes. You act as though I did it to spite you! I have given no orders to sell the slippers.”
I pause, suddenly wondering if I jumped to a wrongful accusation too quickly.
“Considering that you’re not twenty-one yet,” continues Agatha, “and the estate does not belong to you, these seem like just the thing I should keep safely for you until you come of age.”
I stare—at first, dumbfounded, then a moment later, suspiciously. Is this a trick?
Bridget’s face has gone pale. She laughs nervously, glancing between Agatha and me. “But Mother, my dowry! You just said—” She cuts herself off suddenly and turns her attention to me. “Kat, I know these slippers are special to you, but you know that I have practically nothing for a dowry! Your father has given his entire fortune to you and left nothing for us—”
“Because you aren’t his daughters!” I cry back. The instant the words are out of my mouth, I can feel Mary’s exasperated insistence of, “Be a nice little stepdaughter and they won’t torment you so! Your provocation makes everything worse!”
A prickle of shame makes me wring my hands. My gaze turns back to the box. It’s like my mother is locked away, imprisoned under the firm hand of Agatha. Be nice, Kat, and maybe they will let you keep the slippers.
“Yes, we aren’t his daughters,” Bridget says coolly, the laughter gone from her voice. “He had every right to give you his fortune. But it doesn’t change the fact that Edith and I have no dowry. These shoes must be worth a small fortune and could give one of us a sizeable dowry, or the both of us a modest one. I know it’s selfish of me to ask for anything of yours, but I don’t want to be a spinster!”
Now I’m a selfish miser if I want to keep my dead mother’s shoes.
Edith pops a grape into her mouth and says dryly, “You know no one will marry me without a dowry.”
“Why do you keep saying you don’t have dowries?” I demand instead of giving an answer to their requests of my generosity. “Your father left you each dowries! Unless Agatha spent them all—”
“I did not!” cries Agatha, indignant. “They are trite sums that would hardly tempt a man of consequence!”
“Why must they marry men of consequence? Why not marry a good man with a modest wage? You act as if it is some great trial to not be rich!”
“That is easy for you to say,” says Bridget. “You are the wealthiest person at the court except Queen Vivienne herself! Why are you so desperate to not share an ounce of it? You could hardly spend it all in your lifetime!”
Because I have plans for it. There are hundreds— thousands —of human slaves in Faerieland I’ve yet to rescue. I need that money to help them build new lives for themselves. I’m sick of giving them a scant loaf or two of bread and just enough pence for a coach.
But . . . it isn’t fair that my stepsisters have so little when I have so much.
I look at that box, the gray velvet only barely tinged the pink it once was. I open my mouth to make an offer: the price of the shoes contributed to their dowries in exchange for me getting to keep them.
“Girls, girls,” chides Agatha, cutting me off before I can speak. “Bridget, it is not your place to ask such things of Katherine. Her dowry is hers and hers alone.”
My shoulders sink in relief. Maybe Agatha doesn’t intend to punish me after all.
“ But .”
That single word slices through my thoughts. My gaze shoots up to find Agatha staring grimly down at the slipper box. She picks it up and tucks it carefully under her arm. My mouth drops open.
“Since Katherine is not yet of age, I am still mistress of this estate, and I decide what is done with its properties.”
A rock lands in my stomach. “Agatha, please, I—”
She fixes a look of such finality upon me, I know there is no fighting her. “I will make a deal with you. I will give you the slippers— if you accept Lord Boreham’s proposal and marry him before you turn twenty-one. If you do not, I will sell them.”
I grind my teeth together, trying to quell the rising panic inside me. It feels like the moment I watched my mother’s casket slam shut. I want her back. I want those slippers back.
But Agatha summons her servant Sylva—the only one Mary and I are not friends with—and gives her the box. Likely to go lock in the depths of Agatha’s chambers where I can never find them.
I watch mutely as the servant disappears with the box, knowing I will never see that part of my mother again.
My stepsisters sit down at the table, their breakfast now cold, as I keep standing where I am. I am not hungry at all.
“By the way,” says Agatha, taking her place at the head of the table and pouring herself a cup of tea. “You will take the carriage when Lord Boreham comes to call in three days to propose to you. The manservant—I always forget his name. Anthony?”
“Charles,” I say.
“Charles, yes. He should be back any moment from the market. I told him to sell that horse of yours. It’s better if you take the carriage from now on. The horse has served its purpose, and since it’s the reason you keep being late for events, I figured it was best to move it along.”
The horror, the sheer panic that descends upon me is nothing like what I experienced when I saw the slippers. “You sold Bartholomew? When?”
“Oh, early this morning. What? Don’t tell me you’re attached to the creature. It failed you over and over again! You told me so yourself! She had a bad shoe, she was sick, she wouldn’t take her bridle suddenly, and so forth!”
I’m already running out the door. My chest burns, my throat tingling with thickness.
I find Charles coming into the kitchen, where the rest of the servants are cleaning up their breakfast work and preparing for the next meal. He is not in his usual livery, but trousers, suspenders, and a pair of worn boots.
“Where’s Bartholomew?” I demand. “Where is she?”
He gives me a pitying look. “I’m so sorry.”
Beatrice, the cook, shakes her head in sympathy. Viola looks up from scouring a pot in the sink, sadness etched across the worn lines of her face. Matthew has set down his mending.
This is what Mary warned me about. Not the blasted slippers. This .
I ignore all of them except Charles. “Who bought her? Tell me who bought her! We need to reverse the transaction. No one knows her like I do! No one is going to appreciate her! They’ll think she bites because she loves rubbing her lips on flannel and if you happen to be wearing it, it seems like she’s going to bite you! They’ll think she’s being rebellious when she throws her feed buckets in the air but it’s just a game she plays! And they won’t know that she absolutely needs her daily neck scratches—and she cannot stand having her tail messed with! What if they try to braid her tail? And, and—”
Charles’s hand on my shoulder stops my stream of words as tears run down my face. “I’m so sorry.”
“Sweet child,” says Viola, coming at once to wrap me up in her soft, motherly embrace.
“All those times I blamed my tardiness on Bartholomew! I never thought she’d sell her!” I’m a bawling mess, burying my face in Viola’s shoulder.
“You need breakfast, or you’ll cry away all your strength,” says Beatrice, pulling back a towel from a freshly baked tray of pastries. “And a cup of hot cocoa, I think.”
They all know how much I love my horse. Father gave her to me when we were both young—we’ve grown up together, half-raised by this staff. Some of the staff have been with us since before my mother was lost to Caphryl Wood, and the rest since my father was alive.
When Mary enters the kitchen, she’s the one who says, “Enough crying. Eat some food and then go upstairs and cry where the mistress won’t see.”
The words are barely spoken before the click of Agatha’s heels warn all of us of her approach. I sit at a barstool with my back to the door, dragging my sleeve across my wet cheeks and taking numb bites of the food set before me. The servants snap back to their work, giving me a wide berth as the door swings open.
I don’t turn.
I’m too afraid she’ll see the murderous hatred in my face. Too afraid she’ll see that I’ve been crying and know just how much power she has over my life.
“I didn’t know the creature meant so much to you,” Agatha says to my back. The servants are silent except for the clang of dishes, the shift of laundry being sorted through, and the ripping sounds coming from Beatrice removing the feathers from tonight’s chicken.
At this point, I don’t care to decipher if that is a lie or truth. If she hadn’t thought it would hurt me, why did she sell Bartholomew early in the morning when she knew I’d be asleep and couldn’t stop it?
Mary appears in my periphery, her pristine red bun a contrast with her starched white and black uniform. I dare not look at her for fear Agatha will take her away too. Just because she can .
“As already agreed upon, if you accept Lord Boreham’s proposal, I’ll give you the shoes. Perhaps we can even buy your horse back. If it means so much to you.”
“I understand,” I say, glad when my voice doesn’t crack. I haven’t agreed to any of this. I force myself to keep shoveling bites in my mouth, to keep chewing, but I taste dust instead of the buttery, flaky crust of the pastry I eat.
“He will be here in three days. You can let us know of your decision then.”
I listen to the clicks of her heels as she leaves, and they seem to echo long after the collective sigh of relief goes up among the staff.
Three days to figure out how to get myself out of this mess. Three days to figure out how to break Agatha’s control over me.