Chapter 11
The door shut behind the general with a decisive boom. Celeste could only stand there, quivering like she’d just landed hard from a dozen grands jetés. Her palms were damp against the tulle, her heart rioting, every beat drumming where his words had struck her.
This wasn’t right. A fairy godfather wasn’t supposed to sound like a Hotspur in the throes of a charge. She ought to be afraid.
Prue seized the water jug from the washstand and splashed it across her bodice.
“Oh, my poor flesh. Did you hear what that—that man said? Lady Cecilia, the gown doesn’t matter.
You’d undo a battalion wearing a bloody sackcloth.
” She collapsed onto a stool. Her whole body trembled.
“Such ferocious words. Ah! They burned my corset stays! My ears are impure now.”
Rue sighed. Sighed! Which, on the military woman, sounded like a warhorse snorting at the absurdities of peace. “That’s romance for you. Grim as cannon smoke, but hot enough to boil a stewpot.”
Celeste could only shake her head. What was wrong with these women?
They sighed and fluttered, fanning themselves as though they had just witnessed passion in boots and spurs.
No, no. That was not romantic at all. A true prince would not speak like that.
Not with such blunt force, not with such fire.
A prince wooed with poetry, with serenades by moonlight, with whispered vows.
A true prince would never leave her trembling like a girl balancing on pointe for the first time.
“If words could march, those just conquered the bloody continent,” Rue said, her lips smacking approvingly.
Celeste didn’t laugh. She limped to the settee. Her cheeks burned, and her lungs seized with some strange new current that had nothing to do with panic. Papillon should have been beating itself to tatters. Instead… it was still. Waiting. Listening.
“I’ve seen generals aplenty, but none as handsome as the Hawk. He’s the fiercest man in the service—and aye, I’m including Bonaparte’s lot,” Rue said.
Handsome? Certainly. But he was a cry away from being charming. “Brute force is not to be so… so glorified,” Celeste stammered, closing her eyes.
Rue gave a bark of laughter. “Tell that to the ladies of London. They all but fall flat on their faces to throw themselves in his path. You’d think he was the Crown Jewels marching down Bond Street.”
Something hot and irrational spiked in Celeste’s chest. The image—women tripping over themselves, pressing too close, daring to touch him—snapped like a whip inside her.
“Crown jewels. Ha! He would scream at them and tell them to wear sackcloth!” Celeste blurted and immediately regretted her outburst.
The general was to blame, souring her sweet nature.
A man with the brooding silence of Hamlet, the wounded pride of Berowne, and the maddening control of Measure for Measure’s Duke.
If Shakespeare had written him, he’d be the character no one could love until the final act—when it was nearly too late.
All sharp angles and unsaid things. A man sculpted not from flesh, but from restraint.
The deepest of sighs escaped her chest. She terribly hated how compelling that was. Even Macbeth had the decency to unravel publicly.
The seamstress wobbled up from the pile of cloth she had fallen into. “Oh, dear heavens. I can’t sew with sackcloth. I’ll be ruined!”
Celeste groaned. And now that! He had won their dispute despite her flawless performance. She had given it every flicker of wit, every gleam of eye, every artful tilt of her head. Her timing had been impeccable. Her lines, inspired.
And yet he hadn’t applauded. He had growled in her face. That sound. It hummed through her bones like the last note of a cello. And worse, he demanded her tulle as hostage. He might as well strip her of her skin.
The room’s energy had faded—Rue muttering curses under her breath, Prue gently weeping into a lace cuff, the seamstress whispering prayers to the patron saint of unpaid invoices.
“Well, my lady,” the seamstress said, “what will you do now?”
All eyes turned to Celeste.
The tulle lay soft and crumpled in her arms. So delicate it ought to have been singed by the general’s grim words.
“We will proceed,” Celeste said, her voice carrying the calm of martyrdom. “Fit me for the sackcloth gown.”
The wool itched before it even touched her skin, and she glared at her reflection.
Let the general bark his orders—let him banish ribbons, outlaw lace, command her into sackcloth.
Unless he came himself, unless those iron hands stripped the tulle from her body and forced the coarse cloth over her skin, she would not yield.
No, she would show that overly handsome Fairy Godfather that the figurine was the heroine’s choice.
Or die trying. Preferably in Act Five, with a suitably tragic curtain call, “Here lies Lady Cecilia—slain by sackcloth.”