Chapter 6 The Tea Tournament
Interrupting Katrina’s bragging, a servant approached the three ladies down the garden path. The maid wore a green dress with belled sleeves, a white apron and a little white bonnet upon her head, fastened under her chin by a length of lace.
The young woman called to them in a cheery voice, “May I show you to your table, my ladies?”
Celise would have liked to explore the gardens a little more—she had yet to encounter a Starlight Dahlia—but it seemed like Katrina was satisfied after finding her own flower.
“Yes, let’s sit down for tea. I want to see who else is assigned to our table,” Katrina said.
One by one, the servant inspected each of their tickets. Then the young woman led them down a flagstone path to their right, which wandered away from the Zodiac Gardens, under an arched trellis, and toward their next destination.
Celise, Heather and Katrina followed.
Before long, the flagstone path opened into a tea garden filled with chairs and tables. The towers of Gravenmere Castle created a bold backdrop beyond the walled garden. Wispy white clouds trailed across a cool azure sky, framing the castle’s peaked roof and pointed spires.
A trellis of climbing lumenblooms divided the tea garden into two halves.
The older wives and matrons were seated on one side of the trellis, screened from the younger, unmarried ladies.
Celise caught sight of Marcella, already seated at a table, deep in conversation with two other noblewomen of similar age.
Celise didn’t know what the highborn mothers spoke about, but they looked thoroughly engrossed in the topic.
Heather suddenly grabbed Katrina’s arm and pointed. “Katrina, look!” she gasped. “Isn’t that Ambrosia Verabon, your rival from the Luminous Lady’s Fencing League?”
“Oh,” Katrina stiffened, looking toward the far end of the pavilion. “I wouldn’t call her a rival.”
“But last season she almost won your gold medal. . . .”
“Almost? My parry was much faster than hers. The referee called the point, and there’s nothing more to say.”
Heather fell silent.
Celise remembered the incident earlier in Vimspring when Katrina had competed for the Forsynthian Royal Cup.
A lot of contention had surrounded the gold medal.
Some of the papers implied that Katrina might have been favored unfairly.
Celise wouldn’t have thought twice about it, except that Katrina had been particularly cruel to her after the match.
She had bullied Celise relentlessly around the stables until Mr. Talisworth complained to Lord Dhastel.
Ambrosia Verabon—the lady in question—was seated under a shady gazebo with twelve other girls.
She was very beautiful, with luxurious indigo-colored hair and bright green eyes that dominated her pointed face.
She wore a lacy white hat upon her head and a bright magenta dress with a swooping neckline.
With a sinking feeling, Celise noticed that the servant was leading them directly to Ambrosia’s table.
Oh no.
Her palms began to sweat.
Celise tried not to feel like a total imposter as she approached the group at the Silver Thistle table.
Her stepmother’s words rang out in her head: “Stand straight; your posture is crooked. Pronounce your words; don’t mumble.
You’re walking too loudly; lean forward on your toes.
Don’t touch your face when addressing a lord or lady.
You’re standing incorrectly. My, my, but you’re a hopeless case, aren’t you? ”
Katrina reached the head of the table with Heather by her side. Celise guessed that Katrina knew some of the ladies from the fencing league.
“Who’s this?” One of the ladies asked, giving Celise a curious look.
“This is my sister, Celise,” Katrina said quickly.
“I didn’t know you had another sister.”
“She’s . . . um, well, she’s not really . . . .”
“Well. She’s not well. She's often ill,” Heather suggested.
The young woman glanced at Celise, noting her petite frame and slightly hunched posture. “I’m glad you were feeling well enough to attend the ball.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Celise managed.
Then she swept up her skirts and sat down, trying to remember her stepmother’s whirlwind lessons on table manners. Her two younger half-sisters perched in their seats like birds alighting on a branch. She couldn’t capture their grace if she tried.
After all of the ladies were seated, a servant made introductions in a stiff, formal tone: “This is Lavender Dupont, Margaret Thelise, Felicia Credence, Bernadette Goodweather and Ambrosia Verabon. . . .”
At the name Ambrosia, Celise sensed Katrina stiffen. A scowl flitted across her face but quickly disappeared.
Two of the young ladies at the table were from Bratzia, with their soft lavender hair and light brown complexions. On closer inspection, they looked like twins. Celise assumed they were the same outspoken girls from the garden tour.
“You two know each other, don’t you?” Bernadette Goodweather asked, a blond girl wearing a pale blue dress with puffed sleeves. She looked between Katrina and Ambrosia. “You were both contenders for the gold medal, weren’t you?”
“I’d hardly call Ambrosia a contender,” Katrina snarked.
The indigo-haired heiress simply smiled into her cup, but her sharp eyes spoke differently. “We were tied until the last second. Katrina scored the winning point. Some of the spectators didn’t agree with the referee.”
“Didn’t a fight break out in the stands?” Bernadette Goodweather asked.
“My fans were upset,” Ambrosia shrugged.
“Fans? As if,” Katrina muttered, her cheeks flushing bright pink.
Ambrosia flashed her another haughty smile. Celise noticed her teacup beginning to glow a dark blue color. Mana.
Katrina picked up her own cup and ignited the shined porcelain. Her own mana glowed crimson red.
It was a small but significant flex of their power. Celise sensed something threatening about the tension between the two ladies.
Then the other girls at the table began picking up their shined teacups. One by one, the cups began to glow with different light—pink, blue, purple, and green—as the noblewomen channeled their mana through their hands. The water inside the cup heated, allowing their tea to steep.
After some hesitation, Celise lifted her cup to her lips and pretended it was warm.
The conversation flowed from there. Soon, the soft clink of china and feminine voices filled the shade beneath the rose-laden trellises.
The table was artfully arranged with a display of bright pink cupcakes at its center.
More plates full of cucumber sandwiches, sugared peaches and lemon wedges, honey-glazed shortbread and chocolate-dipped strawberries filled the table.
Two female servants in Blackwood livery stood in the shade nearby, ready to refill a cup at a moment’s notice.
The young ladies seemed as poised and practiced as their mothers at this sort of socializing.
Shined teacups glinted. Long skirts rustled.
The variety of gowns created a rainbow of refinement.
It was all very lovely. Picturesque. Perfect.
Celise’s bright blue eyes drifted upward as beams of sunlight trickled through the wisteria vines.
She found herself wondering what it must be like to live in this world, where every occasion was like an oil painting staged to perfection.
Nothing could be unpretty. Nothing could be unclean, imperfect, cheap or common.
She missed the simplicity of the stables, of her lunches spent with Mr. Talisworth or by herself in the fields with the horses.
She didn’t know how to be herself in this kind of company.
She wondered if the other ladies knew how to be themselves at all, or if their entire world was a mask.
Did they ever take the mask off?
She watched her stepsister, Katrina, out of the corner of her eye.
A little scowl alighted on Katrina’s lips; she looked just like her mother.
Her eyes darted around the table at the other ladies.
Her evaluation of their clothes and appearance was obvious to Celise, though well guarded.
Katrina was stacking up chips, as it were, comparing her own charms to theirs.
Celise thought all of the women looked excruciatingly beautiful.
She felt like a little mouse compared to a flock of exotic birds.
True to her zodiac sign, Katrina wasn’t content to sit quietly at the table for long.
She leaned forward, loud and outspoken, regaling the other ladies with stories from Windhaven Ranch.
Most of the young women owned Dhastel horses.
Celise wasn’t surprised. Dhastel walkers, only thirteen to fourteen hands high in white or cream colors, with gaits as smooth as silk, were bred for fine ladies.
“Do all three of you live at Windhaven?” One of the Bratzian twins asked, nodding to Heather and Celise. Celise recognized the rich accent from their earlier walk through the gardens.
Heather answered, “Yes, we do.”
“That must be lovely, living around so many horses,” the twin said.
“Celise spends the most time with the horses,” Katrina said behind her teacup. She cast a sideways glance at Heather, who barely held back a giggle.
The second Bratzian twin said to Celise in broken Forsynthian, “Your hair is . . . a very nice color. Like . . . a flower.” She pointed.
Her sister helpfully translated, “She means your hair looks like the flowers behind you. It has a bright berry undertone. I have to agree; it is very unusual. Eye-catching.”
“Oh . . . thank you,” Celise murmured and fell silent. Her coloring was uncommon in Forsynthia. Her features were more like her mother’s, or so she had been told.
The ladies all watched her expectantly, as though Celise were supposed to carry on the conversation, but she didn’t know what to say.