Glass Slipper (16 page)

Julien, occupying what had become his usual spot, the armchair beside the fireplace in his room, looked up at his housekeeper through drink-reddened eyes. “What’s this?”

“How should I know? Does it look like it’s been opened?” She nudged it with her toe before leaving the room in a huff.

Taking a moment to collect his equilibrium, he leaned forward and scooped up the package. There was no telling who had sent it; the frayed ends of broken twine that should have held a tag remained knotted around the string holding the package closed. “Brujon.”

With growing dread, he unwrapped the small package. The box inside told him all he needed to know about its sender. The polished wood was stamped with the prince’s seal. Julien almost flung it aside, but morbid curiosity forced his fingers to lift the lid.

Inside, nestled on a bed of red velvet, gleamed a string of pearls.

He closed the lid slowly. The necklace had either been sent as a kind gesture, the returning of an expensive piece of jewelry now that the tryst had ended, or in triumph, like a knight presenting the head of a bested dragon. Knowing Philipe, it was the latter, and Julien did not like being cast as the dragon. He flung the box away, to hit the stone fireplace and splinter into a thousand pieces, spilling its contents on the floor.

* * * *

“Get up, you lazy girl! It’s almost light out!”

Joséphine rolled to her side to avoid the wooden shoe that nudged her ribs. She’d arrived at the farm in the middle of the night, owing to the poor conditions on the road from town, and she couldn’t have been asleep more than a few hours. She rubbed her bleary eyes and looked about the small kitchen, where the members of her mother’s family—family she had never met—crowded around a small wooden table and stared at her. One figure was missing. “My father?”

“Left almost as soon as you bedded down.” The woman who towered over Joséphine was large, her stocky figure garbed in coarse brown wool that gave her the appearance of a rotted apple. Her face could only be described as mean, with her perpetually lowered eyebrows, wide nose with flaring nostrils, and scrunched up mouth. “Get up, princess. We don’t laze about here. You’ll work or you’ll sleep outside!”

Outside might have been preferable to sleeping on a dirty hearth. Joséphine sat up, her back protesting its night on the cold stone. “Of course. What do you need me to do?”

“Need?” From the table, a man spoke up. His long, thin face looked dirty, but Joséphine realized it was merely an illusion made by the shadows under his eyes and the dusting of sparse whiskers on his cheeks. “We don’t need you for anything.”

Pushing down her irritation, for she was a guest in their home and had no home of her own to retreat to, she rephrased her question. “I meant, how can I be of assistance?”

“Ooh, and don’t it speak all high and proud to its lowly relatives,” the woman said, nudging Joséphine again with her toes. “You can go out to the well and get some water, like you should have done hours ago if you’d had any sense.”

“Hours ago, I wasn’t here,” Joséphine ground out, against her better judgment.

 The woman’s angry expression grew even more frightening, something Joséphine wouldn’t have thought possible if she’d been asked only a moment before. The harridan let her foot fly and kicked a wooden bucket across the dirty floor. It hit Joséphine’s knees, smarting so that her eyes watered.

She would not let them see her tears. She might be a cast off, and unwanted, but she did not wish to be there anymore than they wished her presence in their home.  She stood, wrapping the thin wool blanket around her shoulders, and gave a kind smile to the unwashed children who sat around the table, all looking as ill-tempered as their mother.  Picking up the bucket, she made for the door.

“You’ll be needing your dancing shoes, princess,” the woman called, and as Joséphine turned to ask what she meant, a pair of wooden shoes hit the wall beside her head.  She flinched, her face reddening at their laughter.

Without another word, she put the shoes on and, bucket in hand, went out into the cold.  The door clattered shut behind her, and she stared out on the snow-covered landscape.  Fluffy white flakes drifted down to settle on her hair and on her eyelids, until she blinked them away, hot tears escaping to wet her cheeks.  The snow had covered the tracks since her father had left.  She could not follow if she wanted to.

And she did want to leave here, but not for her father’s house, where her stepmother would shrill and scream and break her expensive things in a rage, where her stepsisters would titter behind their hands and call her a whore.  There was only one place she wanted to be, but it was impossible.

She forced her spine to straighten. This was her life now. The sooner she accepted that fact, the easier it would be. Perhaps if she lost herself in hard work, she could block out the horrible people she had come to live with.

More importantly, perhaps she could block out the memories of Julien that haunted her dreams.

* * * *

The swirling snow that battered the walls of Chateau Perrault was as inhospitable as the weather inside.

“You’re not staying here all winter, are you?” Brujon asked, whisking away Julien’s breakfast before he could finish.

“You’re free to leave me, as well,” he snapped. Not that Joséphine had left him. No, it would have been much easier if she had. He wouldn’t have to live with the knowledge that he had turned away the only woman he had ever felt more than fleeting affection for.

A reverberating pounding shook the great hall, and Brujon dropped the plate. “That’s probably the devil looking for you!”

If it had been the devil, Julien would have been much happier to see him. Instead, Henrí stormed into the great hall the moment Madame Brujon opened the doors, and he did not stop to say hello before advancing on Julien and punching him in the mouth.

Spitting blood into his cupped hand, Julien swore. “What are you doing?”

“I should ask you the same thing!” Henrí cuffed Julien’s ear. “What did you do to my daughter?”

He’d lost a tooth, he was nearly certain of it. Julien looked up, his hands held defensively in front of his face. “I did exactly what you asked.”

“What I asked?” Henrí’s eyes bugged out of his head. “I asked you to take her to court and get her married off! I never told you to…to seduce her and break her heart!”

“Break her heart?” Julien searched his memory. Philipe was going to ask her to marry him, after just a few short days in her company. “Henrí, I have no idea what you’re raving about. Why have you come all the way here? Shouldn’t you be at the palace, watching your wife spend all your money?”

“Oh, I might well have been, if someone had kept our bargain. Instead, I had to send Joséphine to her cousins in the north to appease my wife, who was none too pleased when she found out that my daughter had rejected Prince Philipe in order to pine over you!”

The words scarcely penetrated. “What do you mean, she rejected him? They were all but engaged the night I left court.”

“You left too early!” Henrí raised his hand as if he would take another swing, then calmed himself. “Not only is the Prince not marrying my daughter, but he has announced that he will not marry anyone. His brush with near monogamy has frightened him off his bride search. My wife will never forgive me!”

“Joséphine has not married Philipe?” Julien slowly pieced together what his friend had told him. “You sent her north?”

“I had to! She wouldn’t tell us a word of what happened while she was away, and then Philipe sent this for her—” Henrí reached into his coat and withdrew one perfect glass slipper, etched in gold, “—said he was keeping the other one for its fond memories, and that he regretted her decision. That’s when she told us what had happened, and that you were the cause of it.”

“You sent her north, to live with her cousins?” Julien would fume at his friend later. He stood, toppling his chair, and scooped up the shoe.

“Where are you going?” Henrí called after him irritably.

Julien stopped at the doors and turned. “I am going to rescue my bride from the frozen north.”

He left Henrí gaping after him and went to saddle his horse.

* * * *

If she ever returned to normal climates, Joséphine vowed she would never complain of the cold again. Clad in her simple woolen dress and wrapped in furs, she could still not keep the chill from her bones as she plodded out in the cold morning light to draw water from the well. It was expected of her, as she was not a guest but a charity case, to do the early morning chores before the household woke. That included drawing water from the well and heating it over the brazier in the outdoor kitchen. As she dragged the heavy bucket through the ankle deep snow, the cold white invaded her shoes, wetting her stockings and irritating the chilblains on her toes.

Every day, she wondered what she would be doing now if Julien hadn’t turned her down. If she hadn’t turned the prince down. If she hadn’t been cast out of her father’s home. But there was no use wondering, as wondering wouldn’t help her find a way out of her predicament. She could not live here forever. There had to be something—

The dogs who slept beneath the weathered wooden steps at the house’s front door woke noisily, baying at god alone knew what. Their loud calls would rouse the household, and she would once again be sniped at and scolded for not having the wash water ready, the breakfast prepared, the circumstances that were beyond her control entirely within her control.

“Hush,” she called, rushing to the front of the house in the most certainly futile hope that she could calm the hounds before they were heard inside. As she rounded the corner, she saw what had sent the animals into fits. A lone figure on horseback rode up the long, snow covered road. A figure that looked surprisingly like—

It couldn’t be.

Her legs carried her toward him before she realized she had moved, pumping furiously despite the burning cold that churned up her skirts. He recognized her, she knew from the way he urged his horse to greater speed through the snow. As he drew closer, he reigned the animal in and swung down from its back, running to her to catch her up in his arms.

“You didn’t marry him,” he panted, his cheeks ruddy with cold.

“I didn’t. I couldn’t!” She threw her arms around him and buried her face in his neck, taking in the familiar scent of him, the scent that had haunted her dreams every night since they had parted. “I love you, Julien. I couldn’t marry Philipe.”

“I didn’t want you to. Can you ever forgive me? I’ve been such a fool!”

“I forgive you.” She kissed him, and the moment their lips touched it was as if the long weeks of their separation were a distant memory.

He devoured her mouth, kissing her hard and taking her breath away. When he broke his lips from hers, it was to say, “I have something for you.”

He reached beneath the heavy furs he wore and dropped to one knee in the snow. He took her foot, her damp, freezing foot, into his hand and slipped onto it the glass slipper she had worn the night of the prince’s party. “Marry me, Joséphine. Whether we have twenty years or twenty days, I want to spend them with you.”

Her chest seized with painful sobs, such a strange reaction to the joy that she felt overflowing her heart. She managed to nod, and he swept her up in his arms and carried her to his horse. He set her on the animal’s back and swung up to sit in front of her, and she wrapped her arms around him, beneath the furs he wore.

“You’ve come to rescue me,” she giggled, snuggling her face against his back.

He turned in the saddle to kiss her forehead. “No, Joséphine. I think you came to save me.”

About the Author

The alter-ego of USA Today Bestselling Author
Jennifer Armintrout
, Abigail Barnette was born during a conversation with author
Bronwyn Green
, who encouraged Jennifer to develop an elaborate fantasy persona-- complete with nom de plume—under which to pen erotic romance. Abigail enjoys long naps in fairy-filled glades, running through corridors in tragically romantic haunted castles, and drinking goblet after goblet of spiced wine.