Midnight Falls: A Thrilling Retelling of Cinderella (21 page)

“Ella?”

Ella was startled when she heard Bethany’s voice and saw her approaching from the hallway, dressed gorgeously in a lime-colored gown that boasted a regal design of pearls across the bodice.

“Bethany? What are you doing out here?” Ella asked.

“I came to see you,” Bethany replied, laboring equally as Ella did to sit on the bottom step. “I wanted to make sure that you were all right.”

“Me? I suppose I am fine.”

“I know you didn’t mean what you said back there. Try not to fret over it. It is not like any of their opinions really matter to you, right?”

“Don’t they? I don’t know. Maybe they should.”

“No, don’t say that! Please. Because if they matter to you, they have to matter to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are the one I’ve tried so hard to emulate, Ella. As much as I might not have known it and my mother detests it, I want to be as kind, patient, and humble as you are. If you cease to be you, then who else will be my example?”

Ella felt tears build up in her eyes. “I am not an example, cousin,” Ella said softly. “I am far from it. I am a coward and a fool.”

“Well, you might be foolish,” Bethany stated with a childish giggle, “as we both vividly recall your trying to outfit our donkey, the Duke of Hubulamumba, in your finest Easter dress when we were eight years old!”

Ella laughed out loud. The two cousins giggled uninhibitedly for several moments until Bethany paused and looked intently at Ella. “But you are not a coward,” she declared.

Ella did not reply, only threw her arms around her cousin’s neck and pulled her into an embrace so forcefully that Bethany feared the pearls might be ripped from her dress. But it seemed a small price to pay so she smiled and hugged Ella back just as ardently.

“Come on,” Bethany said, slapping her palm against Ella’s hand and helping her to her feet, “let’s go back to the circus.”

Gabriel stood silently at the ballroom entrance. He worried for Ella, for her peace of mind. It must have made for such a strange, delicate alliance when a woman of Ella’s class befriended people like the gypsies. Gabriel did not have many friends in his life…ever really. It was foreign to him, the fragile sensitivity that such a bond must have yielded for Ella. And she’d allowed it to be ravaged just so he could have his sacred revenge. Gabriel had watched as she betrayed her morality to do what he’d asked of her. She would not have even been there had it not been for him. How had he permitted himself to ask so much of someone? Gabriel was not familiar with true remorse. He’d felt guilt, despair, and loss…but never the desire to withdraw the pain he’d specifically brought upon another human being, especially one as good as Ella.

She was twice the person he was and he would never deserve her. For even though his contrition was profound, he had no intention of undoing anything.

“You look like you are in another world,” Isolda said as she approached Gabriel with soft, graceful steps. “I hope I am not interrupting something.”

“Not at all, Baroness—er—I mean, Isolda,” he said, grinning when he caught himself reverting to formality. Isolda had no interest in formality.

“Peter, I wonder if I might speak to you a moment in private,” Isolda said, her face so close to his that he could feel her breath on his cheek.

“Certainly.”

Isolda led the way from the ballroom and Gabriel followed behind closely. He was apprehensive to say the least, like he was blindfolded and being led along the cliffs of Gwent by a woman he knew very little about except that she was as cruel a person to Ella as anything Gabriel had witnessed before. Still, Gabriel knew, it was
he
who disliked Isolda so vehemently, not Peter. He continued with her, blindfolded or not. When they had distanced themselves far from the ballroom, Gabriel addressed the woman politely.

“What is it you want to speak with me about?”

“Nothing,” Isolda said, leaning into him and sliding her hand up his neck, “there is far too much talking in this life.”

Bethany and Ella navigated their way back to the ballroom, each still chuckling in memory of the Duke of Hubalumumba and his exquisite Easter dress.

“What will you wear to the royal ball?” Bethany asked, sonorously uttering, whilst flicking her fingers forward in mime of fireworks, the words
royal ball
like they were the lyrics of a magical spell.

“My mother had this pink dress that I’ve always dreamed of being able to wear,” Ella replied.

“Funny,” Bethany remarked. “Aislinn was begging my mother to wear pink but Mother said it did not suit her and so they discarded it like a piece of old linen. Pity really; pink is such a pretty color.”

“What will you wear?”

“A yellow gown as bright and radiant as the sun in the middle of the afternoon; also one of Aislinn’s discards. But there is more! You will appreciate this: I will be wearing the tiara your mother bought for us in Paris so many years ago. Won’t that be dreamy?” There was no response.

Ella was not sure if it was she or Bethany who gasped when they rounded one corner and saw a man and woman kissing, the woman’s hands clawing at the man’s face and the man twisting his neck to either escape the woman’s grasp or kiss her more ardently. Ella was not sure. The couple was still some distance away and she’d had little experience with such displays of passion. Distance or no, she recognized them both in only seconds.

Shocked, Bethany looked over to her cousin and saw Ella’s face had gone white. Bethany was baffled that it was Ella who appeared aghast at the spectacle, for it was only her uncle engaged in the adulterous kiss. Bethany was the one who had to witness, in her very own home, her mother grope a man that was not her husband.

“Ella?” Bethany worried her cousin might soon faint from fright.

“Bethany,” Ella muttered, struggling to draw breath, “I have to go. I have to go now!” Ella pulled at the skirt of her gown until her feet were exposed and she could turn in the opposite direction with ease. As Ella sprinted down the hall and out of sight, Bethany was overcome with yet another revelation: though this one was far less horrifying than seeing her mother drape herself over a man who, by the looks of it, was endeavoring tirelessly to free himself without breaking the her hands.

Whoever Peter is
, Bethany thought to herself as she watched the man called Peter yank Isolda’s arms from around his neck,
he is not Ella’s uncle
.

Chapter Seventeen

Thomas Delaquix had been deployed to summon his daughter to supper. It was a task for which he’d been responsible for some fifteen years but Ella was not in her usual hideouts and he grew worried that something terrible might have happened to his only child. He was impulsive like that, or so his wife told him. Heeding the words of the most intelligent (and potentially belligerent) person he’d ever known, Thomas opted to keep scouring the grounds. After a few more tries, he was able to spot Ella’s loose curls flowing freely from behind an almond-leaved willow tree several yards from their home.

He called to Ella first, but when she did not hear, or heed, he ventured out to her. As he came upon his resting daughter he grew worried about her. She appeared so forlorn and that was not like her. She was typically such a happy girl.

“What grieves you, daughter?” Thomas asked, taking a knee beside Ella, who was startled by his presence.

“Oh, goodness, Papa,” she said, “I didn’t even see you there.”

“Yes, you seemed quite occupied. And quite vexed. What burdens you, my love?”

Ella yearned to lunge into his arms and have him hug her tightly. Her father was such a hugger. She adored that about him. But adoration could not compel her to divulge that which tormented her. It simply was not proper and her poor father would not have known, even in his sincerest efforts, how to assuage the situation. Even if she’d wanted to confide in him, how could Ella tell her own father that two teenage boys from the town had, just hours before, pointed at her breasts and made obscene gestures? She felt sickened to even recall it. And they had been boys that Ella had grown up with; she’d assumed they were her friends.

“Father,” she asked, unwilling to break his sweet heart by ignoring his concern, “why are some people so thoughtless? How can they truly not care that someone’s feelings are hurt?”

“Has someone hurt your feelings?”

“No one in particular. I just wonder if perhaps I am expecting too much from people. Perhaps it is just in a boy’s nature to be callous.”

Thomas perked up.

“Is that who hurt your feelings, Ella?” he asked. “Was it a boy?”

“No,” she said. “Well, yes, kind of.”

“Just give me his name and that will be the end of that!”

Ella giggled. “No, no papa. It’s not like that. It is hard for me to explain.”

“Try.”

Ella turned her face away from her father and gazed out at the sunset, the sky a radiant pink and orange to bid the sun good night.

“Papa,” she said, “do you think God would be angry with me if I decide never to marry?”

Ella fell toward the carriage door and scrambled maniacally to open the latch. The driver leapt down from his seat hastily.

“Your ladyship,” he said, helping her into the coach, “I am sorry. If I had known you were coming, I’d have opened the door for you. Forgive me.”

“It is quite all right,” Ella said, out of breath and frantically eager to bypass the driver’s polite apologies. “I just need you to take me home, immediately.”

“Of course, miss,” the man replied. “Are you sure you do not want to wait for your uncle to join you?”

Ella looked up at the driver, her eyes wrought with tears, and the man knew to say no more but to comply with the lady’s wishes.

How did this happen? Ella raced through her recollections of that evening and knew she must have uttered those same words to herself only hours earlier. Thus the cycle of her madness reached full circle and she knew there was nothing she could say to herself that had not been said before.

How did she allow this to happen?

Gabriel had been kissing Isolda, passionately, in what he surely believed to be the concealment of a dimly lit hallway. How could he have done this? Isolda! Her aunt—the woman who’d displayed sadistic pleasure whenever Ella had been pained or humiliated. Ella had no memory of her aunt ever shedding a tear on her niece’s behalf. Not when she’d tripped and bumped her head as a child, not when she’d been thrown from her horse and made to spend an entire summer indoors, not when Henry had drunkenly compared Ella’s body to a prostitute he’d observed soliciting tricks on a trip to Paris.

Not even when her parents were taken in death did Isolda reach out with a loving hand and place it on her niece’s weary shoulder. Instead, her aunt—her flesh and blood—had exploited every opportunity to tear Ella down and invite an audience to view it. Isolda was the devil Ella had known her entire life; she couldn’t imagine it any better than the devil she’d never met. She murmured to herself in sadness.

“How could you do this to me, Gabriel? I loved you.”

I love you
.

Isolda felt the fire in her belly when her lips moved across Peter’s. It was a sensation she’d not felt in a very long time and she’d have given everything she owned just to melt with Peter into the seclusion of her dormitory and never have to look back. Gabriel took Isolda’s left hand in his and tightened his fingers around it, prying it from his cheek like a barnacle. He pulled his torso away from hers and found his back against a wall. Isolda pressed against him harder. He feared if he grasped her hand any tighter, he would break it. Her left hand found its way underneath his arm and slid across his back. He sought to wrestle her hand and arm from his side, but learned quickly that every endeavor he made to peel her off of him only made her believe that he wanted their embrace to be aggressive and their first kiss to be as physically exhausting as it was gratifying. Gabriel knew he could no longer try to push her away from him politely. Right as he was about to forcibly remove Isolda’s hand from his face, however, an indiscernible noise caused the woman to relinquish her grip and pull her lips way from his. Both Gabriel and Isolda turned toward the sound and saw Bethany gawking at them, petrified.