“Remember,” Bertie instructed as he led me closer. “You don’t want to catch their eye. Don’t give them reason to recognize you attheir next stop.”
I nodded determinedly.
This was it: I would get a coin of my own.
I could already imagine presenting Mama with it—no, not it butthem,multiples, a whole handful, so many they’d tumble from her grasp, spilling to the ground with a cacophony of merry jingles.
Bertie approached Bellatrice first, holding out his hands in a subservient scoop, keeping his eyes downcast and appropriately humble.
“I wish such blessings and such joys upon you,” the princess intoned, giving away a single copper. Her hands were covered in lace gloves the same shade of pink as the trim of her dress, and I wondered if she wore them as a stylish accessory or as a precautionary guard against accidentally touching any of us gathered around her.
“Good blessing to you, milady,” Bertie mumbled, then bumped me forward.
“I wish such blessings and such joys upon you,” she repeated, already sounding entirely bored with her sacred endeavors. Though she faced me, she fixed her green eyes on a space somewhere over my left shoulder, unwilling to meet my gaze. Then she reached into the reticule—the same green satin as her skirts—and removed another coin. I wanted to crow as she dropped it into my cupped hands. It was not a twin to Bertie’s copper. Mine was silver and weighed more than any money I’d ever had cause to handle before.
“Bertie!” I squealed with excitement before remembering my manners. “Thank you, Princess. Many blessings to you.”
She’d already moved on to the next person, reciting her platitude, her eyes never quite meeting theirs either.
Bertie elbowed me in the ribs. “There’s the prince,” he whispered, nodding to the right. “Let’s try him and then head down the street.”
“But we haven’t changed yet,” I worried.
“None of them are even looking at us. He’ll never know.”
“But—”
My protest was silenced as Bertie pushed me toward the queue forming before Prince Leopold.
He wasn’t much older than me, I realized.
Though the suit fit him well, undoubtedly tailor-made to his exact measurements, he moved oddly within it, as if he were deeply uncomfortable. It was strange to see a boy so stilted, so encumbered, and I had a sudden vision of him running free in a field, playing pétanque or jeu de la barbichette. In my imagination, Leopold was not dressed as a prince but wore simpler clothes and had the most enormous smile stretched over his face. And when he laughed—
“You’ve already been to my sister,” he snapped, jarring me from the daydream as quickly as a dunk in the ice-cold bucket of water Mama had forced upon us earlier that morning.
“I…What?” I fumbled, acutely feeling the uncertainty of my position.
“You were just with my sister. She gave you a silver coin, if I’m not mistaken. And now you’ve come to me, wanting more.”
I could feel the weight of everyone around us staring at me.
I licked my lips, struggling to come up with a coherent thought, one explanation that would get me out of this mess and let me escape unscathed.
“I—well. No. Well,” I stammered at last.
My cheeks burned.
“Do you think me a fool?” he went on, taking a step closer. The gathered crowd shuffled back, suddenly eager to be away from this indignant Marnaigne, however small he might be. Even Bertie seemed to have deserted me. I could no longer sense him at my back and had never felt so thoroughly and miserably on my own.
“No! No, of course not, Leopold.” Sharp breaths were drawn at my mistake. “Your Majesty. Your Highness? Sir.” Oh, what was the title I was supposed to use?
He narrowed his eyes. “What do you need all these coins for, anyway? It doesn’t cost much money to look as poor as you.”
His voice held such a lofty, imperious lilt that fiery prickles of anger licked up my spine.
“What doyouneed them for?” I threw back before I could think better of it. “You live in grand palaces and are fed and clothed with the very best of everything. We don’t have even a fraction of what you’ve been blessed with. But your father asks more and more from us, taxing and taking and never giving back until he feels like the gods are watching, and then you come and offer out a single coin?”
Leopold’s mouth fell open. He looked at a loss for words, a sensation I guessed he was unfamiliar with. The moment drew out long, and as the silence grew, so too did the crowd’s expectation for an answer. Two dots of hot red stained his cheeks.
