“Yes, but I didn’t think you’d climb up a wall to find me.”
“It’s brick,” he says as if that explains everything. “Easy to climb.”
“Well, I’m glad you found your way here without getting caught.”
“Speaking of getting caught…” He clacks his pincers together several times before his eyes widen with a panicked look I know so well. His voice raises an octave. “How the shells are you going to pull this off, Maisie?”
I shrug. “Howwon’tI?”
“You heard how the pageant is structured. You’ll only see Dorian alone for an hour at a time. There are only seven days of the pageant and since tonight is just a public dinner, that gives only six hoursmaximumfor you to be alone with him. And that’s only if the private dates occur daily and you make it to the end.”
“Who said anything about making it to the end?”
He runs a claw over his face. “Maisie, I don’t know if you’ve overlooked how closely this church seems to follow social strictures, but I find it highly unlikely a man of the church is going to kiss someone he’s only known for a handful of hours. I’m willing to bet he won’t kiss until marriage. Maisie…you’re going to have to win the pageant.”
“You’re talking nonsense. Were you under the impression I was simply going to wait forhimto kissme?”
“Well…yes. Is that not proper for a young lady?”
I throw my head back with a laugh. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Can you imagine?”
“So, you aren’t going to try and win?”
“Nope.” I turn toward my carpet bag and begin to unpack it. “At the first chance I can get Dorian alone, I’m ending this. I’ll stroll right up to him, press my lips against his, and be over with it. By tomorrow night, I’ll be free.”
15
At five o’clock, Jeremy arrives to escort me to dinner. Podaxis left out the window a few minutes earlier with a promise to investigate the layout of the church in my absence. The more we know of our surroundings, the more successful my mission will be. Since Dorian will be choosing the locations for his one-on-one rendezvous, I’ll need to plan for my kiss to be delivered in any of them. Despite Nimue’s insistence that it would be impossible to link me to his death, I still want to do everything in my power to avoid suspicion.
“The dining room is right this way, Miss Maisie,” Jeremy says as he stops outside an open doorway.
I shake my morbid thoughts from my mind and enter the room. It’s plain and windowless with cream papered walls crammed with old-fashioned paintings in thick wood frames. The table is a long rectangle dressed in a floral-patterned cloth laid with an assortment of trays. Glancing down the length of the table, I find all six other contestants have arrived and are the only other people in the room. A few chat amongst themselves while others regard each other in icy silence. The iciest of all are Vanessa and Greta, seated on opposite sides flanking the head of the table, although most of the chill comes from Vanessa. She watches the other girl with a clenched jaw. Greta, on the other hand, bats her lashes with a placid smile as if she hasn’t any clue about Vanessa’s ire.
Briony leaves the table and strolls over to me. “You’re too late to claim the best seats,” she says with a smirk.
I frown. “What best seats?”
She nods toward Vanessa and Greta. “We assume Dorian will be seated at the head of the table.”
I suppose that stands to reason. The one time I ate at the royal table back home, Father sat there too. The head of the table must be a place of great importance, but I can’t see how the food tastes any better from there.
“We should probably claim our seats too.” Briony returns to the table, and I follow, taking a seat opposite from her at the middle of the table. The other three contestants chat at the far end.
“This isn’t the dinner party I expected,” Vanessa says from her coveted seat. “We should have met in a parlor and then been led in by our escorts. There are ample empty seats, which means there are plenty more guests. I wore my best gown for this, you know.” Her eyes wander the table and land on me. They flash to Briony and her lips curl into a smirk. “Not all of us had the decency to change, it seems.”
“Was I supposed to change?” I glance down at my outfit, then back at the other girls. Briony and I are the only ones wearing the same thing as earlier. Everyone else is dressed in a gown, with the two most elegant ones being worn by Vanessa and Greta. Vanessa’s is a confection of fuchsia silk and lace while Greta’s is green satin with black beaded sleeves. The three other girls wear dresses too, although theirs are plainer in comparison. Still, I suddenly feel highly underdressed. It hadn’t occurred to me I should change for dinner, especially since I brought so few outfits. I was saving my best garments for tomorrow when I meet with Dorian alone. Which, now that I think about it, is quite absurd, considering I’ll be murdering the man. Nausea turns my stomach, but I refuse to give way to darker thoughts.
Freedom. Just focus on the freedom that awaits.
And the fact that I’ll die if I don’t do this.
Vanessa scoffs, stealing my attention back to her. “Are you truly a princess? You certainly don’t act like one.”
I open my mouth, but Briony speaks first. “Not all cows need tomooto convince others of what they are.” She looks Vanessa up and down, then plasters a coy smile over her lips. “Clearly.”
“Well, I think everyone looks marvelous tonight,” Greta Garter says with a flourish of her hand, oblivious to the tension in the room. She shines a grin down the table at each of us. When her gaze lands on the girl opposite her, she leans across the table to tap Vanessa on the tip of her nose. “Don’t frown, darling, you’ll get wrinkles.”
“The food looks…tolerable,” one of the girls says in a flat voice from the other side of the table. Franny, I think is her name, the girl who looked highly unenthused when she was introduced to Dorian. She has broad shoulders and auburn hair done in two braids at the side of her face that loop down around her ears to the back of her head. She eyes the spread of roasted vegetables, fish, and something that looks like porridge. “Are we supposed to wait for them? I’m starving.”
