They’d reached the ballroom, and Isobelle lay a hand on thelatch to one of the double-tall doors, flashing Gwen a sidelong look. “We’re a bit early, but we can sneak in and watch the end of the dance lessons.”
Gwen’s steps halted, diverted from her anger, blinking slowly. “Dance lessons? I thought we were going to meet your combat instruct— Wait—”
But Isobelle had already pushed the door open, cheerfully ignoring Gwen’s protests.
That’s beginning to turn into an annoying habit, Gwen thought, though she was too full of pastries and sausages to work up a really good sulk.
She slipped through the crack in the door after Isobelle.
The grand ballroom was a massive space of cream and gold and intricately patterned details. Broad windows with sheer curtains lined either side of the space, allowing diffuse golden light to spill across the inlaid marble floor. The high buttressed ceiling arced up toward the center, from which hung a massive, ornately worked chandelier.
Antique weapons hung at intervals along the walls, decorative and menacing—above the fireplace at one end of the hall was a huge, ancient dragon-slaying spear. A reminder of days gone by, when knights rode out in glorious combat against the now-extinct monsters who threatened their loved ones.
If only that was the challenge ahead of me,thought Gwen rather desperately, hovering on the edge of this room that was the epitome of Isobelle’s world, and so decidedly not Gwen’s. A wave of dread swept through Gwen at the prospect of having to live in this place for the duration of the tournament and keep up the pretense that she belonged here.
Assuming she didn’t lose in round one. Which, if Gwen let herself think about it at all, seemed all too likely.
Isobelle took her hand and sat her down along the edge of the room as Gwen became aware of a voice shouting, slightly distorted by the echoes of the vast space.
“They will step on your toes!” the voice snapped in a noticeably French accent. “They will bumble about, sweaty-palmed, too close, with the grace and elegance of newborn foals.”
The owner of the voice was a wiry woman whose obvious athleticism and angular features made it impossible to place her age any more accurately than somewhere between forty and sixty. Her brown skin was barely lined, but her hair was a luminous silver. She was stomping up and down between two rows of twelve girls, carrying a cane she used to thump on the marble floor to accentuate her words.
“You must be ready!” she shouted, paying no attention to the two new arrivals now perched at the edge of the room, watching. “You must guide them without seeming to guide, for they must believe they are in control. You must protect your precious feet without appearing to wince. You must be ever prepared!”
“Yes, Madame Dupont!” the two dozen girls chanted in unison, each staring straight ahead like military recruits.
“Sophie!” Madame Dupont whirled and pointed her stick toward a younger girl with auburn hair and liquid eyes. “What do you do if his sweaty hand starts to slide down your back, inexorably lower?”
The girl went even straighter, barking her reply instantly. “I giggle! ‘Oh, sir, we will be seen,’ I say breathily! I blush and look distressed!”
Madame Dupont turned again, choosing a new target among her charges. “Arabella,” she snapped, “what do you do if you encounter a toe-stomper?”
“I am nimble, madame!” Arabella replied, folding her hands behind her back and lifting her chin. “If he cannot be stopped, I pretend I am faint!”
Madame Dupont reached the end of the formation and turned once more, resting the cane against the floor and folding her hands across the stone at its top. She gazed at them, twenty-four girls all holding their breath at once.
Then Madame Dupont shook her head. “You are not ready yet. But you will be. Clarissa, Joriana, I will know if you haven’t practiced your footwork next week. Now, filez! Off with you all!” She thumped the cane against the floor. “And you, Mistress Hobbes, merci.”
An elderly woman with a stoop in her shoulders materialized at the edge of the room, rising from the bench of an organ where she’d evidently been accompanying the lesson at some point. The girls scattered, eager to be done with their schooling and to flee their instructor’s obvious intensity—Gwen could feel the force of the woman from here. Madame Dupont followed them to the door, allowing Mistress Hobbes only a little more leeway to make her exit, and then shut and locked the door with a sigh.
Then she turned, and her dark eyes fixed on Isobelle and Gwen. Evidently she hadn’t missed their arrival at all.
“Well,” she said, tucking her cane under her arm and striding toward them. “Is this she? Let’s have a look.”
Isobelle beamed at her and then leaned toward Gwen to whisper, “Don’t worry. She adores me. It’s just everyone else who’sterrified of her.” Then, more loudly, she said, “Be nice, madame. This is Gwen, and she’s doing me a great service.”
Madame Dupont snorted and came to a halt in front of them.
Gwen rose to her feet without fully registering the impulse to do so. Madame Dupont was a head shorter than she was, but somehow she seemed to loom as she inspected the new girl she was to teach. The silence stretched, giving Gwen an opportunity to inspect her in return.
Her broad face and angular features were dusted with black freckles against a dark brown backdrop, and she had her hair bound up, woven through with a colorful scarf of French-designed silk. Her eyes were shrewd and penetrating, and Gwen found herself longing to look away—but feared doing so would give Madame Dupont some kind of ammunition to use against her.
“So,” Dupont said eventually, “you are the girl who would be a knight, with our Isobelle’s favor pinned to your breast?”
“I am, madame.” Gwen found herself straightening, lifting her chin, feeling like one of the girls who had gone scurrying from the room. She’d assumed that stiff attention was something Dupont had taught them, but apparently that was just how one stood while being inspected by Madame Dupont. “And you are... a dancing instructor?”
She couldn’t quite hide the confusion in her voice. What could a dancer teach her about something as brutal as jousting?
