“Wenthelen—” I warned.
Elin released another sneeze and, after a small ash cloud resettled across her skirts, looked down at herself in dismay.
“Bear your head high,” I called. It was satisfying to see her like this, after so many years. To watch her working. “For they’ll wash off fine. Just don’t touch any nice cloth until then.”
“I need to work on my dress,” Elin protested, eyeing the pinned flounces on her stepsisters.
“You’ve had plenty of time for that.” I tutted.
“Simeon said he does not like to hunt. I wonder if he is an animal lover,” Rosie said, now through a mouthful of pins.
No one responded, for we all heard at the same time the noise of a carriage outside.
“Who is that?” Mathilde asked.
“Not another royal messenger,” Wenthelen worried.
Elin stood in alarm. She had her hair tied under a rag and soot on her face.
“Is it—” Rosie stood, hope cresting on her face and lighting her from within.
“No,” I said firmly, tossing my mending into the basket. I went to the window. “It’s our chaise.” Otto was in the driver’s seat, his own horse hitched and pulling him forward.
I turned to Elin as I made toward the door. “Go upstairs to your room—you’ll be mistaken for a chambermaid looking like that.”
“I cannot be seen as such.” Elin stood straight, consoling herself. “Internal charm always translates to external grace.”
“Regardless of internal charm, I advise that you peer into a looking glass,” Mathilde said. “For you are covered in cinders.”
Downstairs, Otto was dismounting.
I insisted: “Elin, for God’s sake, and for your own sake, go upstairs. Before you’re seen.”
I ignored Alice’s and Wenthelen’s looks of admonishment.
“Very well,” Elin said, meekly, adding more soot to her face as she wiped the bridge of her nose with the back of her hand.
Otto was waiting in the gravel, standing next to the chaise. When I came out the door, he frowned down the drive. “You have a peddler camping at your gate.”
“A jongleur,” I corrected, reproaching myself for not thinking ahead and entreating Moussa to move. The bird in the woods, the broken cart, a peddler’s camp—every circumstance of our interaction seemed designed to lower me in Otto’s esteem. Not that he mattered. I only cared about those he influenced. But, for my daughters’ sakes, I would once more try to curry his favor. “We owe you our thanks for returning the carriage.”
I realized, belatedly, that if the carriage had been driven, then the wheel had also been fixed. “And mending it,” I added.
“Couldn’t have brought it back to you if it wasn’t mended.” Otto’s expression didn’t change. His presence was a mystery—any attendant could have returned the chaise. But that question soon answered itself. Without looking at me, he turned and marched back toward our carriage. “Prince Simeon wanted to send a gift.”
“A gift,” I repeated.
Otto reached the back compartment of the gig, which, I now saw,had a cloth-covered rectangle and a horse saddle inside. He shifted the saddle to retrieve the rectangle and pulled off the cloth. It was a painting. Of apples.
“For your daughters,” Otto explained.
“Apples,” I said.
He coughed. “Prince Simeon said it is because they like pictures of them.”
His discomfort provoked within me a deep sense of satisfaction. As did the fact of the gift—regardless of what the canvas portrayed. “They will be honored.”
Otto thrust the painting, which was surprisingly heavy, into my arms and began to unhitch his horse from the chaise. “I need to return before it grows dark.”
