“I’m so sorry—”
“They’re books, not diaries, girl. I’lltellyou when you’ve committed a crime. The girl before you I caught reading my letters. I fired her on the spot. So far you’ve passed the test.” Duchess Genevieve paused. “Speaking of which, what is your name?”
The past few days, the duchess had only called her “girl.” Now that she’d finally asked her name, Cinderella became tongue-tied. “It’s... it’s Cinderella.”
“Cinderella,” repeated Genevieve. “An odd name, but you must be aware of that.” She sniffed, stifling a yawn. “Heavens, it’s four o’clock already? I’ve been dawdling so long with you and your mutt I’ve forgotten my afternoon nap. All this traveling has made it impossible for me to sleep. Over there, on my writing desk—bring me my sleeping draught.”
Obediently, Cinderella grasped the glass bottle and followed the duchess’s instructions:
“Three drops into my tea. And a squeeze of lemon, for good measure. No, child! That’s four drops, can’t you count?”
“I’m terribly sorry, Your Highness.”
“I suppose one extra drop won’t kill me,” said Genevieve, bringing the teacup to her lips. She sipped, and almost instantly, her hooded eyelids drooped with drowsiness. “I don’t know how George drinks this stuff every night.”
She finished the tea, then passed the cup to Cinderella.
“Now off with you. It’s time for my afternoon nap. Be back precisely in an hour, you hear? I’ll expect a fresh pot of tea, and some biscuits would do nicely, as well. And Cindergirl—if you ever do go to the library, tell those overstuffed scholars there that the books you’re looking for are for me. Fewer questions that way.”
“Yes, Your Highness. Thank you.”
Cinderella took one of the silver trays from the duchess’s table, set the empty teapot on it, and slipped out of the apartments. No sooner did she step outside, though, than the duke’s attendant bumped into her.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” she said, but the man had whirled away from view.
When she looked down at her tray, there was a sealed letter that hadn’t been there before.
Heart hammering, she waited until she was down the corridor, away from the guards’ inquisitive eyes, before opening and reading the note.
I await your report. Come see me at once.
Cinderella dreaded meeting the Grand Duke again, and her apprehension only intensified when she arrived at his apartments.
She’d simply evade his questions as best she could. That was all there was to it.
He hadn’t been in his office by the servants’ quarters, so the palace staff had directed her to his apartments. They were even larger than the duchess’s, and room after room smelled of burnt wax and worn leather. She followed the smell past the sitting room into a short hallway whose walls were mounted with portraits of the duke’s forebears. At the end, a door had been left slightly ajar, the frantic scraping of pen to paper growing louder as Cinderella approached.
Buried behind a stack of papers and a cup of tea that looked barely touched, the Grand Duke scribbled away at the sheet of paper, his back hunched and his neck bent toward the sunlight that pooled on his desk. His black hair, which had been neatly slicked back the last time she saw him, spilled across his forehead, and his mustache curled at its ends.
Quietly, Cinderella slid into the office, her steps muffled by the wool carpet. She shuffled off onto the parquet.
The duke didn’t look up.
The minutes stretched, and finally, she cleared her throat. “Your Grace, you summoned me.”
His fountain pen rattled against the inkpot. “Ah, it’s you.” He held a red stick of wax against the lone candle burning on his desk, then affixed a seal to his document before putting it aside.
“At last. You must be brimming with news, my child. Come, what is your report?”
Two key pieces of information clung to Cinderella’s mind. But she remembered what the duchess had told her about Grand Duke Ferdinand: that behind his sterling reputation was a sly old fox—a man not to be trusted.
She pursed her lips. “I’m not sure what to report, Your Grace.”
“Not sure?” The Grand Duke eyed her skeptically. “You’ve had days to observe the duchess. I told you I wanted to hear everything.”
“She takes her tea three times a day, steeped for four minutes—”
“I don’t care about her tea-drinking habits!”
