The Stepsister and the Slipper by Nina Clare
Bonmagie
“I wishwe could stay here forever.” Charlotte reached for another cherry from the silver fruit bowl. She could see herself in the full-length mirror on the opposite wall, and she made a very pretty picture reclining on the chaise longue with a cherry dangling above her lips and her dark hair fanned out over the cushions. Blanche had brushed it for her until it was smooth as silk. Charlotte tilted her head in a few directions to see which pose was the most flattering. It was useful to know these things.
“Blanche, be a darling and pour me another cup of that exquisite chocolate.”
Blanche put her sewing aside to pour the hot chocolate from the tall, silver jug.
“We could stay here,” mused Charlotte’s mother. She stood at the window, watching the street below. “If you make a conquest quickly, your suitor will settle the bill.”
“It’s impossible to make a conquest without ballgowns, Mama,” Charlotte reminded her. “I need a whole new evening wardrobe before I can go anywhere.”
“Stupid, careless girl,” said her mother, throwing an angry look at Blanche.
“It was not Blanche’s fault,” Charlotte said, reaching for another cherry.
Blanche resumed her perch on a footstool, her head bent, darning a run in her stepmother’s new silk stocking.
“Most likely the coachman drove off with it,” Charlotte continued. “You did annoy him by arguing down the price. Perhaps he thought to make up the extra fee with one of our trunks.”
“If you don’t haggle with these people, they will take every advantage. Oh! A yellow coach! I wonder if it is him! Oh, no. It has gone. I hoped he would call this morning and enquire after us. I should have liked him to see you by daylight.”
“A gentleman cannot call on women in hotel rooms, Mama. It’s not respectable. We’re barely more than strangers. We know nothing of who he is.”
“He was very kind,” Blanche dared to say. “But he only gave us permission to stay here for one night. I think we ought to find my godmother’s house.”
“Blanche is right,” said Charlotte, dropping a cherry stone onto a platter. “We had better not push our luck or we might not be welcome at court.”
Her mother drew the lace curtain back into place, holding it between her fingers and lifting the lorgnette from its chain about her neck to inspect it. “Very well,’ she murmured. “Let’s find this Bonmagie Manor, and then I’ll think what to sell for ballgowns.”
Bonmagie Manor did not seemto exist. The little hill overlooking Place Royale bore two modest mansions, and the coachman enquired at each gatehouse for directions, but received blank looks and and vague musings about a house that used to be there and superstitious tales of fairies. Charlotte and her mother were at the point of despair, debating whether to return to the hotel and risk trespassing on the stranger’s hospitality another night, or to go home in defeat.
Blanche was in tears again, for her stepmother blamed her for this turn of events. The carriage was at a standstill while the coachman awaited instructions. When the dowager’s insults strayed to abusing Blanche’s father, the girl opened the carriage door and leapt out, running blindly away down the dusty lane.
“Oh, Mama, now look what you’ve done!”
“Let her run away! Good riddance!” howled the dowager.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mama. She’s a naive little thing, she would not survive a night in the city streets. Tell the coachman to run after her.” Charlotte called this instruction to the coachman herself.
“She’s nothing but a bane and burden!” bellowed the dowager. “All she does is remind me I married a man who left me in debt!”
“Mama, calm down. You’ll make yourself ill again. Where’s your tonic?”
The coachman soon returned, his face at the carriage window, flushed and perspiring.
“Did you find her?” Charlotte demanded, replacing her mother’s tonic bottle in her case.
“Yes, ma’am. She’s at the house.”
“What house?”
“The house you’ve been looking for.”
“She found it? Mama, she has found the house! Take us there directly, man!”
“Small wonderno one knows this place is here,” Charlotte said, as they passed through an entrance of overgrown yew hedges. “It’s quite hidden away.”
“It’s an abominable wilderness,” said the dowager, pushing aside sprays of late honeysuckle stems from her face as they made their way through a series of stone archways, all tangled and wrapped about with ivy and foliage.
“It’s like a secret garden.” Charlotte navigated her gown safely through a riot of dog roses and their spiny stems, but her mama fared less well, as the thorns of a blackberry branch caught at her hat.
“It is dreadful. Where’s the house? I expect that’s dreadful too. Just when I thought our luck was changing.”
“Here we are, Mama. I see a door.”
Charlotte had the same odd sensation when she stood on the threshold of Bonmagie that she had experienced when entering Château Columbine: she stood looking into the entrance hall and was sure there were only blank stone floors and plain stone walls, with an air of emptiness and stillness, as though the house lay asleep. But when she set foot over the hearth, she was in a hall, well-furnished with tapestried walls and dressed windows. The furniture had an unusual design, but all was clean and polished.
“Well, well,” said the dowager, sweeping past Charlotte to look through an archway into the salon. “To think this has sat empty all this time. What an odd creature that Madame Fée is.”
Charlotte moved around the room, looking at the couches of russet velvet and the gleaming dark wood of the tables and sideboards and chairs. Laughing cherubs and doves adorned the plaster work overhead.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” said Blanche, appearing at an archway at the other end of the salon.
“It smells off,” said the dowager with a sniff, holding her scented handkerchief to her nose.
“It feels strange,” said Charlotte, giving a little shiver, though she did not know why.
“Strange?” said Blanche.
“As though…” Charlotte sought for the words. “As though the house is alive.”
“I think it has a peaceful feel,” said Blanche, who had clearly forgiven the insults of her stepmother in the pleasure of finding the house. “Hasn’t the old coachman done well to keep it so clean? There’s not a speck of dust anywhere. Let’s look upstairs.”
“There are only two bedchambers,” the dowager said, peering into the second of the bedchambers. “Blanche will have to sleep in a dressing room. It smells damp.” She wrinkled her nose.
“I don’t smell damp,” said Charlotte, sniffing the air. “It’s an odd smell. Bittersweet, somehow.”
“I can smell honeysuckle,” said Blanche. “It’s all over the house. I wonder where it’s coming from.”
The dowager shook out her handkerchief. “Where’s the old servant? Does he cook? Is there anything in the pantry?”
“Only a sack of lentils,” said Blanche. “I looked.”
“Then I must sell something. Charlotte needs gowns, and I must hire a carriage and horses and a groom to act as escort.” She spied something on the mantelpiece in the bedchamber and swished across the room to take it up. “This looks valuable,” she murmured, turning the china figurine around and examining the bottom.
“What does she mean?” Blanche said to Charlotte, her eyes widening as she watched her stepmother. “She cannot mean…?”
“Go and find the coachman,” Charlotte said briskly, turning Blanche by the shoulders and propelling her out of the room. “He must have food to hand.” She closed the door.
“Mama, you cannot sell off Madame Fée’s belongings.” Charlotte crossed the room to pluck the figurine from her mother and replace it on the shelf.
“Why not? I’ll warrant she does not even remember what’s here?”
“You just can’t. It’s theft.”
“It’s a loan. We would only pawn it and recoup it when you’ve made a match.”
“We cannot live solely on the expectation of me making a match.”
“You’ve never worried about that before, my girl.” Her mother bristled like an offended cat. “Every sous we’ve borrowed has been on the expectation of you making a good marriage. There’s only one month remaining on the mortgage, Charlotte. One month! And then we are all out on the streets!”
“Do you think I don’t know that? Hasn’t it been hanging over my head these past three years?”
“Three years of eligible men coming and going away again, because you would not accept them!”
“None of them would have saved the estate, Mama. They were not rich enough for that.”
“And now we find ourselves among the wealthiest men in the land, and you cannot get out there and get one because that stupid girl did not watch over your gowns! Why, the new green silk was worth a thousand of these gimcracks!” She threw a look of fury at the figurine.
“Mama, don’t get excited again. Twice in one day will make you ill and then who will chaperone me? I can make up my yellow Florentine into an evening gown if I can get hold of some trimming. Blanche is an excellent seamstress. But we’ll have to pawn the diamonds or pearls for the rest of my wardrobe.”
“I will not let my diamonds and pearls go,” said her mother, clutching at her skirts, where the last of the family jewels were hidden in the secret pockets of her panniers.
“But what else is there to sell?”
“I have some silver and things.” Her mother moved to the bed and rummaged in her large vanity case. A silver fruit bowl appeared, along with a dainty clock, a tall silver jug, and a pair of candlesticks, gleaming mischievously.
Charlotte frowned at the silverware. “Mama, where did you get those?”
“Tell Blanche to hire a carriage. The servant must know where to go for one. I will go to the pawnshop then bring you back as many ready-made ballgowns as I can buy. Blanche can adjust them. Sort out your yellow Florentine in the meantime. I have the very thing for a lace trim. You are going to the court ball tonight. We cannot afford to lose a single evening.”