Glitter (Glitter Duology #1)(33)
“This is perfect,” I say, looking at the cute little pot. “It’s tiny and looks quite exclusive.”
“If you can come up with a name, Reginald will have labels made.”
“Can’t we just call it Glitter?”
“But that’s what it’s called on the street.”
“Still, it’s such an innocuous word. And in a completely different form from the patches Reginald peddles. No one would note the correlation. Besides, it would prevent me from slipping up in conversation.”
Saber just shrugs. “I’ll check it with Reginald. I think that’s everything.” He looks down at his list. “You should go so that this meeting looks as though it were between your father and me. Send word when you’re ready to meet in Paris again to pick up supplies.” He turns his back, fully dismissing me, and I try not to feel rejected.
Now my work truly begins.
AFTER SEVERAL HOURS’ contemplation, I choose red.
Once I’ve determined the color, the rest follows easily: a gown from Marie-Antoinette’s personal fashion book, crimson lips, ruby ribbons in my hair. I’ll twine them up in the back, with cascading curls in front that bounce by my face and flirt with the bare skin above my décolletage—early seventeenth-century hair, a faux pas to pair with a dress from the other end of the Baroque (doubly so on a Wednesday), but only slightly more daring than the monochrome ensemble I have in mind. A single color for a single purpose: tonight I must strain propriety.
Assuming I can find a way to get myself dressed at all.
When I get back to the Queen’s Bedchamber after a long walk to calm my nerves, it still hosts a milling crowd—if smaller than the one that greeted me upon waking.
A crowd, and no bots.
No bots to fetch a plate of charcuterie to make up for my missed luncheon. After my missed breakfast. No bots to remove my hat, cloak, and satin-laced shoes. No bots to assist me with my evening finery.
Even knowing exactly what I intend to wear, I spend as much time as I can laying it out, then applying my intricate makeup, until at last I’m reduced to spending a quarter hour in graceful stillness, a statue by the post of my bed, wondering how in the world I’m to prepare myself for the formal ball. And in only an hour.
I can’t even unfasten my walking dress without a second set of hands. And I can’t com someone for assistance. Molli volunteers for the overtime-pay role of guide duty on Wednesday afternoons. Pretty young girls are practically Sonoma’s corporate mascots these days, to the point that the bust of Demeter in the company logo has on occasion been satirically recast as Persephone. If the commentators only knew. Lady Mei spends most Wednesdays in the women’s center at the Hameau de la Reine, presumably at her father’s behest, though she might be making a permanent place for herself there. Lord Aaron, who could almost certainly arrange a dresser for me, has either left Versailles on business or, in a fit of angst, hidden himself from M.A.R.I.E.—and, therefore, everyone else. I’ll go naked before begging Lady Medeiros’s help twice in one day, and anyway, she’s surely enmeshed in her own preparations for the ball. I could raid my parents’ apartments for discreet access to some dressing-bots, but all my clothing is in the Queen’s Rooms. What am I to do—carry my outfit across the palace like a washerwoman?
The brisk clacking of heels heralds a deliverance in which I can take no joy. Each footfall is heavy, awkward, exactly the way I walked before Giovanni corrected me. So unmistakable is the cadence of my mother’s footfalls that I have almost half a minute to camouflage my frustration and panic before she strides through the doors.
Typical Mother: avoiding me for nearly forty-eight hours after consenting to this appalling new living arrangement. If I didn’t know her better, I’d say she was afraid to face me. But I’m beginning to understand how she thinks; what she wants is for the move to be fully and irrevocably completed before she has to listen to me beg her to put it back to rights.
Too late, she will say.
Except that she won’t say it, because I refuse to complain. Not to her.
The dozen or so people loitering in the Queen’s Bedchamber pause to ogle the new addition to what I’m sure they must have found a dull show. Without asking permission or even dropping a curtsy—as much as to say You’re not Queen yet, and don’t you forget it—my mother pushes the golden gate open and strides over to where I’m frozen in my most languid pose.
“You’re not dressed,” she hisses, taking in my rumpled walking gown and the pieces of my evening finery laid out on the bed.
I’m starving and exhausted, and I hate that she’s here and that I’m going to have to confess my helplessness to her. “I’m not certain how I could be,” I say with a tight jaw.
“You haven’t a dresser?” she says, her eyebrows climbing. Everyone in the room can tell that she’s appalled and disappointed in me, after I’ve been doing such a good job keeping them uninterested—redirecting their focus onto the filigree about the chamber instead of me. It’s worse when someone else strips your carefully crafted illusion away. My mother and the King both have that irritating habit.
“In,” my mother orders, pointing at the door to the wardrobe behind me and scooping the masses of fabric off the bed. “Go! I will take care of you today. We’ve no time for a substitute.”