Stepsister(11)

It was the third time Martin had thrown her that morning. Isabelle was a skilled rider, but everything was different now. She couldn’t get her weight right in her stirrups. There was no purchase where the toes of her right foot should’ve gripped the tread. Unable to balance properly, she had difficulty correcting when Martin reared, bucked, or simply stopped dead.

The falls didn’t discourage her, though. She didn’t care about the dirt in her face, the bruises, the pain. They kept her from remembering that Ella was gone. That Ella had won. That Ella had everything now and she had nothing.

She was still lying on the ground, staring up at the clouds scudding across the sky, when a face leaned over her, blocking them out.

“How many times have you fallen today?” Tavi asked. She didn’t wait for an answer. “You’ll kill yourself.”

“If I’m lucky.”

“Stop this. You can’t ride anymore.”

Fear pooled in Isabelle’s belly at the very thought. It wasn’t true. She wouldn’t let it be true. Riding was all she had left. It was the only thing that had kept her going as her foot healed. As she got used to hobbling instead of walking. As the servants left. As Maman closed the shutters and locked the doors. As the weeds grew over the stone walls.

“Why are you here?” she asked Tavi. Her sister preferred to stay inside with her books and equations.

“To tell you that we have to go to the market. We can’t put it off any longer.”

Isabelle blinked at her. “That’s not a good idea.”

Word had spread. About the glass slipper and what they’d done to themselves to fit into it. About Ella and how they’d treated her. Children threw mud at their house. A man had pitched a rock through one of their windows. Isabelle knew they would only be inviting more trouble if they went to the village.

“Do you have a better one?” asked Tavi. “We need cheese. Ham. Butter. We haven’t tasted bread in weeks.”

Isabelle sighed. She stood up and brushed herself off. “We’ll have to take the cart,” she said. “We can’t walk. Not with our—”

“Fine. Hitch up Martin. I’ll gather some baskets,” Tavi said brusquely, starting for the kitchen. She didn’t like talking about their injuries. Ella. Any of it.

“Fine,” Isabelle said, limping over to her horse.

She hadn’t got used to her slow, lurching gait. Tavi’s injury was not as severe. After it had healed, her stride had returned to normal. Isabelle doubted hers ever would.

“And, Izzy …”

Isabelle turned around. Tavi was frowning.

“What?”

“Behave. In the village. Do you think you can?”

Isabelle waved Tavi’s question away and picked up Martin’s reins. But the truth was, she had no idea if she could. She’d tried to behave. For years. In drawing rooms and ballrooms, at garden parties and dinners. With her hands knotted and her jaw clenched, she’d tried to be all the things Maman told her to be: pleasant, sweet, considerate, kind, demure, gentle, patient, agreeable, and self-effacing.

Occasionally it worked. For a day or two. But then something always happened.

Like the time, at a fancy dinner Maman had hosted, a cadet back from his first year at the military academy said that the Second Punic War ended after Scipio defeated Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae, when any fool knew it was the Battle of Zama. Isabelle had corrected him, and he’d laughed, saying she didn’t know what she was talking about. After she got her favorite book—An Illustrated History of the World’s Greatest Military Commanders—from her library and proved that she did, in fact, know what she was talking about, he’d called her an unpleasant name. Under his breath. Furious, she’d called him one back. Not under her breath.

Maman hadn’t spoken to her for a week.

And then there was the time she’d attended a ball at a baroness’s chateau, got bored with the dancing, and decided to take a walk. She never meant to get into a duel with the baron, but he’d found her admiring a pair of sabers mounted on a wall in the foyer and offered to show her his moves. She’d shown him hers, too, slicing several buttons off his jacket and nicking his chin in the process.

That time, Maman had given her the silent treatment for a month.

Her mother had said her behavior was atrocious, but Isabelle didn’t think cutting off a baron’s buttons was all that bad. She knew she was capable of worse. Much worse.

Just a few months ago, she’d been searching in her wardrobe for the pink parasol Maman insisted that she carry—Pink enhances the complexion, Isabelle!—and a pair of horrible silk slippers—Too bad if they pinch, they make your feet look small!—and had found a book on Alexander the Great that she’d hidden to keep Maman from taking it away.

She’d sat down on the floor of her bedchamber, rumpling her fussy dress, and had eagerly opened it. It was a relic from a happier time, a time before she’d been made to understand that warriors and generals were men, and that showing an interest in swords and warhorses and battlefield strategies was unbecoming in a girl. As Isabelle had turned the book’s pages, she’d found herself once again fighting alongside Alexander as he battled his way through Egypt. Tears of longing had welled in her eyes as she’d read.

Just as she’d been wiping them away, Ella had walked into the room carrying a silver tray. On it she’d placed a cup of hot chocolate and a plate of madeleines.