Fantastical (Fantasyland #3)(59)

“We were honored to have you with us,” Eunice stated.

“Yes, it was fun!” Sabina put in and I looked at her.

It was fun. I had pretended then, too, when I was baking and they were cracking jokes and making an effort to include me in their frivolity, that it was authentic. I hadn’t cooked anything since I came to this world, except basting the rabbit that first night with Tor. I forgot how much I loved to do it. It was even better doing it for Tor. And even better, pretending to enjoy it around people who were pretending to like me. And, in a weird way, the whole thing worked.

“We’ll have to do it again,” I told Sabina, reaching for the cake.

“Wait!” Daphne cried and the women rushed forward as I stilled.

“This is for you,” Pauline said, picking up the package and handing it to me.

“For me?” I asked, taking it and studying her.

“Yes, for you,” Winnie stated.

“But, it’s not my birthday,” I told them, moving my eyes to the package in my hand.

“No, but we thought…” Sabina started then faltered.

Eunice picked it up from there. “We weren’t very nice to you when you, erm… first got –”

“Just open it!” Daphne exclaimed and I looked at her to see she was bouncing on her toes in excitement.

“Okay,” I whispered, worried and wondering what the package would hold, hoping it wasn’t poison.

I opened it and as the wrapping fell away I saw I held an exquisitely carved, purple glass bottle in my hand.

“Your scent,” Perdita stated and my body jolted as my head snapped up.

“We asked Josephina, the perfume maker in town, to create something just for you,” Pauline put in.

“No gardenia.” Winnie smiled.

I blinked at them. Then I opened the stopper to the bottle, brought to my nose and sniffed.

The bottle wasn’t exquisite. The scent was. Subtle and fresh, almost beachy but with a flowery essence.

It was sublime.

So sublime, no poison could smell like that.

I looked around the faces.

Did they… could it be? Did they like me? As in, genuinely?

“Do you all… like me?” I asked quietly and got confused looks.

“But… of course!” Sabina cried.

“You’re sweet,” Daphne said.

“And funny,” Eunice added.

“And you saved a wild bird,” Pauline put in.

“You make our prince happy,” Perdita stated and my gaze locked on hers. “Blissfully so,” she finished.

My heart leaped.

“Do you think?” I whispered.

“Your grace, I’m sorry, but I took a swipe of that icing and let me tell you, if he wasn’t blissful before, which he was,” Winnie put in then grinned cheekily. “When he tastes that, he will be!”

Holy crap! They liked me!

“God, I hope so,” I breathed and they all laughed.

Yes! They liked me!

Then Perdita jumped and ordered, “You must go. You don’t have long before the fireworks start.”

“Oh God!” I cried, set the bottle down and mumbled, “I’ll come back for that.”

“We’ll take it to your rooms,” Eunice offered, picking up the cake and handing it to me. “And we’ll take the others away,” she said, I caught her meaning and my smile trembled as my face got soft, then she cried, “Just go!”

Perdita slid a thin stick between my fingers under the cake and said, “The candles are lit in your rooms. You can use that stick to light your cake candles so you won’t get any wax on your beautiful icing.”

I stared gratefully into her eyes and gave myself a long moment to do it.

Then I whispered, “Thank you,” and she smiled and that smile lit her whole face.

All of it.

Even her eyes.

Not fake.

She liked me!

They all did.

Hurrah!

I smiled at all of them and then rushed out of the room, balancing the cake as I went thinking joyous thoughts that maybe, just maybe, I was finally going to be really happy in this fairytale world.

About ten seconds later, however, I was cursing how far away our rooms were (because, seriously, it was a trek) when I made it there only to find the candles lit all around the room but there was no Tor to be found.

I checked all the rooms (his bathroom, my bathroom, his dressing room, my dressing room, his sitting room, you get the picture), he wasn’t anywhere.

Shit!

Was I supposed to go somewhere else?

I stood by the bed and tried to think of where I might have to go and it hit me that the balcony off his study faced the city proper, not the sea like the one off our rooms did. Maybe I was supposed to go there.

Holding the cake carefully, I lifted my skirts in one hand and ran to his study as fast as I could without dropping the cake.

When I got there, the double doors were mostly closed, one open an inch. I turned and put my booty in it to open it (I’d have to light the candles later, so much for my big reveal, I didn’t have the time) and stopped dead when I heard Algernon’s voice.

“I apologize for calling you out at this hour but with her performance today…” he paused, “Well, as you know, the men are talking. She’s not herself. So not herself, it’s strange.”