Cinderella Six Feet Under(31)

“I am an employee of no one.” Colifichet twiddled bony fingers.

“Of course not!” Prince Rupprecht said, spilling brandy on his lap. “Spilt drink. Rain is on the way.”

“I daresay the rain has already arrived,” Penrose said.

“Are you superstitious, Prince Rupprecht?” Ophelia asked.

“It is what comes of having peasants for nursemaids. They filled our heads with magic and tales.” Prince Rupprecht stared down at the droplets on his lap with a creased brow. Then he looked up at Penrose. “Lord Harrington, I have heard tell that you are afflicted with superstitions of your own. That you hunt down relics of a most peculiar nature, yes?”

“Good heavens,” Penrose said in a mild tone. “Who told you such nonsense? I am a professor.”

Colifichet said to Penrose in an impatient tone, “I have a shop on Rue des Capucines. Colifichet and Sons. Perhaps you have heard of it?”

“Finest clockwork toy shop in all of Paris,” Prince Rupprecht said.

“Toy shop,” Colifichet said, flushing, “is not the term I prefer. I invent and create automata. My grandfather built the shop, but in those days it was strictly a clockmaker’s.”

Ophelia tried to think why clockmaker rang a bell.

“My grandfather once made an engraved pocket watch for Napoleon Bonaparte,” Colifichet said.

“How remarkable,” Ophelia said, attempting to remember when Napoleon Bonaparte had lived.

“Not really. Bowing down before aristocrats was never what I wished for myself. I wish to create more. More beauty, more ingenuity, even the semblance, oui, the poetic semblance of life itself. Life, indeed, perfected.”

“Life, I daresay,” Penrose said, “at least, judging from that garden in Act One, made fantastical. Phantasmagorical, rather.”

“If only I could make clockwork ballerinas, too,” Colifichet said. “Did you see that wretched display in scene two? Like a troupe of dromedaries.”

Prince Rupprecht grunted his agreement.

“I work so hard, so very, very hard,” Colifichet said, “and those girls destroy it all with one cumbersome arm out of place. My work, my sweat, my blood!” He curled his lip. “Wasted. I would like to kill those girls, sometimes.”

Ophelia and Penrose traded glances. “Pardon me, Monsieur Colifichet,” Ophelia said, “but is the Marquis de la Roque-Fabliau a student of yours? A student of clockwork inventions?”

“Oui, my only student. The marquis is eager to learn, and, well, how could I say non to such passion?”

Sounded like Malbert paid handsomely for his lessons in clockwork.

Meanwhile, the Count de Griffe had lumbered close to Ophelia.

Ophelia had always had a way with animals. For starters, she’d spent her girlhood on a farmstead where her mother had been a maid-of-all-work. Ophelia had fed the chickens, milked the cows, and in the summertime, supervised a bratty herd of goats as they foraged along sloping green meadows. Later, when she’d joined P. Q. Putnam’s Traveling Circus, she’d been not only a trick rider, but assistant to a poodle who leapt through hoops.

For some reason, this all came to mind as she regarded Griffe and his lionlike aspect.

“Mademoiselle Stonewall,” he said with a gruff French accent, “I beg of you, what is your given name? I shall perish, perish like the buffalo of your American soil, if you do not consent to bestow upon me that small morsel.”

He was a regular Lord Byron, wasn’t he? Well, surely there was no harm in telling him her real given name. “My name is Miss Ophelia Stonewall.”

Griffe kissed her hand. “Merci, ah, merci! Mademoiselle Ophelia Stonewall. Like an angel’s name, no?”

Ophelia yanked her hand from his grasp. “I’ve always thought it sounded a little forbidding.”

“I fall at your feet in shame, please, if I have offended you. Please, where are you from?”

“From? Oh—”

“Ohio? I have heard of it.”

“Yes. Ohio. Cleveland, Ohio.”

“I, myself, am from the Périgord, a most beautiful region to the south. Cleveland. Your family has been settled there long?”

“Not terribly. My father is a—a soap manufacturer. Tallow, you know.”

“A soap and tallow heiress? Magnifique.”

“Heiress? Well, I . . .” Ophelia was wearing a gown and mantle that had probably cost more than most folks’ yearly wages. The mantle, by the by, had become stifling. She was going to have to bite the bullet and take it off. “Yes,” she said, sliding it from her shoulders, “Papa has met with good fortune.” She sighed in relief as cooler air flowed over her neck and shoulders.