Cinderella Six Feet Under(35)

*

The Russian ballerina continued to rummage about her dressing room, searching for something. Miss Flax watched her through the rip in the folding screen. Gabriel, for his part, watched Miss Flax. He was unable to tear his eyes away from a small section of the side of her neck where her smooth skin met her elaborately twisted hair.

What would it be like to kiss that spot?

The ballerina slammed a drawer and padded out of the dressing room.

“Miss Flax,” Gabriel said.

She turned her head.

They were still crouched behind the screen. Miss Flax’s capacious skirts oozed around them, and her obviously padded bodice was lopsided. Quite absurd. He must put an end to this, all of this, before he forgot himself. There was the impropriety of it, of course, and the question of Miss Flax’s innocence. And then there was the matter of impossibility.

“Miss Flax, I . . .” Gabriel paused. “I wished to tell you that, during these weeks past, I did think of you. I thought of you more than I wish to admit, and although I am not certain why I—”

“Well, we really ought to go.” Miss Flax struggled to her feet.

“No, please. I must finish.” Gabriel stood. He was surprised by the coolness of his own voice as he said, “I feel it is only right that I tell you, I have an understanding of sorts with a young lady in England.” An understanding of sorts was accurate. He had never in fact proposed to Miss Banks, although the thought had clearly crossed Miss Banks’s mind on several occasions.

“How pleasant for you,” Miss Flax said. “I reckon she is a most wondrous young lady indeed to have won your esteem. Is she a duchess? A countess, maybe?”

“Miss Ivy Banks is not a noblewoman, although she comes from a very good family.”

“Oh, right. Good family. Those are simply indispensable, I hear. I suppose she’s as lovely as—what do they say?—as the sunrise.”

“Miss Banks is quite a beautiful young lady, yes, but more importantly, she is very well-educated. She reads Latin and Greek, not to mention being fluent in Italian, German, and French. She is working her way through translating an ancient manuscript for me.”

“How clever.”

The translating bit was a stretch. Ivy had elbowed her way into Gabriel’s study one day and demanded a way to, as she put it, help.

“Miss Banks is an avid collector of scientific specimens,” Gabriel said stiffly, “particularly botanical, although she has of late taken an interest in fossils—”

Ophelia wasn’t really sure what fossils were. Something to do with caves. That was it—caves and teeth. Or was it ferns?

“—and she has impeccable penmanship. In my line of work, that, and a certain retiring and ladylike nature, are two indispensable qualities in a wife.”

“Oh, I do agree.” Miss Flax smiled, too sweetly.

Gabriel’s neck began to sweat as they went out into the backstage corridor. “I would quite understand if you did not wish to see me again.”

“No, no, it’s hunky-dory.” Miss Flax walked so quickly Gabriel was compelled to lengthen his stride. “It is quite logical—I fancy Miss Banks enjoys logic immensely? Yes? Well. You’ll be wanting to find the missing stomacher. That’s pretty clear. And I wish to locate Henrietta. Since these two problems are, by the looks of it, tied up together, we may as well continue to assist each other.”

“Oh. Quite.”

“To that end—to the end, that is, of a certain arrangement that is of mutual benefit in a strictly businesslike sense, for I would not wish to in any way do anything that might give Miss Banks cause for . . . What I mean to say is, tomorrow, perhaps, you might accompany me to the lawyer’s office, and translate for me if need be when I ask him what he knows about Henrietta, and then, well, we might go to Maison Fayette and inquire about the two gowns and the stomacher.”

“Yes. A capital plan. Shall I collect you round the corner of H?tel Malbert at, say, nine o’clock tomorrow morning?”

“Sounds fine.”





11




The ogre had carried Prue from the kitchen, up the steps, clear across the nighttime, earthworm-smelling garden, through the wide-open carriageway gate, and out to the street. Prue heard clopping hooves, the creaks of harness and wheels. He pitched her like dirty laundry onto a carriage seat and slammed her inside.

The carriage rolled away with her shut up inside it. Prue fumbled in the blackness for the door handle. One of her fingernails ripped.