Cinderella Six Feet Under(83)

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By the time they reached Prince Rupprecht’s house, Ophelia had straightened her wig and, since she had her theatrical case right there on her lap, she had done some repairs to her face. Professor Penrose had watched the proceedings with interest and, Ophelia fancied, slight alarm.

Prince Rupprecht resided in a stately, white stone mansion behind spiked iron gates. The drapes were all drawn.

“You need not come in, Miss Flax,” Penrose said. “Perhaps you should rest after your ordeal with the—”

Ophelia was already halfway out the carriage door.

“At least allow me to ask the questions of Prince Rupprecht,” Penrose said. “He strikes me as the sort who only feels regard for gentlemen’s conversation.”

“You’re right about that.”

The front gates were ajar, and a dignified manservant answered their knock on the door.

Penrose said something about the prince in French and passed his card. He had to be running low on those cards by now. He passed them out like show bills.

The servant led them into a foyer and disappeared.

“Looks like we’ve come just in the nick of time,” Ophelia whispered. She pointed to the pile of traveling trunks at the base of a lavish marble staircase. “He must be setting off for his chateau.”

“I am, I am!” a voice boomed above them. Prince Rupprecht trotted down the stairs. “Lord Harrington! What a charming surprise.” He reached the foot of the stairs, and surveyed Ophelia in her matronly disguise. “Good afternoon, madame,” he said in a bored voice.

Penrose once again introduced Ophelia as his aunt. “I would very much like to have a word with you, Prince Rupprecht, if you have the time.”

“I am just about to set off for Chateau de Roche, but certainly, certainly. Come this way.”

Prince Rupprecht led Ophelia and the professor down a wide corridor filled with chandeliers and statues of voluptuous ladies, and through tasseled curtains into a sitting room. He went straight to a sideboard and poured out two brandies. He passed one to Penrose—completely ignoring Ophelia—and fell into a thronelike chair.

Ophelia and Penrose sat.

Penrose laid aside the brandy and leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I shan’t waste your time. I was told you commissioned the ballet Cendrillon at the opera house. Why?”

“Why?” Prince Rupprecht swirled his brandy. “I am a newcomer to this city, Lord Harrington. My land, Slavonia, is thought to be backward by the Parisians. Provincial. Some even say barbaric. I wish to make France my home, however, and so, to earn the respect of the people here, I commissioned the ballet. At great expense, true, but it proves, I think, that Prince Rupprecht of Slavonia belongs here, at the center of the civilized world. Not in a backwater.”

And Ophelia thought she was touchy about being a bumpkin.

“Why do you ask, Lord Harrington?”

“I was considering commissioning a ballet myself, as it happens.”

What a tall tale! But Prince Rupprecht seemed to buy it; he nodded.

“Another fairy tale ballet, I fancy,” Penrose said.

Prince Rupprecht grunted what sounded like approval and finished off his brandy. He placed the glass on the carpet and lounged back in his chair.

“‘The Sleeping Beauty,’ perhaps,” Penrose said. “I enjoyed that tale as a lad. But I must get the sets and the costumes just so, and I was told that you, Prince Rupprecht, took great care over the costumes and scenery of Cendrillon.”

“Who told you that?”

“I cannot recall.”

“I paid some attention, yes. If a man sinks that much money into something, he must see it through, yes?”

“The detail of that ballet! Colifichet’s scenery is simply stupendous, and the costumes.” Penrose paused. “How is it that the ballerina’s costume has a stomacher that resembles to a startling degree an heirloom stomacher belonging to the Malbert family?”

“Does it?” Prince Rupprecht had drawn a small object—a coin—from his pocket, and he tossed it into the air and caught it, over and over. “I did not design the costumes, Lord Harrington.” He chuckled, his eyes strained. “I wished for the costume to be particularly beautiful, of course, so I commissioned Madame Fayette—have you heard of her?—to design and make it. No cheap theatrical rags, yes?”

That explained why the ballet costume was so unnecessarily fine, then.