Ellen," Poppy said, her hands busy knitting something small and pale that looked like a kind of sailor's knot. "And both of them were to marry princes. Why? And would she have married Marianne to Christian? Or would George have done just as well?" She frowned, counted st.i.tches, and then went on knitting.

"Perhaps she's after the Dane navy," Roger said, coming back into the room now that Ellen was decent. "If the future queen of the Danelaw were beholden to her, it would give her quite a bit of power in the mortal world."

"Convenient that Christian is here to dance with Lady Ella, then, isn't it?" Poppy looked at them wryly, but Ellen thought she saw a flicker of something in her eyes. Fear?

"Do you think she's behind that as well?" Marianne's eyes were huge. "Did she make King Rupert invite Christian? How could she get to him?"

"This does seem a bit... all-encompa.s.sing," Lord Richard said, restlessly adjusting a picture frame. "The fact that she is able to make whole housefuls of people fall in love with Eleanora ... I don't know what to think ..." He trailed away, looking pensively at a painting of a deer drinking from some idyllic stream.

Ellen squirmed a little under her pile of blankets. Poppy must have caught the motion, and looked up again from her knitting. Her gaze wasn't fearful now, but thoughtful.

Marianne had been staring at the canopy of Ellen's bed, in much the same way her father was now gazing at the painting of the deer. Ellen wondered if the other girl resented 199.

her: resented her birthday ending with them all fussing around a downtrodden maid who was now wearing one of Marianne's own nightgowns.

But Marianne, as she had several times tonight, surprised Ellen.

"Has the Corley been planning this since Ellen was born?" Marianne's voice was musing. "Did she have Ellen's father ruined so she could control Ellen?

"I wonder, Father, if she went after Ellen as a result of you backing out of the deal." She wrinkled her nose.

A tingling sensation ran through Ellen's body, from the top of her head all the way to her toenails, and she gasped aloud. Everyone looked at her, and she clutched the blankets tighter.

"The ironing ruined," she said, her voice coming out strangled. "Laundry soiled, china broken, hair tangled, silver tarnished! No matter how I tried for years to be a good maid, everything turned out wrong."

She looked up and met Poppy's eyes. She had talked to the princess before about this, and wasn't sure that Poppy had believed her at the time. Now she saw that the other girl did.

"I think she sabotaged my work, but why would my G.o.dmother--the Corley, I mean--care if I ruined the sheets?"

"If you'd enjoyed being in service you might not have been as ready to accept her deal," Marianne offered.

The Corley was to blame. And she'd been too caught in her pride and resentment to notice it.

Ellen looked down at the humps and hillocks of the 200.

bedding. Her cheeks were burning, and she didn't dare to meet anyone's eyes.

"I think we should let Eleanora rest," Roger said.

She turned his words over, searching for traces of disgust, of condemnation, but found none. She looked up cautiously, and saw him smiling at her with a line of concern between his level brows.

"We should all get some rest," Lord Richard said. "And tomorrow, we'll start fresh."

They all wished each other good night, and the others filed out. Marianne turned out all the lamps but the one on the bedside table that Ellen could reach.

After they had gone, Ellen snuffed that one as well and lay in the dark, thinking. She had started the day as a maid named Ellen. Had danced at a ball as the most fascinating and yet hated woman in the room, Lady Ella. And now she was going to sleep as a guest of the Seadowns, someone to be respectfully bid good night, watched over and cared for.

Someone named Eleanora.

201.

Prey

Now when she found herself dreaming of being in the Palace Under Stone, Poppy hardly had the energy to be frightened.

Jaded, she wandered the corridors, trailing her fingers along the cold walls and wondering what half-mad p.r.o.nouncements Rionin and Blathen were going to make tonight. Whenever she encountered them, they swore that she would never leave again, or some such thing. She looked down and saw that she was wearing the violet and silver gown from Marianne's ball, and was quite pleased. It was her new favorite, and she wanted to make sure that Blathen got a good look at what he was missing, even if it was all in her own head.

She was still smiling about this when she came into the ballroom, and saw the usual arrangement: the courtiers dancing to give their king power, while Under Stone and his remaining brothers huddled on the dais. This time, though, there was someone with them. An old woman, crouched like a toad on a velvet-cushioned chair.

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"You're the Corley, aren't you?" Poppy went right to the foot of the dais to study the woman.

"So I have been called," the old witch said.

"And Eleanora's G.o.dmother, or so you call yourself," Poppy said. "If you want her to attract a princely husband, you might want to avoid maiming her." She wondered if this was really what the Corley looked like, if there was something prophetic in her dreams.

"What business of it is yours?" Blathen pushed his way forward to stand just in front of Poppy. He looked her over and licked his lips.

Giving him a look of deep disgust, Poppy tossed back her hair. "Well, let's see, I keep having all these tedious dreams with you and now her in them, so I'd say it's rather a lot of my business." She pointed rudely at the Corley, glad that her finger didn't shake.

"Tedious?" Again Blathen licked his lips. "Don't you enjoy visiting your true home?"

Poppy snorted, aware that it was something Lady Margaret would never do. But it suited Poppy. "This isn't my true home, and it never will be."

Rionin got up from his throne and crossed to the edge of the dais. He leaned down, bringing his face close to Poppy's. "Before you wake up, allow me to clarify one thing: you may toss your head and stamp your foot all you like, but you cannot fight us.

"Just like Eleanora, you are nothing but prey."

He pushed her away with a finger that seemed to pierce the 203.

center of her chest like an icicle. She fell and fell until she woke with a lurch in her own bed.

The violet and silver gown lay in a shaft of moonlight, and her nightrobe was damp with sweat as always. She lit a lamp and wrote everything that she had seen and heard in her diary, just as she had been doing for the past few weeks. Then she wrapped herself in a shawl and went to sit by the window. She wouldn't be getting any more sleep that night, so she might as well finish another bracelet.

She decided she would prefer that her dreams not come true.

At breakfast, Lady Margaret was reluctant to put on the strange bracelet that Poppy offered her. So reluctant, despite her normally gracious att.i.tude toward any gift, that Poppy suspected magical intervention. But in the end Poppy got it fastened around Lady Margaret's upper arm, and was pleased to see the change that began to overcome the older woman.

She still looked confused, however, so Lord Richard offered her a tumbler of Roger's strange potion and convinced her to toss the gla.s.s into the fireplace. It was such a dramatic gesture that Poppy had a hard time not shouting, "Cheers!" whenever someone did it.

"Do you realize that Lady Ella is our own Ellen?" Lady Margaret looked around, astonished, to see if anyone else had come to that same conclusion.

"Not Ellen, my dear, Eleanora," her husband corrected her.

204.

And then, with Marianne and Poppy talking over him and one another to make certain no detail was forgotten, they explained the situation.

Poppy braced herself for an explosion when Lady Margaret discovered that her husband had himself made a deal with the Corley in order to recover his fortune. But when he came to that part of the tale, she merely nodded. After all the explaining was done, she appeared only half-surprised.

"Did you know about the Corley?" Poppy asked.

"Not her name, but I suspected that Richard's luck was more than, well, mere luck," Lady Margaret admitted. "I suppose I didn't really want to know the details." She made a face. "Of course, if I'd known that our daughter's future lay on the line as well, I might have intervened sooner."

"You know I would die before I would let either of you come to harm," Lord Richard said. He lifted his wife's hand from the white tablecloth, and kissed her wrist.

Marianne sighed dreamily, and Poppy found herself stifling a similar noise. Imagine being so cherished. cherished. It was never something she had really thought about, until she had seen her oldest sisters with their husbands, and now Lady Margaret with hers. It was never something she had really thought about, until she had seen her oldest sisters with their husbands, and now Lady Margaret with hers.

She doubted very much that she would have been cherished like that by Prince Blathen.

Thinking of her erstwhile partner from the Midnight b.a.l.l.s, she drew herself up. They needed to solve this problem, and quickly. The masked ball was only days away.

"What should we do about the royal masquerade?" Poppy 205.

picked up her fork and pressed some lines into the tablecloth. "I suppose I need to go now." She winced. It had sounded like torture before there was a curse involved.

"And d.i.c.kon still needs a bracelet," said Marianne. "It looks like we have to have both. Roger's given him the potion four times now," she said to her plate of kippers and toast.

"I'm working on it," Poppy a.s.sured her. "Also, Roger's trying to find a Far Eastern herbalist he knows. It's possible that he could help us."

But when Roger came to the manor a few hours later, he shook his head in answer to their eager inquiries. The house at the address he had for Lon Qui was empty, and he had left a message with the landlady, though she did not know where her tenant was or how long he would be gone.

"You'd think if this Lon Qui were any good, he would have cured the old bat's warts," said d.i.c.kon, who had accompanied his older brother.

"Drink your medicine," Roger said grimly, and poured some sludgy potion out of a flask and into a gla.s.s one of the maids brought in.

d.i.c.kon shrugged, drank, and threw the gla.s.s in the fireplace, the movements well practiced by now.

"And put this on," Poppy said, wrapping a bracelet around his wrist. She couldn't stand the expression on Marianne's face one second longer. d.i.c.kon shook himself like a dog and then his gaze went to Marianne.

"I've been making rather a fool of myself, haven't I?" His normally cheerful demeanor was subdued.

206.

"Yes. Are you quite finished doing so?" Marianne's soft voice was tart.

"I hope so," he told her.

"Then you may sit by me while we plan what to do next," she said.

"I hate to say this, Poppy," Roger said. "But I'm not convinced that your knitted charms are that efficacious. It seems to take the potion as well to make any difference. And even that wears off." He frowned at d.i.c.kon.

"Roger," Poppy said evenly, without looking up. "As the knitting doesn't do any harm, either, I will continue to knit these things and tie them on people until the Corley and her gla.s.s slippers are just a memory. And that is all I will say about it."

Roger stopped pacing to look at her, then resumed. "Very well, I understand," was all he said.

Poppy didn't think he truly understood--but then, he was the one pacing. She had to keep her hands moving, she had to be doing something, something to help, or she would run mad. If she knit a thousand charms and none of them did a thing, at least she could say that she tried.

Lord and Lady Seadown came in, looking subdued. They had been talking with Eleanora for the last hour, and Poppy saw that Lady Margaret had been crying.

"The poor girl," she murmured, and sank down beside Poppy.

"Eleanora is in no condition to attend the masked ball," Lord Richard announced. "Her feet... the skin ..."

207.

"Her feet are turning to gla.s.s!" Lady Margaret cried out as she sank onto the sofa beside Poppy. "Gla.s.s, the poor child! The physician has never seen anything like it. He's not sure if it can ever be cured. How could it be? We need to get rid of that Corley creature, and find someone to heal Eleanora."

"Don't worry, Cousin Margaret," Poppy said, knitting even faster. "If it cannot be done in Breton, I'll take her to Westfalin. Galen can help her, and if he can't, we'll find someone who can."

Poppy, who had once shunned Ellen as irritating and depressing, now wanted to help her just as much as she wanted to free Christian from his infatuation with Lady Ella. She had realized in the night that she and Eleanora were really quite similar: their parents had made horrible mistakes, and the children were forced to pay the price.

"What will happen if Eleanora doesn't dance?" Poppy's voice was much more tense than she would have liked. There had been penalties for her and her sisters if they didn't attend the Midnight b.a.l.l.s, even if their absence had not been by their choice. choice.

"I don't know, but the Corley's plans seem to hinge upon the masquerade," Roger said gravely. "Christian will soon return to the Danelaw, and the Corley told Eleanora that the prince must propose to her by the end of the ball."

"But if she doesn't go," Marianne said eagerly, "then he can't propose and the Corley's plan will be ruined!"

"I fear it won't be so easy, my dear," her father said. "The Corley will likely find some way to force her to attend, even if 208.

it cripples her, or she will exact her revenge upon Eleanora for failing."

"It's best to let these things play out," Poppy said, striving to sound knowledgeable but coming out anxious instead. "There's always a chance for escape, but you have to wait for just the right moment."

She thought of the last night she had spent in the Palace Under Stone, not in a dream, but in reality She thought of dancing at the ball with one eye on her sister Rose, who had tried to make a bargain of her own before Galen had helped them escape. The scream from the King Under Stone as Galen's silver knitting needle pierced his heart would haunt her for the rest of her life, but the sense of lightness, of freedom, that she had felt when she ascended the golden stair for the last time was worth the occasional nightmare.

"But in order to let this play out," Roger argued, "Eleanora will have to attend the masked ball."

"Not necessarily," Poppy said suddenly. "It's a masked masked ball. Someone wearing gla.s.s slippers will have to attend, and be proposed to by Christian." Her eyes met Marianne's, and the color drained from the other girl's face. ball. Someone wearing gla.s.s slippers will have to attend, and be proposed to by Christian." Her eyes met Marianne's, and the color drained from the other girl's face.

"I--I--I couldn't possibly! No!" Marianne clutched at d.i.c.kon, who put his arm around her.

"Out of the question," d.i.c.kon said. "I'm not letting Marianne risk her life standing in as a decoy!"

"It's all right, Marianne, I'll do it," Poppy said. "I'm more of a height with Eleanora anyway. No one will even know the difference."

209.

She looked back at her knitting as though the decision were only of pa.s.sing importance. On the mantel, the clock ticked loudly as everyone else in the room stared at her, in admiration, in horror, in speculation.