I waited there for a minute before I felt another hand on top of mine as the flowers were slowly taken.
“Welcome to Bellecoeur Palace, Odette Rochelle Wyntor.” Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper.
I wasn’t sure if that meant I could rise, so I stood still.
“You may rise.”
I looked up to the older woman as I stood up slowly. She gave me a small smile and a nod.
“Thank you.” Was I supposed to say thank you to the queen?
“Come,” she said, and I followed her up the stairs.
When we got in front of the door, we turned back to face where I had walked from, and I could see people were already at the gates. Not five or ten people, more like a hundred, maybe two. How? Everything just happened this morning. When I saw a photographer step forward, I tried to keep my face pleasant and free of all thoughts.
There was no counting of the snapping of photos. Just as quickly as he came forward, he moved to the side. The car Gale and I had arrived in was now long gone. The people behind the gate were all that was before us now.
Do not wave your hand like someone cut it off. Be slow, graceful, like you are petting the air, and remember, we use our secret smiles for the judges, Odette, okay? Show me your secret smile.
My mother’s voice came to mind as the queen lifted her hand to wave. Raising my own slowly, gracefully, just like when I was a kid, I petted the air and used my secret smile, which had been her way of saying, do not smile with my teeth showing. We were like that for a few moments before the queen spoke.
“Let us go.”
And how everyone else heard her was beyond me, but as she turned, everyone else did, so I did too. She walked forward, and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to, but I did anyway. When we stepped inside, I noticed an M on the stone at my feet and a chandelier above me, hanging from a painted ceiling. In front of me was a large, long, marble staircase that went up to a platform where the stairs were divided into two different sets before proceeding up the sides. In the middle stood a white statue, which looked like an altar with red drapes behind it and the family crest under it.
“Less than seven hours, Gale?”
I jumped slightly, looking to see where that stern thunderous voice had come from, but the only person to speak was his mother. She handed off the flowers to some gray-haired woman as she spun on her heel to face him. The look of gentle serenity was gone. It wasn’t only her who had changed. Eliza stepped up, put down the dog, and kicked off her heels, sighing as her bare feet touched the stone.
“Six hours and fifteen minutes to be precise, Mother, and I had things to do!” Eliza complained, taking off her earrings and putting them into the hand of a woman beside her.
“Oh please, as if you ever get out of bed by noon anyway, Eliza,” Gale shot back.
“I do too!”
“Yeah, sure, and I am marrying the pope.”
“If you were, I would like more than six hours to prepare, Gale,” his mother snapped at him. “Everyone in the palace has been running around since dawn, preparing for something that should have been arranged at least three weeks before. Normally, this would have been on the calendar for months. Poor Julianne nearly had to run down 12th Street in her pajamas, screaming bloody murder to find me this purple dress! It does not even zip! I am wearing a coat because it did does not zip! Look what you have brought me to!”
He snorted when he noticed the top of her back as she showed him.
“You are laughing? Laughing at your mother? Your mother, who has had her entire day thrown for a loop because you decided six hours and fifteen minutes ago that you wanted to bring your fiancée here!”
“Mother, forgive us,” he said with a large grin on his face. “However, I had to act quickly, or she would most definitely have left me.”
“She should leave you now! You gave her no time to prepare, no instruction, no guidance, no practice. Let us thank heaven that she had received some formal training she could rely on before she met you.” Her blue eyes snapped to me. “Your wave