“No, but we thought…” Sabina started then faltered.
Eunice picked it up from there. “We weren’t very nice to you when you, erm… first got –”
“Just open it!” Daphne exclaimed and I looked at her to see she was bouncing on her toes in excitement.
“Okay,” I whispered, worried and wondering what the package would hold, hoping it wasn’t poison.
I opened it and as the wrapping fell away I saw I held an exquisitely carved, purple glass bottle in my hand.
“Your scent,” Perdita stated and my body jolted as my head snapped up.
“We asked Josephina, the perfume maker in town, to create something just for you,” Pauline put in.
“No gardenia.” Winnie smiled.
I blinked at them. Then I opened the stopper to the bottle, brought to my nose and sniffed.
The bottle wasn’t exquisite. The scent was. Subtle and fresh, almost beachy but with a flowery essence.
It was sublime.
So sublime, no poison could smell like that.
I looked around the faces.
Did they… could it be? Did they like me? As in, genuinely?
“Do you all… like me?” I asked quietly and got confused looks.
“But… of course!” Sabina cried.
“You’re sweet,” Daphne said.
“And funny,” Eunice added.
“And you saved a wild bird,” Pauline put in.
“You make our prince happy,” Perdita stated and my gaze locked on hers. “Blissfully so,” she finished.
My heart leaped.
“Do you think?” I whispered.
“Your grace, I’m sorry, but I took a swipe of that icing and let me tell you, if he wasn’t blissful before, which he was,” Winnie put in then grinned cheekily. “When he tastes that, he will be!”
Holy crap! They liked me!
“God, I hope so,” I breathed and they all laughed.
Yes! They liked me!
Then Perdita jumped and ordered, “You must go. You don’t have long before the fireworks start.”
“Oh God!” I cried, set the bottle down and mumbled, “I’ll come back for that.”
“We’ll take it to your rooms,” Eunice offered, picking up the cake and handing it to me. “And we’ll take the others away,” she said, I caught her meaning and my smile trembled as my face got soft, then she cried, “Just go!”
Perdita slid a thin stick between my fingers under the cake and said, “The candles are lit in your rooms. You can use that stick to light your cake candles so you won’t get any wax on your beautiful icing.”