So This is Love (Disney Twisted Tales) - Elizabeth Lim Page 0,31

trace,” the Grand Duke had reported on the night of the ball, after sending his men to chase after her coach. Then, after a snide pause—in which he had taken undisguised pleasure—he had added, “Don’t you suppose that if she had wanted to marry His Royal Highness, she would have stayed?”

Charles couldn’t get Ferdinand’s words out of his head. What if they were true? He wanted to believe she had fled the ball because it had been midnight, as she’d said—but what if she had left because of him?

The doors to the royal dining room opened, and a familiar voice from inside called to him, “Charles!”

Lifting his head, Prince Charles smiled, filled with a new sense of hope and determination.

If anyone would help him find the girl of his dreams, it was Aunt Genevieve.

Try as she might, Cinderella could not forget her second encounter with Prince Charles.

Every free moment she had, she ran through their brief conversation in her head. She couldn’t forget how her heart had swelled when he’d stopped to speak with her. And how it sank once she realized he hadn’t recognized her at all. It still stung whenever she thought of it.

“You have your answer,” she told herself. “He doesn’t remember you. So you should stop thinking about him.”

Easier said than done. The only way that would happen was if she didn’t have any free moments to think about him.

She threw herself into her new routine as the duchess’s attendant, working from dawn until long past dusk over the next week. Being a royal attendant was taxing; Cinderella had thought that serving only one mistress instead of three would be easier, but the palace was far bigger than her stepmother’s house. The walk alone from the kitchen to the duchess’s chambers with her tea took a quarter of an hour.

Not to mention, Genevieve was a demanding mistress with a keen eye, and few things pleased her.

“My collar is crooked,” she would say. Then, a minute later: “My hair is uneven. You’ll have to do it again.”

Or: “The rouge on my left cheek is darker than on the right. Can’t you do anything properly?”

And before breakfast: “I specifically asked for my tea to be steeped for four minutes. Not three, not five. Four. Any more makes it much too strong.”

On top of that, Cinderella was tasked with helping the duchess prepare her bath, taking her clothes to be laundered, steaming the curtains, beating dust out of the rugs, and polishing the duchess’s jewels until they sparkled. Duchess Genevieve was used to having at least three girls to wait on her, but no other servants arrived to Cinderella’s aid.

All the same, Cinderella didn’t mind. Duchess Genevieve was stern and eccentric, and as often as she berated Cinderella for her incompetence, she wasn’t mean-spirited, as Lady Tremaine had been. Maybe it was the portraits Cinderella had seen in the royal gallery of the duchess grinning, or the way she pored over her novels, chuckling to herself when she thought Cinderella couldn’t hear, that made Cinderella like the woman.

Her stepmother had never read; in fact, every time she caught Cinderella in the act, she tore the book away and burned it. In the palace, Cinderella had already stolen a few peeks at Duchess Genevieve’s novels, luxuriating for a few moments in a far-off adventure. Cinderella was certain that no one who read such thrilling tales could be that bad.

Besides, the extra work made the days pass faster. Every day she survived in the palace meant another night with a roof over her head and three hot meals, the leftovers of which she and Louisa always sneaked over to Bruno late at night.

But it didn’t help that she was living under the same roof as the prince.

The prince, Cinderella thought with a sigh, as she slid a pearl-studded pin into the duchess’s chignon to hold it firm. I don’t even know why I’m still thinking about him. Maybe I’m in love with the idea of him, just as he’s in love with the idea of me. So much that he didn’t even recognize the real me.

“You’re looking rather dour today,” the duchess remarked while Cinderella finished buttoning the back of her dress. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, ma’am,” Cinderella mumbled.

“Then? For heaven’s sake, girl, can’t you say anything entertaining? The lot of you all are so dull.”

Genevieve sighed and reached for a book on her dresser. “I am beginning to remember why I stayed away from this place for so many years. This