That was my job alone, and by the time I was done with 80/431

it, my hands, arms, face, and hair were smeared with greasy soot. The stepsisters breezed into the manor while I did that job to watch me and comment on my appearance.

“I rather like her hair black,” the tall one said. “It matches her complexion quite well.” The plump one gave me a simpering smile. “Fine ladies

always

powder

their

faces.

Ella

uses

cinders—that’s why she’s our cinder-ella.” I mostly ignored them whenever they were around.

During the day, they did nothing as far as I could tell, except steal some candles from the cupboard, light them, and then take them out behind the barn, where they played guess-whose-straw-will-burn-quickest. I’m serious. Then they moved on to twigs, pinecones, and beetles. They spent most of the afternoon igniting things. This apparently is what hoodlum teenagers did back before street corners were invented.

While I worked I sent whispered pleading messages to Chrissy and worried that my parents were panicked about my disappearance. She never answered.

The second day was worse. Not only did I have the same chores, but I also had to clean the garderobes, which is a fancy way of saying outhouses. I couldn’t bathe—and trust me, I needed to after cleaning the garderobes—because unfortunately no one had had the 81/431

sense to invent indoor plumbing yet. All I had was a bowl of water, a rag, and a hard, scratchy, foul-smelling block of something that they told me was soap, but it didn’t resemble any soap I’d ever seen. They gave me a threadbare dress to wear and a pair of flimsy leather boots that didn’t fit and smelled as though their last owner had died while wearing them.

I learned that I lived in a land called Pampovilla and that my stepsisters were named Matilda and Hildegard.

When they weren’t burning things they spent most of their time ordering me around. I hoped that one of the king’s footmen would show up with the announcement of a ball. I counted on it, but no one visited.

Day three went about the same. The cook yelled at me as much as, if not more than, my stepfamily did—something, I might add, which has totally been overlooked in Grimm’s version of the fairy tale. It should have been a story about the wicked stepmother, ugly pyromaniac stepsisters, and a trollish-looking, short-tempered cook.

Day four was only made interesting by the fact that Matilda—the brunette one—accidentally set her hair on fire. It involved a great deal of screaming on Matilda’s part, and it could have led to serious injury if I hadn’t been nearby with a bucket of pig slop. I threw it over her head to douse the flames. As usual, she didn’t appreciate 82/431

my efforts on her behalf. I spent the night in my room without supper.

More days came and went by in a blur of chores. My back and arms ached from the workload. Where they weren’t blistered, my hands became dry and chapped. I wanted to cry every morning when I woke up, stiff and itchy from my straw mattress.

By the third week, I missed my home, my parents, and my friends so intently that it felt like a thick stone had wedged itself in my chest. I longed for a hot bath. Electricity. American food. I even missed little things that I’d taken for granted before. Carpet. Clear drinking water.

Cold milk. My tennis shoes.

As I worked, I kept my mind on all the things my life had been in Virgina, trying to hold onto them. Even Hunter seemed almost like a dream now. And when he didn’t—when I was washing clothes and the lines of his face suddenly forced their way into my mind—I tried to scrub them away along with the dirt and the grime. He didn’t deserve a place in my memory. I refused to think of Jane or him at all, refused to wonder if either one of them missed me.

Where was my fairy? When was that stupid ball?

I had tried to ask about the ball in roundabout ways before, but no one seemed to know anything about it.

One day as I was in my stepsisters’ room braiding 83/431

Hildegard’s hair, I asked if she wouldn’t like to visit the palace for a dance. Hildegard just sighed wistfully and said, “I do hope Prince Edmond throws one now that he’s done putting down that peasant rebellion.”

“Peasant rebellion?” I repeated.

Matilda said, “The peasants are always asking for too much. If it’s not lower taxes from their lords, it’s the right to leave their manors. As though they should be able to leave when there’s work to be done.” She sat across the room supposedly doing needlework, but I had yet to see her take a stitch. Mostly she was cleaning her fingernails with the needle.

I stopped braiding Hildegard’s hair. “What exactly do you mean when you say he put down a peasant rebellion?”

“It wasn’t a real rebellion,” Hildegard said, as though proud of this fact. “Prince Edmond hung a few of them and the rest scattered. What are a few peasants against the knights of the royal army? They should have learned their place by now.”

My hands gripped the brush harder. “The prince killed peasants? My prince?”

Hildegard’s nose wrinkled in disdain. “Your prince?

As though the likes of you had any claim to him.” Matilda tilted her head, which lost some of the dramatic effect since half her hair was missing. “You’d 84/431

better watch your tongue or he’ll hang you up with the rest of them. And why do you keep muttering the word

‘Chrissy’ under your breath? What is a Chrissy?” That was the first I heard of Prince Edmond, but it certainly wasn’t the last. Three days later a royal procession visited the estate.

Chapter 5

They sent notice they were coming, but only one day’s notice, which was something the servants complained quite a bit about when the WSM wasn’t around. It meant we all had to scurry around like panicked rodents trying to prepare the manor for royalty. Not that they were staying long. They were just resting here for the night, using us like a hotel stop on their journey to see some important noble in the south.

Since we not only had to provide food and quarters for the royals but for their knights, groomsmen, horses, and servants, the kitchen buzzed with activity all day long. When I wasn’t working to the point of exhaustion, I admit I was curious about Edmond, the blind date—er, life—Chrissy was trying to set me up on. Surely my stepsisters were wrong about him. He couldn’t be some tyrant who hanged people unnecessarily. Chrissy was supposed to find some wonderful, charming guy for me.

The question was, could he be so wonderful that he’d make living in the Middle Ages, make everything I’d gone through, worth it?

I am obviously a hopeless romantic.

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Late in the afternoon, Prince Edmond, his younger brother, Prince Hugh, and his sister, Princess Margaret, arrived in a procession of knights and carriages. The other servants and I crowded around one of the windows in a top room to watch them. When the royals descended from a gilded carriage, my stepfamily did a lot of bowing and fawning. Their colorful skirts swished and swayed as they moved. I had only soot-stained rags to wear, and I was embarrassed that Edmond would see me this way.

WSM ushered the guests into the manor and all of the servants went downstairs, ready to answer any whim or fancy of our visitors.

I recognized Edmond right away. He stood at least six feet tall—perhaps even a couple of inches more—a whole head taller than a lot of the men I’d met in the Middle Ages. He had sleek brown hair, a square jaw, and perfect teeth. Every time he looked in Hildegard’s direction she giggled. Matilda wore a covering over her head to hide her missing hair and kept tugging on it nervously as she watched him.

Prince Edmond’s younger brother, Prince Hugh, was no less handsome. Although he was not as tall and had a curl to his brown hair, he had the same flawless features and square jaw. The two of them walked, talked, and looked about the room with an air of haughtiness that 87/431