“It’s all right,” Luce said quickly when she saw the girl’s honest despair. “There must just have been a misunderstanding.”
The girl curtseyed and began to close the door. Bill peeked his horned head up above the surface of the water and whispered, “Clothes!” Luce used her bare foot to push him down.
“Wait!” Luce called after the girl, who slowly pushed the door open again. “I need your help. Dressing for the ball.”
“What about your ladies-in-waiting, Princess Lys? There’s Agatha or Eloise—”
“No, no. The girls and I had a spat,” Luce hurried on, trying not to talk too much for fear of giving herself away completely. “They picked out the most, um, horrid gown for me to wear. So I sent them away. This is an important ball, you know.”
“Yes, Princess.”
“Could you find something for me?” Luce asked the girl, gesturing with her head at the armoire.
“Me? H-help you dress?”
“You’re the only one here, aren’t you?” Luce said, hoping that something in that armoire would fit her—and look halfway decent for a ball. “What’s your name?”
“Anne-Marie, Princess.”
“Great,” Luce said, trying to channel Lucinda from Helston by simply acting self-important. And she threw in a bit of Shelby’s know-it-all attitude for good measure. “Hop to it, Anne-Marie. I won’t be late because of your sluggishness. Be a dear and fetch me a gown.”
Ten minutes later, Luce stood before an expansive three-way mirror, admiring the stitching on the bust of the first gown Anne-Marie had tugged from the armoire. The gown was made of tiered black taffeta, tightly gathered at the waist, then swirling into a gloriously wide bell shape near the ground. Luce’s hair had been swept up into a twist, then tucked under a dark, heavy wig of elaborate curls. Her face shimmered with a dusting of powder and rouge. She was wearing so many undergarments that it felt as though someone had draped a fifty-pound weight over her body. How did girls move in these things? Let alone dance?
As Anne-Marie drew the corset tighter around her torso, Luce gaped at her reflection. The wig made her look five years older. And she was sure she’d never had this much cleavage before. In any of her lives.
For the briefest moment, she allowed herself to forget her nerves about meeting her past princess self, and whether she’d find Daniel again before she made a huge mess out of their love—and simply felt what every other girl going to that ball that night must have felt: Breathing was overrated in a dress as amazing as this.
“You’re ready, Princess,” Anne-Marie whispered reverently. “I will leave you, if you’ll allow me.”
As soon as Anne-Marie shut the door behind her, Bill propelled himself out of the water, sending a cold spray of soapsuds across the room. He sailed over the armoire and came to rest on a small turquoise silk footstool. He pointed at Luce’s gown, at her wig, then at her gown again. “Ooh la la. Hot stuff.”
“You haven’t even seen my shoes.” She lifted the hem of her skirt to show off a pair of pointy-toed emerald-green heels inlaid with jade flowers. They matched the emerald-green lace that trimmed the bust of her dress and were easily the most amazing shoes she had ever seen, let alone slipped onto her feet.
“Oooh!” Bill squealed. “Very rococo.”
“So, I’m really doing this? I’m just going to go down there and pretend—”
“No pretending.” Bill shook his head. “Own it. Own that cleavage, girl, you know you want to.”
“Okay, I am pretending you didn’t say that.” Luce laugh-winced. “So I go downstairs and ‘own it’ or whatever. But what do I do when I find my past self? I don’t know anything about her. Do I just—”
“Take her hand,” Bill said cryptically. “She’ll be very touched by the gesture, I’m sure.”
Bill was hinting at something, clearly, but Luce didn’t understand. Then she remembered his words right before they dove through the last Announcer.
“Tell me about going three-D.”
“Aha.” Bill mimed leaning against an invisible wall in the air. His wings blurred as he fluttered in front of her. “You know how some things are just too out-of-this-world to be pinned down by dull old words? Like, for example, the way you swoon when Daniel comes in for a long kiss, or the feeling of heat that spreads through your body when his wings unfurl on a dark night—”
“Don’t.” Luce’s hand went to her heart involuntarily. There were no words that could ever do justice to what Daniel made her feel. Bill was making fun of her, but that didn’t mean she ached any less at being away from Daniel for so long.
“Same deal with three-D. You’ll just have to live it to understand it.”
As soon as Bill opened the door for Luce, the sounds of distant orchestra music and the polite murmuring of a large crowd flooded into the room. She felt something pulling her down there. Maybe it was Daniel. Maybe it was Lys.
Bill bowed in the air. “After you, Princess.”
She followed the noise down two broad, winding flights of golden stairs, the music getting louder with each step. As she swept through empty gallery after empty gallery, she began to smell the mouthwatering aromas of roasted quail and stewed apples and potatoes au gratin. And perfume—so much she could hardly inhale without coughing.
“Now aren’t you glad I made you take a bath?” Bill asked. “One less bottle of eau de reekette punching holes in l’ozone.”
Luce didn’t answer. She had entered a long hall of mirrors, and in front of her, a pair of women and a man were crossing toward the entrance of a main room. The women didn’t walk, they glided. Their yellow and blue gowns practically swished across the floor. The man walked between them, his ruffled white shirt dapper under his long silver jacket and his heels nearly as high as the ones on Luce’s shoes. All three of them wore wigs a full foot taller than the one on Luce’s own head, which felt enormous and weighed a ton. Watching them, Luce felt clumsy, the way her skirts swung from side to side as she walked.
They turned to look at her and all three pairs of eyes narrowed, as if they could tell instantly that she had not been bred to attend high-society balls.
“Ignore them,” Bill said. “There are snobs in every lifetime. In the end, they’ve got nothing on you.”
Luce nodded, falling behind the trio, who passed through a set of mirrored doorways into the ballroom. The ultimate ballroom. The ballroom to end all ballrooms.
Luce couldn’t help herself. She stopped in her tracks and whispered, “Wow.”
It was majestic: A dozen chandeliers hung low from the faraway ceiling, glittering with bright white candles. Where the walls weren’t made of mirrors, they were covered with gold. The parquet dance floor seemed to stretch on into the next city, and ringing the dance floor were long tables covered in white linen, laid with fine china place settings, platters of cakes and cookies, and great crystal goblets filled with ruby-colored wine. Thousands of white daffodils peeked out of hundreds of dark-red vases set upon the dozens of dining tables.
On the far side of the room, a line of exquisitely dressed young women was forming. There were about ten of them, standing together, whispering and laughing outside a great golden door.
Another crowd had gathered around an enormous crystal punch bowl near the orchestra. Luce helped herself to a glass.
“Excuse me?” she asked a pair of women next to her. Their artful gray curls formed twin towers on their heads. “What are those girls in line for?”
“Why, to please the king, of course.” One woman chuckled. “Those demoiselles are here to see if they might please him into marriage.”
Marriage? But they looked so young. All of a sudden Luce’s skin began to feel hot and itchy. Then it hit her: Lys is in that line.
Luce gulped and studied each of the young women. There she was, third in line, magnificently wrapped in a long black gown only slightly different from the one that Luce herself was wearing. Her shoulders were covered with a black velvet capelet, and her eyes never rose from the floor. She wasn’t laughing with the other girls. She looked as frustrated as Luce felt.