Matins rung and was ignored. Lauds rung. I tore myself away from him, seeing the dazed look in his eyes and knowing it was on my own face as well.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “Oh, tomorrow.”
Elly was already running down the stairs toward the carriage when I came out of the shadows in my cloak. I saw the prince running after her and made him trip and fall. We barely made it home before the sun rose, and if I had not been behind the carriage in my boots, hurrying the horses, she would have been too late.
It was early afternoon before she woke. “I need not leave early tonight” she told me. “This is the last night. I will walk home, after.”
“If you are in that ballroom when dawn comes,” I told her, “all the faery stitches will vanish from your dress and veil. The cloth will fall about your feet, and you will be there naked, with everyone sniggering at you. Best leave him at Lauds, as you did last night, and let me act the marriage broker for you.”
“Early in the morning,” she begged. “When the bell rings for Prime.”
“When Prime rings, the sun is already coming up,” I told her, pitying her, envying her. “When you hear it ring for Lauds, you’ll know the dawn is coming. You must run, then, or be caught out. I do not think the prince’s parents will want him to marry a girl who takes off her clothes in a ballroom.”
She promised me. I scarcely heard her, thinking of my own lover. I went with her once again, and watched briefly through the windows before Giles arrived. Poor Gloriana had no hope and knew it now. The prince danced with no one but Elly.
And Giles and I lay in the grass below the terrace, hidden beneath my cloak.
“Beauty,” he sighed, and I did not correct him. I was. He was. We were. Our bodies moved and touched and held one another, with nothing between us. We grasped at stars, once, twice, three times, falling exhausted at last into the warmth of our nest. My kirtle was somewhere in the grass. My underdress was around my neck. Giles wore only his shirt. Our secret flesh was still wet and entangled, one with another’s.
A bell rang.
“Matins,” I said drowsily.
“Lauds,” he said as drowsily. “Matins was hours ago.”
Above me on the terrace, I heard a sound and looked up to see Elly in the prince’s arms.
The little fool was going to let her clothes vanish and stand there in her skin, begging him to take her, as well he might. I could not blame her. How could I blame her? And yet her chance to marry him would be over. His parents would not permit such an impropriety. Princes had to have virgin brides, lest doubt be cast upon their heirs. I moved with a strength greater than my own, wrenched myself away from Giles, wrapped myself in the cloak, distracted the prince with a faroff cockcrow, seized Elly up beneath the cloak and bore her away.
She struggled. She was a strong girl. I got her out to the driveway just as the carriage dissolved. The pumpkin rolled there, broken, spilling its seeds. Mice scattered in all directions as the toad hopped away into the brush with a disenchanted croak. Luckily, no one was looking at the assemblage. Everyone was staring at the terrace, where the prince was running about like one demented. Somehow I got the boots on. I put a spell of silence and compliance on Elly, gathered her up in my arms again and said, “Boots, take us to the Dower House stables.” As we went, I heard the bell striking for Prime.
When I set her down, her clothing fell around her feet, as I had told her it would. Her breasts were still rosy with desire, her nipples like little rubies. She put one hand between her thighs as though something hurt her, then left it there. She gave me a slow, hating look. “Why did you do that?” she demanded, her hand moving slowly back and forth.
I snatched it from between her legs and shook her. “Do you want him for one night, once? Is that all? One time, then he will marry someone else?”
Her eyes did not focus on me, so I slapped her. That got her attention, and I asked her again what she wanted.
“I want to go to bed with him,” she said in a voice like warm honey. “Over and over again.”
“Then you must marry him.”
She stepped away from me, stumbling. She still wore one of the glass shoes. The other had been dropped in our flight.
“They didn’t disappear,” she said. “I dropped one on the stairs.”
As soon as she said it, I realized why. They were clear. They were glass. There was no appearance to disappear. They might gradually fade, over some weeks, but they would not disappear suddenly. Which is why they had been in the story in the first place.
“Go to bed,” I said wearily. “I need to think.”
“He’ll marry me,” she said as though she were God, deciding fate. “He will. He has to. He can’t live without
