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“We haven’t—” began Dorothea.
“Of course, your highness,” Lady Tremaine interrupted, all scraping curtsies and saccharine smiles. “The girls will see to it personally. Won’t you, girls?”
Stasia and Dorothea stared at her in horror, though neither breathed a word of protest. Both were more terrified of their mother than of making a poor impression on visiting royalty. They would not refuse any request.
“Go and ready Cynthia’s bath,” Lady Tremaine commanded her frozen daughters. “Now.”
Stasia and Dorothea scurried off, too rattled even to remember to dart accusing looks over their shoulders at Cynthia as they hurried toward the kitchens.
Cynthia wondered if they knew how to boil water.
Lady Tremaine gestured toward Dorothea’s bedchamber. “Show the princess to your rooms, dear.”
“But that’s not my room.” Anger flashed through Cynthia’s veins. “You gave my room to your daughter and sent me upstairs to live in the attic.”
Lady Tremaine looked as though she could happily throttle her, but settled instead on visibly grinding her teeth behind a tight smile.
“To the attic, then,” Princess Ammalia said briskly. “I’m certain there will be no trouble carrying the hot bath upstairs.”
No one had ever brought Cynthia a hot anything up to the attic. If she wanted a bath or even a cup of tea, she boiled the water herself down in the kitchen. The cramped wooden tub in the pantry was where she’d had the most stolen moments to relax.
“Of course, your highness,” Lady Tremaine said, curtseying low, her tone fawning. “My girls will be right up.”
Princess Ammalia inclined her head as though all of this was as it should be. Without further comment or attention to Lady Tremaine, the princess turned to Cynthia with her eyebrows raised. “Now then. Why don’t you lead the way?”
“Of… course,” Cynthia stammered, as used to leading the way to her attic bedchamber as her stepsisters were used to manual labor. Which was to say: not at all. In the years since she’d been installed there, the only living souls to visit her were her magpies, Jack and Gus.
Even Morningstar the devil-cat didn’t bother climbing multiple flights of stairs to torment Cynthia by scratching at her door and her shins. It was just as easy to wait to attack until she was making her careful way down the steps with a heavy basket or precarious tray in her hands.
She hated that the princess was seeing her this way, bedraggled and browbeaten. But Cynthia could not help but want to please her, and Princess Ammalia’s low rich voice with its Italian accent was too delicious to deny.
Cynthia hurried up the stairs at her usual must-accomplish-everything brisk pace before realizing the princess was likely unused to racing up and down flights of stairs. Most likely, Cynthia had left the poor woman in the dust back on the first step.
But when she paused, Princess Ammalia was right behind her. Due to the difference in their heights, and because Cynthia had not given warning that she was about to turn around, her bodice swung directly into the princess’s path.
The princess had no time to slow her forward momentum before her startled face smushed directly into Cynthia’s bosom.
“Oh,” Cynthia gasped, her face flaming with heat. “I’m so sorry. I…”
She jerked backwards, rescuing the princess from suffocating in Cynthia’s cleavage, then spun around and dashed up the final steps as though her slippers were on fire.
When she reached the top of the stairs, she flung open the door to her bedchamber and launched herself a safe distance inside.
Probably it was a safe distance. Maybe. She wasn’t quite sure what she was running from—the princess, or her own reaction to having her so close.
If it was the latter, things were not about to get easier.
The princess glanced around the dim attic, taking it all in. The ceiling was low, but the wide chamber covered the full length of the house. Almost every inch was full of decades-old trunks and boxes and furniture, save for the small area Cynthia had claimed for herself, with just enough room for the broken wardrobe where she kept her few items of clothing, the straw pallet upon which she slept, and the heap of strings and sparkly bits the birds had brought her.
“Er,” Cynthia said, then decided to forge ahead without further mention of accidentally force-feeding her bosom to the princess. “I’d offer you a seat, but as you can see, I’ve no chairs. The wooden crates are sturdy, if you’d like me to dust one off for you.”
“You used to have a proper bedroom?” the princess asked.
Cynthia nodded. “It’s Dorothea’s now.”
“This three-story house only contains three usable bedchambers?”
“No, there are others. But they’re reserved for guests.”
