Werewolves & Glass slippers

Will She do it?

*Ella*

There is a moment of cool silence in the room, like the silence that follows a gunshot when hunters are in the woods.

Anastasia doesn’t say anything. I take one look at her soft, bewildered eyes and see that my mother’s pronouncement has flown over her head.

“Anastasia is my sister,” I repeat.

“Yes, so you bloody well better go there and make sure her marriage goes through before she’s ruined. Because she’s your sister.” My step mother says.

A little pulse of relief rushes through my veins. I must have misunderstood, I have…

“She’s your half-sister,” Minna clarifies, her voice grating.

“But… she’s…” I turn to Anastasia. “How old are you?”

“You know how old I am,” Anastasia says, snuffling a bit as she rubs her lower lip. “I’m almost exactly five years younger than you.”

“You’re eighteen,” I say. My heart is thumping in my chest.

“Which makes you a ripe twenty-three,” Minna says pleasantly. “Or perhaps twenty-four. At your age, it’s easy to forget.”

I shake my head, “Your husband, the colonel…”

Minna shrugs.

I find myself struggling to breathe. I feel as if my whole life is unfolding in front of me, all the questions I never knew I had. The shock of my father coming home, just two weeks after my mother’s funeral, and saying that he was planning to marry by special license.

My mother lying in bed all those years, and my father popping his head in now and then to say cheerful things and toss kisses in her direction but never to sit by his mate’s side.

Because apparently he’s been sneaking off to sit with Minna.

“I feel as if I’m missing something,” Anastasia says, looking from one to the other. “Are you going to cry, Ella?”

I recoil. I have never cried, not since my father’s funeral. “Of course not!” I snap.

There is another beat of silence in the room.

“Why don’t you do the honors?” I say finally, looking at my stepmother. “I’m agog to learn the particulars.”

“The particulars are none of your business,” Minna states. Then she turns to Anastasia. “Listen, darling, you remember how we used to see dearest Anaton even before we came to live in this house?”

Anaton! I have never thought for a moment that my father’s name had any connection to that of my stepsister.

“Yes,” Anastasia agrees. “We did.”

“That would be because your mother was his mistress,” I say. “I gather he visited your house for at least eleven years, before my mother died. Was there a colonel at all? Is Anastasia illegitimate?” I ask Minna.

“It hardly matters,” Minna says coolly. “I can provide for her.”

I know that. My beloved, foolish father has left everything to his mate... and Minna has turned it into a sweet dowry for Anastasia, and be damned whether the estate needed the income. It’s all Anastasia’s now.

Who is not only pregnant but illegitimate. One has to suppose that the colonel, Minna’s putative first husband, has never existed.

Minna gets up and stubs out her cigarillo in a dish overflowing with half-smoked butts. “I am shocked beyond belief that the two of you haven’t sprung to your feet and hugged each other in an excess of girlish enthusiasm. But since you haven’t, I’ll make this short. You will go to Pomeroy Castle, Ellanora, because your sister is carrying a child and needs the approval of the prince. You will dress as your sister, you will take the bloody mongrels with you, and you will make this work.”

Minna looks tough, and more tired than she usually does. “In that case, you will keep the Crabtrees in their cottage,” I state.

I watch as Minna shrugs, her indifference clear. She doesn’t really care either way, I realize. She has summoned the Crabtrees into this situation just in case the plea of blood relations fails.

“I’ve summoned the same man who cut Anastasia’s hair,” Minna says briskly. “He’ll be here tomorrow morning to cut off all of that rot on your head. Three seamstresses are coming as well. You’ll need at least twenty gowns altered.”

“You’ll be at the castle for three or four days,” Anastasia says.

She gets to her feet, and for the first time, I recognize that my sister is indeed going to have a child. There’s something slightly clumsy about the way she moves.

“I’m sorry,” Anastasia says, walking over to stand before me.

“There’s nothing for you to be sorry for!” Minna interjects.

“Yes, there is,” she insists. “I’m sorry that our father was the sort of man he was. I’m not sorry that he married my mother, but I’m… I’m just sorry about all of it. About what you must think of him now.”

I don’t want to think about my father. I’ve tried not to think of him in the last seven years since his death. It’s too painful to remember the way he laughed, the way he would stand by the fireplace and tell me amusing stories of London, reflected firelight glinting from his wineglass.

And now there’s a whole new reason not to think of him.

I return Anastasia’s embrace politely, then disengage myself and turn to Minna. “Why must I come to dinner tonight?”

“Alpha Blanklake has some doubt that you two look enough alike to fool someone who might have met your sister.”

“But my hair…”

“It’s not the hair,” my stepmother says. “We’ll put you in a decent gown, and you’ll see the resemblance soon enough. Anastasia is known for her beauty, her dogs, and her glass slippers. As long as you don’t indulge your churlish tongue, you’ll pass.”

“What on earth is a glass slipper?” I ask.

“Oh, they’re marvelous!” Anastasia cries, clasping her hands together. “I brought them into fashion myself this season, Ella, and then everyone started wearing them.”

“Your feet are about the same size,” Minna adds. “They’ll fit.”

I look down at my tired, gray gown and then up at my stepmother. “What would you have done if my father had lived? If I had debuted when I was supposed to and people recognized the resemblance between myself and Anastasia?”

“I didn’t worry about it,” Minna says with one of her shrugs.

“Why not? Wouldn’t there have been the risk that someone would have seen the two of us together and guessed?”

“She’s five years younger than you. I would have kept her in the schoolroom until you married.”

“I might not have taken. I might not have found a husband. My father would have . . .”

A smile twists the corner of Minna’s lips. “Oh, you would have taken. Don’t you ever look in the mirror?”

I stare at her. Of course I look in the mirror. I see my perfectly regular features staring back at me. I don’t see Anastasia’s dewy eyes, her light curls, or her charming smile, because I don’t have any of those.

“You’re a bloody fool,” Minna says, reaching out for her cigarillo case and then dropping it again. “I’m smoking too many of these, which is entirely your fault. For the Goddess sake, get yourself into a decent dress by eight this evening. You’d better go see Anastasia’s maid straight off; you’re not fit to scrub the fireplace in that rag you’re wearing.”

“But I don’t want Algie to see my lip like this,” Anastasia says, sniffing.

“I’ll instruct Cherryderry to put a single candelabrum on the table,” her mother says. “Blanklake won’t be able to see a rat if it jumps on the plate in front of him.”

So it all comes back to the rats, which is fitting, because that’s where the story began.