“Cinderella did not do that,” Lady Cruthlach said.
“Who cares, you old bat?” Prue set off down the corridor. There went that wheezing again, and a creaking-basket sound. Prue stole a look over her shoulder.
Lord Cruthlach bore down on her in a wicker wheelchair. He was just as scrawny as ever but his eyes had life in them now, and he spun the wheels with gusto. Lady Cruthlach wasn’t far behind. Her little pointed hat hung on the side of her head, and her eyes looked mean.
Prue ran as fast as the tight, glass-beaded slippers could go.
*
At two minutes till midnight, the orchestra finished playing and shuffled offstage. The crowd watched and whispered as footmen cleared the dais of the musicians’ chairs and stands. Fans flicked. Ladies giggled nervously.
Prince Rupprecht strode up onto the dais in his white evening jacket, crimson sash, golden epaulets, and medals.
Ophelia’s palms sweated. Would her plan work?
Prince Rupprecht began a speech in French, and Griffe whispered a translation in Ophelia’s ear.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Prince Rupprecht said, “at last the moment has arrived that we have all been anxiously awaiting. The moment when I, Prince Rupprecht of Slavonia, announce the identity of my cherished, my love, and, yes, my intended.”
Feminine yelps rang out. A glass splintered somewhere.
“At the stroke of midnight,” Prince Rupprecht said, “I shall identify my cherished one, the only lady of flawless beauty, the only lady with a foot small enough to fit”— he extracted a tiny, shining shoe from his pocket—“this glass slipper.”
The crowd erupted like a tree full of chickadees.
“Silence!” Prince Rupprecht boomed.
The crowd hushed.
“At the stroke of midnight, I shall fit this dainty slipper to my darling . . . Cinderella.”
Ophelia craned her neck to see the huge golden clock on the wall. One more minute.
“Are you well?” Griffe whispered.
Ophelia nodded. She looked back to the dais and saw Colifichet standing up close, narrow arms folded, smug.
The crowd babbled. Ophelia stood on tiptoe to see a footman pushing something up a ramp and onto the dais. Shrouded in a white sheet, it glided as though on wheels.
“She arrives,” Prince Rupprecht said, watching the thing approach with a look of boyish anticipation.
It couldn’t be.
The footman parked the thing beside the prince. Then he bowed to his master and whipped off the sheet.
The crowd gasped.
Standing beside the prince was a beautiful automaton in a sumptuous gown of ivory tulle, embroidered all over with gold and silver threads. The Cinderella gown, except it didn’t have a stomacher. The waist was plain ivory silk. The automaton’s hair was heaped upon its head in a profusion of shining, diamond-studded cornsilk that looked too heavy to be supported by such a slender neck. Its demure lips and alabaster arms curved in permanent perfection.
“He means to marry a doll?” Ophelia whispered. “An enormous doll?”
Prince Rupprecht caressed the side of the automaton’s neck. He must’ve touched some kind of spring, because it jolted into motion. It gracefully moved its head on its filigree neck. One hand lifted to touch its throat in a maidenly gesture of surprise, and back again.
The crowd was having forty fits, but Prince Rupprecht seemed to be deaf and blind to his guests. He knelt before the automaton. He gazed up at it, still holding the glass slipper.
“He truly seems . . . jumpy,” Ophelia said. “As though it were a real lady who might turn him down.”
“I always suspected it would come to something like this with him,” Griffe said. “He is not right in the head.”
There was a delicate chime, and then another and another. The crowd fell silent.
The clock was striking midnight.