Where was Prue?
Just as the clock chimed twelve, the automaton kicked out a bare foot from under its tulle hem. Prince Rupprecht attempted to place the slipper onto the foot. He wiggled and shoved, but he could not get it on. All the while, the automaton went on swiveling its head and touching its throat. The prince leapt to his feet, cursing and ranting in French.
“What’s he saying?” Ophelia asked Griffe.
“He asks if this is a joke. He demands to know who has tampered with his Cendrillon and replaced her foot with a larger one. He says someone will be punished.”
Someone had replaced the automaton’s foot? Yes. The feet in Malbert’s workshop cupboard must have been the automaton’s original feet. But how had they come to be in that brining vat?
Prince Rupprecht yelled and pointed at someone standing to the side of the dais.
“He says, ‘You! You destroyed her, you ditch rat!’” Griffe said.
“Who?” Ophelia struggled to see. Her breath caught.
Prince Rupprecht was pointing at Pierre, Colifichet’s apprentice.
32
Gabriel stood in a doorway to the side of the dais only a few yards away from Pierre. Where were Inspector Foucher and his men? Gabriel had received word that they were on their way from Paris, but he had not seen them yet.
Pierre had appeared downtrodden and flimsy the few times Gabriel had seen him before. Now he exuded a vicious power.
“Yes,” Pierre said in loud, clear French, addressing the shushing crowd as well as Prince Rupprecht. “It was I who altered your automaton.”
“You replaced her foot with another!” Prince Rupprecht yelled. “A large, ugly foot, like any ordinary woman’s. You destroyed her—her perfection!”
“No lady is perfect,” Pierre said. “Not even a clockwork lady, it seems. You thought you would destroy my sister for her imperfections, did you?”
Sister?
Understanding hit Gabriel. It hadn’t been Lord and Lady Cruthlach on the lake. It had been Pierre—slightly built, vengeful Pierre. But who was his sister? Surely not Sybille.
“You thought,” Pierre said, stalking forward, “you would not pay the price for sullying my sister, for discarding her like a soiled rag? No, altering this automaton was only a little joke, Prince. Only the beginning of what we have in store for you.”
The two men locked eyes, Prince Rupprecht large, opulent, and looking like he was about to erupt, Pierre cool and crackling with hatred.
Where was Miss Bright? Had she forgotten her role? Because an entrance on her part at this moment would be theatrical indeed.
The crowd parted for a figure barging towards the dais. Not Prue, but Miss Austorga in a puffy, pollen-yellow gown. She hitched her skirts and tromped up the dais steps. Redness mottled her upper lip, complexion spots dotted her forehead, and she was out of breath. “You say, Prince Rupprecht, that your intended, your bride, your true love, is the only one in the world who would fit that slipper?”
“Yes,” Prince Rupprecht said with a scornful glance.
“And you promise to marry she who fits the slipper?”
“That was the idea, yes. But it has been ruined, and I—”
“But do you promise?”
“If her foot had been small enough, then yes, I would have promised to marry she of the tiny foot. But this grotesque thing”—Prince Rupprecht sneered at the automaton—“is imperfect.”
Austorga dragged one of the musician’s chairs to the center of the dais. She plopped herself in the seat, skirts puffing like a cheese soufflé, and pried off one of her slippers. She thrust out her foot. “I am ready.”
“You cannot be serious,” Prince Rupprecht said. He addressed the sea of faces. “This creature?”
“Her foot appears to be quite dainty,” a gentleman near the dais said. “Why do you not make an attempt?”