“I am just about to set off for Chateau de Roche, but certainly, certainly. Come this way.”
Prince Rupprecht led Ophelia and the professor down a wide corridor filled with chandeliers and statues of voluptuous ladies, and through tasseled curtains into a sitting room. He went straight to a sideboard and poured out two brandies. He passed one to Penrose—completely ignoring Ophelia—and fell into a thronelike chair.
Ophelia and Penrose sat.
Penrose laid aside the brandy and leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I shan’t waste your time. I was told you commissioned the ballet Cendrillon at the opera house. Why?”
“Why?” Prince Rupprecht swirled his brandy. “I am a newcomer to this city, Lord Harrington. My land, Slavonia, is thought to be backward by the Parisians. Provincial. Some even say barbaric. I wish to make France my home, however, and so, to earn the respect of the people here, I commissioned the ballet. At great expense, true, but it proves, I think, that Prince Rupprecht of Slavonia belongs here, at the center of the civilized world. Not in a backwater.”
And Ophelia thought she was touchy about being a bumpkin.
“Why do you ask, Lord Harrington?”
“I was considering commissioning a ballet myself, as it happens.”
What a tall tale! But Prince Rupprecht seemed to buy it; he nodded.
“Another fairy tale ballet, I fancy,” Penrose said.
Prince Rupprecht grunted what sounded like approval and finished off his brandy. He placed the glass on the carpet and lounged back in his chair.
“‘The Sleeping Beauty,’ perhaps,” Penrose said. “I enjoyed that tale as a lad. But I must get the sets and the costumes just so, and I was told that you, Prince Rupprecht, took great care over the costumes and scenery of Cendrillon.”
“Who told you that?”
“I cannot recall.”
“I paid some attention, yes. If a man sinks that much money into something, he must see it through, yes?”
“The detail of that ballet! Colifichet’s scenery is simply stupendous, and the costumes.” Penrose paused. “How is it that the ballerina’s costume has a stomacher that resembles to a startling degree an heirloom stomacher belonging to the Malbert family?”
“Does it?” Prince Rupprecht had drawn a small object—a coin—from his pocket, and he tossed it into the air and caught it, over and over. “I did not design the costumes, Lord Harrington.” He chuckled, his eyes strained. “I wished for the costume to be particularly beautiful, of course, so I commissioned Madame Fayette—have you heard of her?—to design and make it. No cheap theatrical rags, yes?”
That explained why the ballet costume was so unnecessarily fine, then.
Up went the coin, and Prince Rupprecht caught it. And again, and again.
Ophelia glanced at Penrose. He made a slight shake of his head: no. She ignored it.
“Prince Rupprecht, whatever are you throwing that coin about for?” Ophelia asked.
He caught the coin and tucked it in his pocket. “My nursemaid told me, when I was a boy, that you must keep a coin in your pocket to appease the ghosts you meet.”
“Ghosts! Have you ghosts in your house?” Ophelia asked.
“One never knows.” Prince Rupprecht snatched his empty glass from the floor and lumbered—unsteadily now—back to the drinks table.
“I ask about the stomacher,” Penrose said, “because in my academic work I happened to have come across an old version of the tale that assigns the stomacher to Cinderella’s ball gown. Not the younger stepsister’s.”
Prince Rupprecht brought his sloshing-full brandy glass back to his throne and thumped to a seat. “That is but a silly bit of lore, is it not? I heard it from the mouths of the mademoiselles Malbert. They claim kinship with Cinderella and claim their house was the setting of the tale. Rubbish.”