And there they were. And next to the cake was an oddly shaped, purple-wrapped package.
“Your grace,” I heard from my side and I jumped when I saw Perdita as well as half a dozen of the cooks and cooks-helpers standing behind her.
“Uh… heya, Perdita,” I replied, smiled and tipped my head to the women around her. “Eunice, Daphne, Sabina, Winnie, Pauline.”
I got a bunch of smiles and mumbled, “Your graces,” in return.
Then I looked back to Perdita. “You found candles.”
“Talked to Rocco, the candlemaker, had them made special,” she told me and I blinked.
“You had them made?” I whispered.
“Seemed important to you, your grace,” she whispered back and I blinked again, this time to blink away the tears that sprung to my eyes.
I knew she was doing it thinking she was avoiding my, then Tor’s, displeasure but that didn’t make me any less happy that I could give Tor a real from-my-world birthday cake, which was exactly what I wanted most to give him. I was so happy that I dashed to her and gave her a big hug with a loud, smacking kiss on her cheek.
Still holding her arms, I leaned back and whispered, “Thank you.”
Her hands pried mine from her arms but held them between us where she gave them a tight squeeze. “My pleasure, your grace,” she whispered back.
I smiled at her and then cast my smile around to the others before I raced back to the cake, saying, “And thanks for letting me use the kitchens.”
“We were honored to have you with us,” Eunice stated.
“Yes, it was fun!” Sabina put in and I looked at her.
It was fun. I had pretended then, too, when I was baking and they were cracking jokes and making an effort to include me in their frivolity, that it was authentic. I hadn’t cooked anything since I came to this world, except basting the rabbit that first night with Tor. I forgot how much I loved to do it. It was even better doing it for Tor. And even better, pretending to enjoy it around people who were pretending to like me. And, in a weird way, the whole thing worked.
“We’ll have to do it again,” I told Sabina, reaching for the cake.
“Wait!” Daphne cried and the women rushed forward as I stilled.
“This is for you,” Pauline said, picking up the package and handing it to me.
“For me?” I asked, taking it and studying her.
“Yes, for you,” Winnie stated.
“But, it’s not my birthday,” I told them, moving my eyes to the package in my hand.
“No, but we thought…” Sabina started then faltered.
Eunice picked it up from there. “We weren’t very nice to you when you, erm… first got –”
“Just open it!” Daphne exclaimed and I looked at her to see she was bouncing on her toes in excitement.
“Okay,” I whispered, worried and wondering what the package would hold, hoping it wasn’t poison.
I opened it and as the wrapping fell away I saw I held an exquisitely carved, purple glass bottle in my hand.
“Your scent,” Perdita stated and my body jolted as my head snapped up.
“We asked Josephina, the perfume maker in town, to create something just for you,” Pauline put in.
“No gardenia.” Winnie smiled.
I blinked at them. Then I opened the stopper to the bottle, brought to my nose and sniffed.
The bottle wasn’t exquisite. The scent was. Subtle and fresh, almost beachy but with a flowery essence.
It was sublime.
So sublime, no poison could smell like that.
I looked around the faces.
Did they… could it be? Did they like me? As in, genuinely?
“Do you all… like me?” I asked quietly and got confused looks.
“But… of course!” Sabina cried.
“You’re sweet,” Daphne said.
“And funny,” Eunice added.
“And you saved a wild bird,” Pauline put in.
“You make our prince happy,” Perdita stated and my gaze locked on hers. “Blissfully so,” she finished.
My heart leaped.
“Do you think?” I whispered.
“Your grace, I’m sorry, but I took a swipe of that icing and let me tell you, if he wasn’t blissful before, which he was,” Winnie put in then grinned cheekily. “When he tastes that, he will be!”
Holy crap! They liked me!
“God, I hope so,” I breathed and they all laughed.
Yes! They liked me!
Then Perdita jumped and ordered, “You must go. You don’t have long before the fireworks start.”
“Oh God!” I cried, set the bottle down and mumbled, “I’ll come back for that.”
“We’ll take it to your rooms,” Eunice offered, picking up the cake and handing it to me. “And we’ll take the others away,” she said, I caught her meaning and my smile trembled as my face got soft, then she cried, “Just go!”
Perdita slid a thin stick between my fingers under the cake and said, “The candles are lit in your rooms. You can use that stick to light your cake candles so you won’t get any wax on your beautiful icing.”
I stared gratefully into her eyes and gave myself a long moment to do it.
Then I whispered, “Thank you,” and she smiled and that smile lit her whole face.
All of it.
Even her eyes.
Not fake.
She liked me!
They all did.
Hurrah!
I smiled at all of them and then rushed out of the room, balancing the cake as I went thinking joyous thoughts that maybe, just maybe, I was finally going to be really happy in this fairytale world.
About ten seconds later, however, I was cursing how far away our rooms were (because, seriously, it was a trek) when I made it there only to find the candles lit all around the room but there was no Tor to be found.
I checked all the rooms (his bathroom, my bathroom, his dressing room, my dressing room, his sitting room, you get the picture), he wasn’t anywhere.
Shit!
Was I supposed to go somewhere else?
I stood by the bed and tried to think of where I might have to go and it hit me that the balcony off his study faced the city proper, not the sea like the one off our rooms did. Maybe I was supposed to go there.
Holding the cake carefully, I lifted my skirts in one hand and ran to his study as fast as I could without dropping the cake.
When I got there, the double doors were mostly closed, one open an inch. I turned and put my booty in it to open it (I’d have to light the candles later, so much for my big reveal, I didn’t have the time) and stopped dead when I heard Algernon’s voice.
“I apologize for calling you out at this hour but with her performance today…” he paused, “Well, as you know, the men are talking. She’s not herself. So not herself, it’s strange.”
And Tor’s answer made my entire body lock.
“She says she’s from a different world.”
Uh…
What?
I said I was from a different world?
He didn’t believe me?
I thought he’d come to believe me.
I heard Algernon’s sharp bark of surprised laughter before he asked, “A different world?”
“Yes. A different world,” Tor replied. “Gods, it’s unbelievable. She lives it and breathes it. She’s even created words to go with it. She tells me extraordinary stories of the make-believe architecture and fantastical gadgets they have in her world.” He paused and my dazed brain imagined him shaking his handsome head in disgust at the same time it hazily recalled the many nights over dinner or when we were in bed when I’d tell him stories of my world and all the things in it when he went on, “I must admit, it’s stunning how clever she is, how sharp her mind. She’s astonishingly imaginative and she never forgets a word of it. She has to be making it up as she goes along but every lie she tells, she remembers and uses it again.”