Chapter Text
It is all utterly intolerable.
Everything.
Bad enough that the little wretch went to the Ball - stealing out of the house again, it seems, would the child never learn to listen? – outshining her own angels in the process and stealing the prince’s heart all for her greedy self. That would have been bad enough!
But no, the little harlot couldn’t manage to follow it all through! To vanish off into the night without a word to anyone! Not so much as a ‘by your leave’ to her darling mother who had taken her in and cared for her without any obligation to do so. It had been she who had kept a roof over the ungrateful urchin’s head and clothes on her back and food on her plate. So what if she had cooked that food herself? Plenty of peasants did that for their whole lives and it seemed to have no ill-effects on the riff-raff, no?
Oh! When Lady Lucrezia thought of what might have been!
Naturally, if Lady Lucrezia had known that her little inherited child would catch the eye of the Crown Prince himself, she would have done things differently.
For one thing, she’d have made sure the little brat loved her just as much as her poor, dear, dead father had, whatever the little miss might have spat at her on the day they buried him. Love was a far better way to bind the useful to you in the long-term, after all; far better than fear or coercion.
She’d have cossetted the child, maybe, dressed her finely and primped her naïve charms into True Beauty. Taught her the elegance and refinement that was so necessary to lead the Royal Court.
Perhaps that was why the child had run away? Naïve charms would never survive in amongst the intrigues and scheming; they must have ripped the child apart.
Lady Lucrezia had few enough friends from her time at court with her first husband, but those she had managed to keep told her things. They said that the prince seemed to have truly loved her little step-daughter (sentimental fool), that he had searched for her everywhere (incompetent too, not that she had looked herself), that she had not really run away, but had been sent away in secret by the king in favour of a politically-advantageous match (it seemed that someone in that family had good sense.)
If that last rumour proved to be true, Lady Lucrezia might never forgive her lord and king, not to her dying day.
Oh, she could appreciate the good sense, of course. Years ago young Isabelle had taken a shine to a young squire of small estate, after all, and she had ruthlessly dismissed the girl’s tears as she crushed the relationship as quickly as possible. Her daughter’s heart had recovered, after all, and so would the prince if he had any sense.
But the logic of such an action was entirely lost upon her when she thought of the advantages to her darling girls if the little brat had only married the prince like she had been so very desperate to do.
To be the step-mother of the princess, eventually of the queen herself! It was an advantage Lady Lucrezia would never have dreamt of! Oh, she had encouraged her darlings before the Ball, of course she had. They were true beauties, after all, and what a fine thing it would have been if the prince’s handsome head had been turned by one or the other of them!
But to have been so close to such a victory – unlooked for though it might have been – and to have it all slip away because of a clever king…
No, Lady Lucrezia did not think she could forgive such a thing.
It was far better to be able to blame the silly chit, really.
Her girls were getting no younger, after all. Lady Lucrezia would continue to look to their futures as best that she could, naturally. But young men of suitable means and breeding were hard enough to find as it was, and the sudden rise and fall of young Cinderella’s fortunes had tainted the family name long after the wretched brat’s disappearance.
Palatine had been taken to court by the Duke of Montague, who had met and remembered her from the Ball, it seemed. Lady Lucrezia had been incandescent with happiness: it was rumoured that the prince forsook his bride’s bed whenever possible, and therefore was likely to die without issue. The Duke was the next in line to the throne and Lady Lucrezia wouldn’t even have to pretend to like the ungrateful wretch when she took her rightful place at court, not with her own flesh-and-blood daughter on the throne as queen!
But the King had blanched so much at the sight of her, clearly someone had made the connection. The princess - Palatine had told her mother later that night, struggling through her tears – had spent the afternoon going out of her way to make Lady Lucrezia’s beloved daughter miserable, clearly needing to vent her frustrations on the nearest thing to Cinderella she could reach. That was a double unkindness the brat had done her family, Lady Lucrezia cursed.
Whatever had happened after the Duke had brought Palatine home that night, he did not call again, and neither did any other suitors for quite some time.
It was all the stupid little chit’s fault, all of it, and yet Lady Lucrezia did not even know where the wretch had gone so that she could express her displeasure about that fact.
It was all intolerable.