Work Text:
It was the silence that she noticed first.
Before the slipper fit, before Ella had met her prince and found her happily ever after the Tremaine townhouse had hummed with carefully moderated laughter, the rattle of teacups, the bustle of servants, the frequent arrivals and departures of visitors. The polished silver salver on the hall table had always overflowed with calling cards and vellum enveloped invitations to balls, soirees, afternoon teas, musical evenings, salons and drawing rooms all over the capital and an invitation to a similar Tremaine event had always been not just warmly received but highly sought after.
But since.
Choosing to remain stubbornly oblivious to the quietly brewing storm Drizella had gone to the Tremaine family’s preferred, highly fashionable modiste for the final fitting for a new gown shortly after Ella and her new husband, the Crown Prince had returned from their honeymoon at the Royal Family’s hunting lodge. That was when it became impossible to ignore, a very subtle but still noticeable shift. The salon, always the scene of many happy visits over the years was spotlessly clean, smelling faintly of starch and roses, the mirrors had been polished until they sparkled and the modiste was her usual polite self, the Tremaine family always paid on time after all, but there was an almost mocking tone to the Madame Bellamy’s farewell that day, starting with an overly dramatic obsequious bow.
“And where do you plan on wearing this lovely gown, Mademoiselle Tremaine?”, The modiste had asked in a tone that was far too polite to be completely sincere
Drizella had smiled almost on cue, as years of behaviour dictated a young woman of her age and status must behave. Her chin lifted as she gave the modiste the polished smile she had practiced in front of a mirror until it was perfect over the years, a relic from her mother’s drawing room lessons for as long as she could remember. "We are Tremaine’s Madame; now linked to the Royal family by marriage, our social calendar has always been and will continue to the envy of half of the noble families in the kingdom”
The modistes smirk had been so lightning fast that Drizella had almost missed it. Of course she would have known all about the wedding, the flurry of women of good breeding visiting her salon to have just the right gown to attend the spectacle in the cathedral, silk, taffeta, lace, in just the right fashionable shades would have been a welcome influx of trade during a usually quiet time of year at the end of the season. Something had made Drizella avoid the modiste’s salon in the lead up to the wedding, she didn’t dare call it ‘pride’, but the thought of standing in the salon and enduring speculative glances and whispered remarks that may or may not have been meant to be overheard made her flinch for a reason she couldn’t place These women who had once been her peers, dare she say it, her friends.
The modiste’s smile, when it had finally appeared had been all teeth and lowered lashes “of course Mademoiselle, have a wonderful day”.
Stepping out into the street once more and the door had closed behind her with a chime far too cheerful for Drizella’s liking. Sunlight slanted through the red and white awning in sharp, judgmental stripes.
“Hurry up Nellie” she snapped with unnecessary force at her lady’s maid.
Accustomed to remaining silent Nellie said nothing, merely lifting the hem of the gown a fraction higher and kept pace, her gaze fixed somewhere just beyond the cobblestones. Drizella winced inwardly but didn’t slow her stride. She couldn’t afford to, not now, not while that woman might still be watching from the window with that irritating smirk curling at the corners of her mouth.
She’d apologize to Nellie later. Or not. She was a Tremaine after all and as such had never apologised to servants.
The large powder blue box emblazoned with the modistes name and tied with a black velvet ribbon made her surprisingly angry for a reason she did not understand, she was usually so excited after a modiste visit and would hurry home to show off her latest fashionable purchase to her mother and sister but today, that damnable modiste had taken all the fun out of what was usually a highly anticipated and much enjoyed outing .
“Where’s that carriage” Drizella muttered to herself
The carriage rattled to a stop, just shy of the curb enough to make Drizellas lips thin, why wasn’t it drawn up properly? She stepped forward and the coachman tipped his cap, his face creased with an expression somewhere between politeness and no, she wasn't imagining it, something resembling amusement.
“Apologies, miss,” he said, holding the door open. “Ran into a bit of a delay, old friend of mine from the palace kitchens”
He smiled and Drizella felt a prickle of unease down her spine even though the coachman’s smile was fond and unguarded.
“Lovely affair that wedding was, according to my friend the new Princess looked radiant.”
Something in Drizella’s throat caught. She nodded without speaking, her spine rigid as she climbed into the carriage. Nellie followed in silence, but Drizella was certain she had heard her maid’s breath hitch slightly. She rapped smartly on the ceiling of the carriage, and it lurched forward.
“I’m sure he meant no harm Miss Drizella”’
“Harm? Of course not, I adore hearing how resplendent my stepsister looked on her wedding day, I’m happy for Ella” Drizella replied, a little too quickly, a little too forcefully. They hadn’t been invited to the wedding. Not even a note, not so much as a glimpse of parchment bearing the royal seal. Cinderella, Ella as if those extra syllables could make her less of an interloper had simply vanished into another world leaving the Tremaine women with their perfectly set table and no visitors to entertain and flatter.
Her jaw tensed. It had been a scheduling error surely. Or perhaps a slip of a royal clerk’s pen. The Royal household hosted hundreds, every year, names could be lost or miswritten perhaps even misplaced. Yes, surely that was it Their name had been written on invitations in an elegant hand for years now, Tremaines were never forgotten, not like that .
To distract herself from unwelcome, intrusive thoughts of a potential Royal snub Drizella untied the ribbon, flipped open the box and rummaged through the tissue paper. Her new gown was exquisite, but it felt tainted, somehow. The colour she asked for had been subtly altered. The sleeves too narrow just shy enough of the latest fashionable width to not be noticeable to all but the sharpest eye. Not enough to complain, but markedly enough to humiliate.
“Madame seems to have adjusted the neckline, apparently the one I requested was a little too, what was the word she used, ambitious?”
“She wouldn’t have dared last season” Nellie began, then quickly clamped her lips shut, the implication hanging heavy in the air. Last season, before the ball that had changed everything.
“She wouldn’t have dared even think it last season” Drizella replied bitterly.
The Tremaine carriage travelled though the cobblestoned streets, its two occupants sitting there in awkward silence until it shuddered to a stop outside the townhouse. The coachman didn’t dismount, just leaned back in his seat and opened the carriage door.
“There you go Miss, it’s no Royal Palace, but its home , right”
Drizella froze, one foot paused mid-step. Nellie blinked behind her, not sure if she should scowl or shrink.
Stepping down from the carriage, Drizella gripped the door frame tightly so she wouldn’t fall as her voluminous skirts swished about her ankles
“it’s a shame really” the coachman called out mockingly as Drizella and Nellie walked past the horses “neither you nor your sister have been the ones to wear white yet just our dear Ella”
Drizella didn’t look back, didn’t speak, her knuckles turning white as she gripped her reticule tightly.
The front steps seemed to stretch longer than usual as she stood waiting at the top, Nellie a half-step behind. The brass knocker gleamed, but she didn’t touch it. There should be a footman. There was always a footman.
She waited.
From somewhere inside male laughter drifted out to her, a servant perhaps or maybe even a guest?
Nellie glanced toward the door, then back at her mistress, waiting for instruction. Drizella refused to move. She simply stared at the heavy oak until at last it creaked open slowly, too slowly and, what was his name again, Callum, a junior footman, appeared breathless with a faint flush and no apology.
“Didn’t hear the carriage miss, it’s been a busy morning”
He stepped aside without bowing
Drizella bushed past him crossing the threshold as if entering a stranger’s home, the scent of beeswax floor polish reminding her just for a moment of the person who used to do all the cleaning, the person who was now a princess.
From the drawing room to her left came the soft clink of a teaspoon in a porcelain teacup .
“Back so soon dear? I expected Madame would have kept you longer what with all the alterations”
“No Maman ”Drizella replied curtly, “She’d already adjusted it, said she thought it required a more, what was the phrasing she used, ah yes a more modest silhouette”
Madame Tremain looked up from her teacup without blinking
“Well, at least she’s honest that neckline you requested would look much better on a longer throat”
The room went silent again apart from the soft click of teacup meeting saucer
“Did you rehearse that one mother, or did it come naturally to you?”
Lady Tremaine stared at her younger daughter for a moment
“My dear, Madame Bellamy is one of the most highly regarded modistes in the city, I’m certain that her suggestions were not out of spite “ Lady Tremaine replied, folding her napkin with delicate, practiced precision.
From the far corner of the sitting room Anastasia gave a stifled laugh that was a little too quick, a little too forced. She sat curled up in a chair near the harpsichord, plucking absently at the lace cuff of her day dress. “She means well, Dri. Honestly, I think a modest silhouette is, well elegant.”
Drizella turned her head slightly, just enough to cast a glance at her sister who didn’t quite meet her gaze. “Then perhaps you should wear it”.
Anastasia flushed, but Lady Tremaine was already fanning the air with her hand, dismissing the moment like the steam from that wafted from her cup of tea. “Enough of this. There are far more pressing concerns than a few inches of décolletage.”
“Like being left off the invitation list to Lady Guillory’s Garden supper?” Drizella snapped
“A mere oversight” Lady Tremaine responded smoothly, though as she watched, Drizella noticed her mother’s teacup tremble ever so slightly as she raised it to her lips.
“Every other noble family that is still in town has been invited, invitations were hand delivered personally by Lady Guillory ’s own butler last week mother, are we just going to pretend he tripped when he got to our house, and it got lost in a hedge?”
Anistasia gasped, Lady Tremaine’s expression shifted, just for a moment, a hairline crack in her otherwise perfect veneer before she drew herself tall again, spine straightened against the humiliation her chin lifted in silent defiance.
“We are not beggars,” she said. “We do not grovel for scraps.”
“No,” Drizella replied coldly, folding her arms. “We just pretend we’re still feasting.”
Anastasia shifted, her eyes darting between them. “Can’t we just, move on? Be gracious? Ella is our stepsister after all”
“ But she is not your sister, not by blood” Lady Tremaine snapped with unexpected venom.
And there it was. Not fury, exactly. Not grief. Just a strange hollowed-out kind of fear, still clinging to a mask of elegant indifference.
Lady Tremaine’s hand toyed absent mindedly with the cameo brooch at her throat, the fingers tightening almost imperceptibly.
“ And I will ask you not to speak in metaphors Drizella, it cheapens the conversation”
“Dri mother is just trying to hold things together for all our sakes”
“Tying silk ribbons around a sinking ship,” Drizeilla murmured. Then, softer: “Some of us can already taste the saltwater.”
Her mother rose slowly, each movement deliberate, like she was performing for invisible guests still seated at a table that had been empty for some weeks now.
“You speak as though you've seen war,” she said, facing the window. “But you’ve only glimpsed the battlefield from the garden gate.”
Something cracked in her voice then, barely audible, but Drizella caught it. Lady Tremaine turned her head just enough to meet her daughter’s eyes in the mirror above the fireplace.
“I have lost everything once before,” Lady Tremaine whispered. “I will not do so again. Not without… elegance.”
Her gaze drifted toward the portrait of her second husband, Ellas father, tall, distinguished, greying slightly at the temples upright in deep forest green and gold, gaze noble, frame dustless.
“They all think I married for my own comfort,” she said softly more to herself than to her daughters. “That I leapt at the first man with coin and conscience enough to bring me here, but I married for survival, “With two girls and debts I didn’t dare tally. Your stepfather gave us more than a roof. He gave us time. Time to become something acceptable again.”
A pause. She traced the rim of her teacup as Anastasia shifted uneasily in her seat.
“They are trying to erase us for some imagined slight towards Ella” Lady Tremaine continued, “ But she was a servant by circumstance, not cruelty. After her father died, this estate faced certain difficulties. We all made sacrifices. You girls poured your own tea, brushed your own shoes, lit your own candles. Ella simply had fewer social obligations. I kept her busy. It kept her distracted, yes, I married her father for stability, but I didn’t marry HER, she was quiet, odd, always out in the garden with dirt under her fingernails talking to the horses and the stable cats and picking wildflowers like they were grown in the best hothouses, it made sense that she preferred the attic, I would even go so far as to say she chose it oh, I know people gossip, I don’t doubt that Ella herself has told people her own version of what life was like for her here under this roof and people wonder why I treated her the way I did.
Lady Triamines voice dropped, becoming low and bitter
But no one ever asks what it takes to keep a household afloat when the man of the house dies but the merchants still require payment and responsibilities don’t die with him. I worked ceaselessly to keep us all afloat but Ella?” Lady Tremaine all but spat out the name contemptuously. “Ella made an already difficult task even more difficult by merely existing
No one asks what it feels like to watch your own daughters fade into the background while another girl quiet, lovely, strange draws every eye without even trying. You girls had to work for every scrap of regard you received but Ella? She simply didn’t need my help. She didn’t need a single lesson she merely had to breathe and people adored her. She would walk into a room and people would stop and stare, hang on her every word. She had that glow, that effortless grace. And the worst part is that it wasn’t earned. It wasn’t taught. It just was.”
"I fed her. Clothed her. I didn’t throw her onto the streets, though heaven knows the law would’ve looked the other way if I had done so. Instead, she chose to repay me, repay us with spite and treachery by sneaking off to a royal ball, no less”
Lady Tremaine’s gaze came to rest on a small music box on the mantelpiece, the kind that children overwind as if expecting something to pop out of it like a jack in the box until they know better. She turned the crank once, twice and a soft melody crackled to life
“This little trinket belonged to Ellas mother you know”
Lady Tremaine held the lacquered wood box with polished brass hinges as though it might crack if she so much as breathed too hard. And after a moment, she spoke softly again, as if she was speaking in an empty room.
She closed the lid. The music stopped.
“It’s easy to love a ghost,” she whispered. “They never talk back, they never question a growing daughters’ choices, never tell her no never tell her she can’t wear her hair up or lengthen her skirts until she is 18 or listen when their child demands their independence before they have earned it ”
Her fingers tightened over the music box
“Perhaps it’s time I got rid of this thing”
“Mother”
Drizella began but Lady Tremaine silenced her with a look,
“Anastasia, Drizella, we are Tremaines, we will overcome this, if you let mud dry after a while you can simply brush it off, our contemporaries will find something else to gossip about soon enough “
“But Mother”
“I said ENOUGH Drizella ”
Lady Tremaine swept gracefully out of the drawing room her silk dress trailing behind her like a banner lowered in defeat. The drawing room door did not slam; it wouldn’t dare slam under Lady Tremaine’s hand. It merely closed with a quiet finality and Drizella and her sister were left alone under their stepfather’s baleful gaze from the large portrait on the opposite wall and for a moment the house seemed to hold its breath. Lady Tremaine left behind only the scent of her signature gardenia perfume and silence. Drizella folded her arms tighter, as if to hold herself together by sheer force, her thoughts unravelling. The music box hadn’t played for her. Neither had the rest of the world.
Tomorrow was Sunday. And she would be expected to smile.