CINDERELLA'S LITTLE SISTER

For my beautiful wife, Vera, the sweetest woman in the world

“Sweetness,” she continued. “That was all I really ever wanted from you.” Ambrosia stood up and walked over to the chair where the Prince was sitting. “After all, what else is there to want?” she asked. She leaned over him from behind, draping her arms over his shoulders and meeting them at her wrists and his heart. She gave him a soft, dry kiss on the cheek. A peck. “But you were always so wrapped up in Cinders. You never had any time for me.” Ambrosia waltzed theatrically over to the mantelpiece and took a framed photograph of a young blonde woman in her hand. The Prince considered her in silence. “Now,” she indicated, tapping the tip of the index finger of her right hand on the glass of the photograph, “it can be different. Now we can be ourselves.”

 

The Prince glanced uncomfortably at the picture portrait. Ambrosia sat down on the fireside chair opposite him, resting the photograph face down on the upper section of an Italian nest of tables. “I’ve always known it was what you wanted,” she sighed. “But that you could never have. Every day I would watch you leave with Cinders, going out to perform your duties, giving alms to the poor or going off to receptions or dinners or whatever, and I would have to wait behind and behave myself, pretending that I was content just to be the governess, the well-behaved little girl who did what she was told and told other people to do what they were told.”

 

“Now!” she exclaimed excitedly, “this is it!”

 

The Prince coughed. He watched her as she so innocently smiled at him, happy in the knowledge that her dreams, so apparently long held and hidden, might finally be realized.

 

Ambrosia brushed aside a stray brown lock that dangled and danced over her brow. It was now, she imagined, that he would confirm that feeling beating so deep in her bosom that she was sure it could be heard even by the tiniest of creatures. Beyond this, all was quiet and still. Only the slow and pondered ticking of the mantel-clock broke the dull silence of the morning room. Now, she knew he would speak.

 

Now, after these years of mistaken existence, or even, as she sometimes allowed herself to believe, of mistaken identity, for had it not really been her that the Prince had wanted when he came looking for his mysterious guest on the morning after the debutantes’ ball? Had she not really been the girl destined to enjoy the favors of royal passion and joy? Had it not only been a difference in age and shoe-size that had led Cinderella to become his wife and lover and not her, Ambrosia? She looked casually at her needlepoint, beside her chair on the embroidered footstool she had received as a present from the Royal Household on the occasion of her eighteenth birthday.

 

Yet today her thoughts were as far away from the events of three years ago as they were from the day of Prince Chardin’s wedding to her sister. Oh, it was true, that that birthday held a special significance for her. After all, had she not been held in the Prince’s arms, close to his breast, for the first time in her life? Had she not felt his strong breath of warm wine on her nape while they danced? Had she not lingered and talked with him on the moonlit balcony after the party was over, the guests had gone to their accommodations, and Cinders had retired early to bed with one of her habitual migraines?

 

Indeed. Much about that evening would never be lost to her still young soul. But had he not politely – but somehow, she knew, unwillingly – taken his leave of her and bidden her goodnight, leaving her with a flourish, a kiss on the hand and a click of his heels? And it was there and then, in that “she knew, unwillingly” that she had seen the true Prince. A man capable of leaving no stone unturned in his quest for what he truly desired and deserved. A man who… But she was interrupted in her thoughts as the Prince stood up.

 

“Ambrosia”, he started sternly, glancing at the picture portrait on the nest of tables. Her heart leapt. “We danced once. I am sure you remember; I do. While it would be far from honest of me to say that evening had no meaning for me, I must state that I did then, as I have done at all times, consider you as a sister. Under the law.” The Prince crossed the mottled marble floor towards the bay window. Outside it was a gray January, and its two faces looked at the year of hardship and struggle now ended, hopeful now in one of peace and plenty throughout the principality.

 

“I love you, Ambrosia”, he continued. “But not in the way you wish for.”

 

These short words gashed at Ambrosia’s soul in a manner immeasurable. Her eyes sought short-lived aid in the smoldering logs of the fireplace. Her mouth and chin found support in her hand. She closed her eyes.

 

“I am not insensitive to the feelings of women”, added the Prince. “And I have taken your interest in me into account, indeed, commenting on the matter to my father. To no one else. But it has never been reciprocal.”

 

Ambrosia wished to hear no more, but the Prince went on.

 

“When I first saw you, when you were wearing the lilac dress you used to wear on formal occasions before I married Cinderella, the one you had made specially in Vienna, and that young Henri had so much trouble bringing from the frontier post on that particularly cold September night -- you remember? When I first saw you and you had your hair ruffled because you had walked through one of the entrances to the servants’ quarters by mistake and you were wearing those ballroom slippers that were too large for your feet and you had stumbled, brushing your hair against a pot hanging on the wall, and one of my menservants – I forget his name now – had mentioned to me that you looked so much more attractive with your hair hanging loose – I later dismissed him for some reason which escapes me now – and I was waiting in court dress to be introduced to the rest of Cinderella’s family – an aunt and uncle and someone else from Salzburg – and you came in slightly late – you’ve never been punctual, Ambrosia, so unlike your sister – and apologized and looked so nervous and embarrassed and overawed by all the commotion surrounding you. When I first saw you and I was introduced to you as Prince Chardin, Grand-Duke of Lower Bexania and Duke of Noema, and you laughed – you later told me, when we were taking an afternoon stroll in the garden three days later, the first time we had been alone together, after a reception for one of my cousins from France, that you thought such a title was ridiculous for someone so young and simple as I – and I didn’t know what to say, and I stupidly offered you my kerchief, pretending that I thought you were sneezing, but everyone could see, I now see, that this was a weak excuse, and then afterwards you didn’t know what to do with that ridiculous handkerchief, and you were stuck with it in your hand when you were being introduced to other people, whoever they were, who had been invited along to the festivities and you had to try to find some manner of getting it to someone else, but you and some other women from the court were all in line and you had nowhere to put it and I found the whole spectacle somewhat amusing and afterwards you told me that you thought I had given you the handkerchief on purpose just to test you and see how you would behave in a difficult formal situation at court and I said to you – this was when we were riding in the foothills of the Apennines in the summer that Cinderella was confined to bed because of some illness she contracted after a meal in Switzerland, I think – that I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing to anyone as a test and then you laughed and took your whip to Bess and challenged me to a race and I won, as usual, and when we reached the little outhouse on the estate you were breathless and it began to rain and your honey-brown hair hung over your face and we didn’t know where we could go to towel you dry and you said that it didn’t matter, after all we were on holiday and I said ‘Princes don’t have holidays’ and you told me not to be so stuffy and old fashioned and the sun came out a little between some lighter clouds and sparkled in your eyes and you had raindrops on your cheeks and your makeup was running and then the heavens opened and we had to take shelter for two hours in the little hut and all we had to eat was a rose-red apple I had picked from a tree near Villa d’Alba and I gave it to you saying I wasn’t hungry really when all the time I was starving to death and you took one bite and said you were disappointed because you were expecting something sweeter and I asked you what you expected from something that had been growing wild and had been picked before its time and you replied “Sweetness” and I didn’t understand what you meant and I asked you and you said that wild things should be sweet and that time didn’t matter and I was puzzled and a little angry because I thought that this meant something that I couldn’t understand and that you were suggesting I was stupid and then you told me to think about it and afterwards, when we had returned to the village I went looking for the same tree, you told me not to look so hard because I would never find the same tree again and you were right and then we never really finished the conversation about the handkerchief. This one.”

 

Chardin turned and showed Ambrosia a handkerchief he was clutching in his hand. Ambrosia looked at him in silence.

 

“Those first days after I met you I realized that you were possibly harboring some affection for me. An irrational one, of course, as you hardly knew me.”

 

Ambrosia made to speak, but Chardin waved her into silence.

 

“I know what you are about to say. I hardly knew Cinderella when I fell in love with her; but that is different. She had been introduced to me formally at an official ball before which a public proclamation had been made that I was to choose a bride, so it was natural for me to fall in love with her. No, it was my duty. In your case this had not taken place. It was not fitting.”

 

“Chardin”, said Ambrosia, smiling to herself and slightly shaking her head as she looked at the floor in a gesture that said ‘no, no’. But the Prince was not listening. And continued.

 

“And so, on the Maundy Thursday before your eighteenth birthday, when I had the chambermaids make that footstool for you, it was not correct of you to claim a place on my dance card even before the ball had been announced publicly. And do not think that your emotions were not clear on that evening when I left you – wrongly – with a kiss on the lips after holding you in my arms while we walked in the garden. I state again: it was wrong of me to do this. And perhaps it was because I felt alone as Cinderella was away on some official engagement. Or perhaps it was the beer that I had drunk. And afterwards I am sure that you suffered, for which I apologize. I overstepped the mark.”

 

“But, Chardin”, attempted Ambrosia.

 

“No”, interrupted the Prince. “It is true. I can imagine that you spent many sleepless nights because of that evening. Tossing and turning in bed and unable to get the image of me out of your mind. Finding that in everything you saw you could only see me. Nothing, no single detail of any landscape was bereft of my image. Wherever you looked you expected to see me coming in through a doorway, even in situations where you knew that this would be impossible; every sound you might hear would remind you of my voice. Every place where we had been together on previous occasions would take on a mysterious, mystical quality. I am aware that you must have felt like this.”

 

The Prince walked slowly towards his chair and sat down as if he were tired of this conversation. He went on, now looking at Ambrosia in the eyes. She raised her eyes serenely and listened.

 

“And I imagined, for a while, that you would soon cease to entertain these foolish notions; you were now a young lady, after all. But no. Only last November, when we occasioned, once again, to be alone together, on the boat trip to Elba, through a mistake in the arrangements made by my valet, I saw that you still had a fondness for me. When we had been listening to the concerto after dinner and were taking a stroll above decks and you said you felt a little dizzy and seasick and leant against me for protection and I felt your heart beating so strongly – so strongly it could be heard by a mouse, I’m sure – and the French perfume, l’air de la brume, you always wear when you attend musical recitals was all over your hair and on your neck and just below your ears and you smelled so sweetly and moist and like honey and inviting and I realized that you had deliberately made yourself up to be the most beautiful, desirable, mysterious woman I had ever seen in my entire life and in six hundred thousand lifetimes that I could ever possibly live and that you purposely had set out to create an impression of attraction upon me that would never ever leave my mind, and that I would never forget this wondrous vision of youth and beauty and womanhood and innocence and you had intended to make me want you in manner that would be almost impossible for any other man to resist without a freezing fear of failing to grasp the moment when the time was ripe and wished to provoke me into considering there – then – at that very moment – that I should abandon my true love and sweep you into my arms and think ‘to hell with decency and decorum’ and that the only thing that mattered then to me or that had ever mattered to me or that would ever matter to me was you, and that I should live forever in that moment in a passion unbridled and foolish.” The Prince paused for breath. “So, Ambrosia, you see. I have been aware of your intentions for some time. And I am afraid that while I respect – and understand – your feelings, I cannot condone them. And that, as they sometimes say, is that.”

 

Ambrosia stood up, an unexpected, faint smile on her rose-red lips. The Prince stood up courteously.

 

“Chardin”, she said, moving close to him and giggling. “Shut up.”