Just Like Magic by Elizabeth Townsend Read Free Book Online

would certainly solve the other two problems, but how to do it? I stared into the fire again and read my list over. There was no inspiration anywhere. I quickly scrawled: “ To marry well, I must debut and become wealthy—See Above??? ”
Which brought me back to where I had started and was no help at all. I made a face, then crumpled up the paper and threw it into the fire.
     
Next morning I slept late, but it didn’t matter. Stepmama, Lucy, and Gerta didn’t trail down to the sitting room until one o’clock the next afternoon, demanding breakfast with a distinctly headachy tone to their voices. The ball had been bright, yes, brilliant, absolutely—but altogether barren of beaux.
“Of course, I danced with the prince.” Lucy looked down her nose at Mon Petit, who was sniffing her slipper. She gave him a little shove with her foot, and he scurried off toward Stepmama’s chair.
“He couldn’t get out of it, with Princess Seraphine pushing you on him like that,” said Gerta, snatching up Mon Petit and cuddling him, much to his dismay.
“How dare you!”
“I, for one, am sick of the royal family. They’re nothing but a pack of snobs.” Gerta tossed her curls, and Mon Petit wriggled out of her arms.
“Gerta! Our own dear prince and princess—how could you say such a thing?” Stepmama protested faintly from the armchair where she had sunk, her feet propped up on a footstool.
“Jealousy,” said Lucy. She moved over to the little piano that sat in the corner and started playing a tinkly minuet. “Nothing but spite and jealousy. Simply because Her Royal Highness mentioned that Gerta’s dress did not enhance her complexion, and because I danced more, and nobody noticed her—”
“Nobody! I danced three times, and you only four!”
Lucy raised her hands from the keyboard and pondered. “I beg your pardon! Oh, that’s right, I was forgetting that soldier—a lieutenant, wasn’t he?—who danced with you. I was only remembering the bald little man, Baron Chumbly’s cousin, I think, and Great-Uncle William.”
“Well, who did you dance with? Prince Gregory, because Princess Seraphine made him, and Arthur Atherton, because his mother made him because we used to be neighbors, and that fellow with a hearing trumpet, probably because he was also blind—and Great-Uncle William!”
Lucy sniffed. “My conversation was greatly admired!”
“My headdress was the most fashionable!”
“Girls, girls!” moaned Stepmama, who had covered her eyes with a handkerchief soaked in lavender water. Lucy and Gerta subsided into a sullen silence broken only by Gerta’s “So where’s breakfast, Ella?”
I gave them tea and toast, and they weren’t too happy about that, either.
The worst part of the Season, though, was the callers. I had been absolutely right. Opening the door turned out to be a major headache at Seventeen Queen’s Way. Stepmama would never have thought of doing it herself. Lucy and Gerta refused absolutely. So did I, bullying Henry into it when he was there until one day Baron Chumbly’s cousin came to visit on Henry’s day off, and no one answered the door at all. Then I was called into Stepmama’s room, where she sat, flustered, flanked by her daughters, and informed me that from now on, I must answer the door.
“It’s only because you haven’t debuted yet, dear! It wouldn’t be right for Lucy and Gerta, would it?”
Her tremulous voice and piteous look kept me from snapping at her or my stepsisters, but nothing kept me from simmering with anger every time I had to open the door. Fortunately, it wasn’t often. Stepmama had few callers, Lucy and Gerta almost none.
But worst of all were two for me.
The first was a fleeting visit from Anna Cameron. I had sent her a note explaining that I couldn’t debut this Season, and she had sent a few sympathetic notes in reply, but she hadn’t visited yet.
“Ella! You’re looking well—of course you always do.” She hugged me.
Anna was looking well