The Night Dance by Suzanne Weyn Read Free Book Online Page B

and I grabbed it.”
    “Hold on to it,” Eleanore said to her. Groping her way forward past her other sisters, she came to Ione. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness well enough to let her see Ione and the mouse a little. Bending, she pulled the ribbon from the lavender silk slippers she wore. She removed her earring and fastened it to the ribbon, and then she tied the ribbon around the end of the mouse’s tail. “Now let it go,” she instructed her sister.
    Just as she’d hoped, the earring clattered as the mouse scurried away ahead of them. “Come on, hurry, while we can still hear it,” she told her sisters. They followed the sound, as quickly as they could go, and it wasn’t long before they saw a dim light in the distance—it was the trapdoor opening.
    They climbed back into their bedchamber just as there came an urgent pounding on the door. “Yes,” cried Eleanore, reaching to pull Bronwyn through the opening.
    Bronwyn, in turn, helped pull the next sister, Isolde, through while Eleanore opened the door a crack. On the other side was short, plump Mary, the head housekeeper. “Thank goodness,” she cried when she saw Eleanore.
    She was about to come in but Eleanore blocked her way. She needed to give her sisters time to shove the bed back over the trapdoor. “Is there something you need?” she asked Mary.
    “Something I need?” Mary cried incredulously. “I’ve been pounding on that locked door sincesupper. Where have you girls been?” Red splotches formed on her cheeks as she pushed past Eleanore.
    The sisters had managed to get the bed back into place and had piled onto it as if to further cover the opening with their long dresses. “We’ve been right here,” Eleanore told her.
    “You have not been!” Mary scolded. “When I called you to eat there was no one in here. I heard not a sound! You may thank me for I told your father that you were all feeling ill being that it was your time of month.”
    “All of us at once?” Cecily questioned, raising a skeptical brow.
    “It happens among females who live in close quarters: Their cycles become attuned to one another,” Mary maintained. “Besides, I had to say something . I didn’t want to worry the poor man. Now I must know the truth! Where have you been?”
    “We’ve been right here,” Eleanore insisted once again.
    Mary pointed an accusing finger at the eleven pairs of dirty, tattered silk slippers dangling from the bed just above the floor. “And your slippers got into that sorry state because you have been here in your room all the while, I suppose!”
    “We were dancing,” Eleanore said.
    “What? In a dust bin?” Mary demanded.
    The sisters glanced at one another. How could they explain the disastrous state of their slippers?
    They couldn’t. So they stared at Mary, dumbfounded but unwilling to reveal their secret. After a long, uncomfortable moment Mary breathed a sigh of resignation. “It’s very late and I have not gotten any sleep. Give me those slippers. In the morning I’ll discard them and bring you new ones from the storage chest.”
    The sisters removed their slippers and handed them to her. “Look at these expensive slippers—ruined! Your father would get into a state if he saw these,” Mary muttered crossly as she collected them in her outstretched skirt.
    “What are you going to do with them?” Rowena asked as she bent to pull off her slippers.
    “I don’t know—burn them before your father sees them I imagine,” Mary replied as Rowena dropped them into her apron. “There are replacements in the storage cabinet, but I know he would not be pleased. These shoes are not a month old.” Mary scowled at the sisters, encompassing them all in a sweeping glare of disapproval, before leaving with the slippers.
    When the door closed behind Mary, Eleanore was suddenly extremely tired. Rowena had wandered to the window and was gazing dreamily out into the night. The other ten had fallen asleep where they lay,