The Van Alen Legacy

The prettiest room in the castle was built like a jewel box: all pink, white and gold, with gilt molding, pink damask wallpaper, fat cherub murals painted on the ceiling, and a crystal chandelier above the bed. It was a room fit for a sleeping princess. Except the princess, Marie-Victoria, was only pretending to be asleep. She kept her eyes closed and her breathing even as her ladies-in-waiting gathered around the bed, trying to make as little noise as possible. Marie wondered how long they had been standing there—since dawn? Or for only a few minutes? She never knew; only that they were always there when she woke up. There was an audience for everything she did, even the most mundane of activities, from rising to dining to strolling in the gardens. The practice had been handed down from the French side of their family, and even though the court was in London they kept to the French ways.

She supposed she should get up soon. She could sense that her ladies were getting impatient; she could hear them coughing and murmuring to each other. But she also knew what was awaiting her that day, and so she wanted to stay in her soft warm bed for as long as possible. One of her ladies—Evangeline, most likely, the highest-ranking one—cleared her throat loudly, and Marie decided it was time to put everyone out of their misery.

“Good morning,” she said, pulling open the bed curtains and yawning.

“Good morning, Princess,” her ladies chorused as they curtsied.

“No breakfast today?” she asked, noticing that no one had set the little table at the edge of the room by the windows.

“No, my lady. You have been asked to join the queen this morning.”

Marie sighed. It meant that the rumors were true, then—her mother had plans for her. The formal request to join her at breakfast in front of the whole court meant that Marie would discover what those plans were, along with everyone else, in public—with no opportunity to talk about it in private beforehand. Which could only mean that her mother did not want to take any chances, and that any objections Marie might have to her designs would not be taken into account. She began to cough violently into her handkerchief, staining the white linen with blood and scaring her ladies.

“I am all right,” Marie said when the coughing subsided, and the ladies helped her dress. Paulette, the Lady of the Robes, decided on the crimson silk.

“Better for your coloring.” She smiled as she helped Marie pull the gown over her head. “There, you see? You carry it well—you can hardly tell you are sick.”

“Paulette! Watch your tongue!” Evangeline reprimanded.

“Oh! Forgive me, Your Highness,” Paulette said fearfully, with a bow.

“It is all right, Paulie, dear,” Marie said gently, taking a long wheezing breath. “It is not a secret.” As a child, she had suffered from every childhood ailment, from infection to the pox. She had been slow to speak and slow to walk; for a long time, it was assumed she was slow in every capacity, and arrangements had quietly been made for transfer to an institution in Geneva—until she surprised her governesses by speaking in complete paragraphs at the age of four, and discussing logic with her tutors by age seven. She had worn braces on her legs to straighten the tibias, a helmet on her head to round out her skull, and a contraption on her back to make her sit up straight. For most of her life she had felt more like part of a machine than a girl, harnessed and strapped and attached to a variety of painful apparatuses to improve her looks and posture.