“Elora doesn’t really confide in anyone.” Finn fell silent for a moment, and then exhaled. “If I explain this to you, do you promise to get back to studying?”
“Yes!” I answered immediately and looked over at him.
“What I say to you cannot leave this room. Do you understand?” Finn asked gravely, and I nodded, gulping painfully.
I had been growing more and more preoccupied with Finn and Elora’s relationship. She was an attractive older woman, and he was definitely a foxy guy, and I could see her digging cougar claws into him. That was what I was afraid of, anyway. Then it would make whatever feelings I had for Finn seem even more disturbing.
“About ten or fifteen years ago, after your father was gone, my father came under the employ of your mother. He had retired from tracking, and Elora didn’t like living alone, so she hired him to guard her and the estate,” Finn explained. His eyes darkened and his lips tightened, and my heart raced.
“Elora was in love with my father. They had to keep things quiet, because it would be quite the scandal if anyone found out. No one knew, except for my mother, who to this day still is married to my father. Eventually, my mother convinced my father to leave. However, Elora remained quite fond of him, and in turn, rather fond of me. She has personally requested my services over the years, and because she pays well, I have accepted. Since I am so good at my job, nobody has ever thought anything of it. Until you, of course.”
I stared at him, feeling nauseous and nervous. Since his father became involved with my mother after I was born, I could safely assume that we weren’t siblings, so at least that was something. Everything else made it feel rather disturbing, and I wondered if Finn secretly hated me. He had to secretly hate Elora, and he was only here because of how much she paid him. Maybe he was some kind of glorified gigolo, and I had fight to keep from vomiting.
“I am not sleeping with her, and she has never made any advances of the sort,” Finn clarified, looking at me evenly. “She is fond of me because of her feelings for my father. I don’t blame her for what happened between them.
It was a long time ago, and my father was the one that had a family to think of, not her.”
“Huh.” I looked up at the ceiling because it was easier than looking at him.
“I have distressed you. I’m sorry,” Finn apologized sincerely. “This is why I was hesitant to say anything to you.”
“No, no, I’m fine. Let’s just go on,” I insisted unconvincingly. “I have a lot to go over and all that.”
Finn remained silent for a minute, letting me absorb what he had just told me, but I tried to push it from my mind as quickly as possible. Thinking about it made me feel dirty, and I still had too much on my mind as it was.
Eventually, Finn continued on with the texts, and I tried harder to pay attention. If I was thinking about what exactly a Queen’s job entailed, I wasn’t thinking about my mother bumping uglies with his father.
Frederique Von Ellsin, the dress designer, came over a few hours later.
He was excitedly flamboyant, and I couldn’t tell for sure whether or not he was Trylle. Finn sat in the corner, off-handedly flipping through a book while Frederique made all kinds of notes. I wore only a slip as he took my measurements and sketched something on a notepad. Finally, he declared that he had the perfect gown in mind, and he dashed out of my room to get working on it.
All day long, there was an irritating succession of people. They were all staff of some kind, like caterers and party planners, so at least I didn’t have spend an hour getting ready to impress them. In fact, most of them ignored me.
They just trailed after Elora as she listed an inconceivable amount of information about what she expected them to do, and they all scurried to write it down or punch it in their Blackberries, or maybe just contemplated suicide. I know I wpild.
Meanwhile, I had the pleasure of camping out in my sweats all day again. Whenever Elora saw me, she glared at my apparel intensely, but she was always too busying prattling on demands to somebody else to complain about me. Everything that I managed to overhear only made my coming-out festivities sound even more terrifying. The most horrific thing I heard as she zipped by:
“We’ll need seating for at least 500.” Five hundred people were going to be at a party where I would be the center of attention? Splendid.
The only upshot of the day was that I got to spend the entire thing with Finn. That became less enjoyable by the minute as Finn refused to talk about anything that wasn’t related to my performance at the party. We spent two hours going over the names and pictures of the more prominent guests that would be attending. Two whole hours spent pouring over a yearbook-type thing trying to memorize the faces, names, and notable facts about like a hundred people. At least we learned something with that. An eidetic memory was not one of my abilities.
Then there was the hour and a half spent at the dinner table.
Apparently, I did not know how to eat properly. There were certain ways to hold the fork, tilt the bowl, lift the glass, and even place the napkin. Up until that time, I had never mastered any of those skills, and from what I gathered about the way Finn regarded me, I still hadn’t. Eventually, I gave up. Pushing my plate back, I laid my head down and pressed my cheek against the cold wood of the table.
“I can see you’ve had enough with this,” Finn sighed and pushed back his chair as he stood up. “Why don’t we do something fun for awhile?”
“Fun?” I looked up skeptically at him. “Do you mean fun fun? Or do you mean looking at pictures for two hours fun? Or Using a Fork 101 fun?”
“Something that at least resembles actual fun,” Finn answered. “Come on.”
Cautiously, I got up and followed him. Even if whatever he planned on doing was the most boring thing in the world, I didn’t really have a choice.
What I was going through right now was the montage part of every duckling-toswan story. In the movies, they always showed clips of all the hard work they put in until the got better, and in thirty seconds flat, there were be the finished, transformed princess. Unfortunately, I couldn’t montage my way through this. I actually had to endure.
As Finn led me down a hall to the west wing of the house, I realized that I’d never seen any of this before. When Garrett had teased Elora about this being a palace, he wasn’t kidding. There were so many places I had yet to see. It was astounding. Finn gestured to a few rooms, pointing out the library, meeting halls where they conducted business, the opulent dining hall where we would hold the dinner on Saturday, and then finally, the ball room.
Pushing open the doors, which seemed to be two stories high, Finn led me into the grandest room I had ever seen. Massive and exquisite, the ceilings seemed to stretch on forever, thanks in part to the fact they were entirely skylight. Gold beams ran across it, holding up glittering diamond chandeliers.
The floors were marble, the walls were off-white with gold detailing, and it looked every bit like the ballroom for Disney fairytales.
The decorators had started bringing things in, and one of the walls was lined with stacked chairs and tables. Table cloths and candlesticks and all sorts of decorations were littered in a pile around them. The only other thing in the room was a white grand piano setting in the opposite corner. Otherwise, the room was empty, except Finn and me.
I hated how taken I was with the splendor. I hated it even more that the room was this magnificent, and I looked like I did. My hair was in a messy bun, and I was wearing baggy sweats and a faded sweater with a boombox on it.
Finn wasn’t exactly dressed to the nines either, but his standard buttoned shirt and dark washed jeans looked much more fitting.
“So what’s the fun part?” I asked, and my voice echoed off the walls.
“Dancing,” Finn’s lip twitched with a smile, and I groaned. “I’ve danced with you before, and I know that it needs some improvement.”
“The slow circles don’t cut it?” I grimaced.
“Unfortunately, no. A proper waltz should be enough, though. If you can master that, you’ll be set for the ball on Saturday,” Finn explained.
“Oh no.” My stomach dropped as I just realized something. “I’m going to have dance with these people, aren’t I? Like strangers and old men and weird handsy boys?” Finn laughed at that, but I wanted to curl in a ball and die.
“I could lie to you, but to be honest, those are probably the only people that will ask you to dance,” Finn admitted with a wry smirk.
“You are enjoying this more than I’ve ever seen you enjoy anything!” I pointed out, and that only deepened his smile. “Well, I’m glad you find this funny. Me getting felt up by compete strangers and tripping all over them. What a great time.”
“It won’t be so bad,” Finn insisted, then he motioned for me to come over. “Come on. If you learn the basic steps, at least you won’t be tripping over them.”
I sighed loudly and walked over to him. Most of my trepidation about dancing with strangers melted away the instant Finn took my hand in his. It suddenly occurred to me that before I had to dance with them, I got to dance with him. His hand went to the small of my back, and I cursed myself for wearing such a thick hoodie. Then I had a brilliant idea. I paused our training, claiming the bulk of my hoodie was too hard to dance with, and pulled it off. I was wearing a tank top underneath, so it wasn’t like I was being completely inappropriate.
After a few directions from him and a rough start by me, we were dancing. His arm was around me, strong and reassuring. He instructed me to keep my eyes locked on his so I wouldn’t get in the habit of watching my feet while I danced, but I wouldn’t have looked anywhere else anyway. His dark eyes always mesmerized me. We were supposed to keep a certain distance between our bodies, but I found it impossible. Soon, his stomach was nearly pressed against mine, and I was certain we weren’t going as fast as we were supposed to, but I didn’t care. I was back in that moment with him, that wonderful one that seemed too impossibly perfect to be real.
“Right, okay.” Finn suddenly stopped and took a step away from.
Disappointed, I let my hands fall to the side. “You’ve got that down pretty well, but there’s going to be music. So you should see how you do with that.”
“Okay?” I said unsurely.
“Why don’t I play the piano, and you count out the steps yourself?”
Finn had already started backing away to the piano, and I was wondering what I had done wrong that made him stop so suddenly. “That might be a better way for you to learn.”