Free The Fairy Tale Bride by Kelly McClymer Page A

within her
cedar chest. It was wrinkled and gray, and as she removed the items
that had been rolled within it and fruitlessly tried to shake the
wrinkles from the cloth, a smell of stale grease surrounded
her.
    "Are you sure you should go?" her younger
sister, Hero, asked, hazel eyes reflecting her worry even as her
nose wrinkled in distaste at the odor.
    "Yes." She had hoped never to have to wear it
again. "Valentine is being stubborn. He insists that he will find a
way to keep Anderlin afloat."
    "Perhaps he will." There was little
confidence in Hero's voice.
    Miranda was tempted to shelter her younger
sister, but she could not. Hero was the next oldest after Miranda
and Valentine, and she must be prepared to shoulder the
responsibility of the younger girls while Miranda was gone. "He is
coming around from his disappointment. But not fast enough. He has
not stirred from the study in two days, except to bathe and
shave."
    Hero protested. "If you give him just a
little more time, Miranda – "
    "We've barely any flour left, and the
vegetable garden will not produce enough for eight people this
month," Miranda interrupted, trying not to breathe too deeply, as
she donned the wrinkled gray gown over her own plain blue, giving
her figure a bulkier look. "Help me with this, please, Hero." She
turned away from her sister's stricken look and quickly tied the
hideous yellowed linen cap onto her head so that it hid every lock
of hair.
    As she had in previous trips, Miranda took
two balls of spun wool and stuffed them into the sagging bodice of
the gown until it was rounded and taut. One glance in the mirror
convinced her that no one would recognize her. But the final coup de grace was the pair of padded bags that she tied
under her skirts. Before she tightened each bag's drawstring, she
inserted two carefully wrapped sets of silver candlesticks and the
glittering ruby neckpiece that had been her mother's prized
possession.
    "Oh, Miranda." Hero took the necklace from
Miranda's hands and unwrapped it from the velvet cloth that
protected it. "Must you pawn Mother's necklace? She left it to you
to wear when you are married and give balls of your own."
    It was truly a work of art, with its
intricate working of diamond-eyed gold swans, each with its neck
curled gracefully around a ruby the size of Miranda's thumb
pad.
    The jewels themselves held no dazzle for her.
It was the memories that the piece conjured for her – her mother,
dressed for a ball in a beautiful gown sweeping down the staircase
at Anderlin under the awed gazes of her children.
    Miranda sighed. "Well, I have no better use
for these jewels, Hero, than putting food on the table. I'm afraid
Mother would be disappointed, but I don't believe I'll ever marry.
Like the girl in the tale who would do anything to release her
brothers from the evil spell that has turned them into swans —" she
ran her finger over the swans, feeling the hard smooth swell of the
jewels under her fingertips — "I would give up anything for my
family." She smiled at her sister and gave her an impulsive
hug.
    Hero's eyes shone with hope. "Perhaps the
duke will come for you like Cinder Ella's prince. You'd make a
better Cinder Ella than swan princess."
    Miranda frowned. "It's Grimthorpe who has my
"slippers", Hero, not the duke." She shuddered. "And I pray that he
never finds out that they belong to me."
    Hero laughed. "That would certainly change
the way you told Cinder Ella's tale. You'd have one of the
stepsisters fit into the boots, then, wouldn't you? Still, you'd be
a marvelous duchess, even without boots. Wouldn't Mama just be
delighted if she could look down and see her daughter a
duchess?"
    Miranda's smile died on her lips as she
thought of her mother looking down from heaven. What would Mama
have had to say about Miranda's folly? She had allowed the Duke of
Kerstone unforgivable liberties.
    Worse, in her own mind, as she was sure it
would be in her mother's were she alive, Miranda had desired