Cinders & Ash: A Cinderella Story (Passion-Filled Fairy Tales Book 3) (2 page)

When Ella arrived at the house, she was a little bit late, but thought she’d be able to cover. She’d make soup for dinner. That didn’t take as long to cook as some other things, and there was leftover bread from yesterday, so that meant everything would be alright.

The moment she arrived home, she went straight to the kitchen and began cooking. She’d started the pot on the fire and had cut up all the vegetables and thrown in the beans already. She needed to grab a couple of herbs from the garden and dinner would come together without Lady Kenna or the girls having a clue how far behind Ella had really been.

She was heading out to get the herbs when Lady Kenna entered the kitchen. Curses. She was in trouble. Lady Kenna avoided the kitchen unless she wanted to chastise Ella.

“Stepmother,” Ella said with a smile on her lips, despite the dread in her heart. “How may I help you?”

Lady Kenna stood there, wearing a long silky red dress that was way too fancy for a trip to the kitchen or just sitting around one’s house, but lady Kenna preferred to put on airs. A scowl was etched on her stepmother’s face, and the woman’s silver-streaked black hair was pulled tight in a bun. Her long fingers clutched each other in front of her midsection. “You sold eggs at the market today?” Lady Kenna asked.

The money. She almost breathed a sigh of relief; she wasn’t in trouble. Ella nodded and walked over to her bag. “Yes, I’m sorry stepmother,” Ella said. “I was running behind a little, and I wanted to hurry and start your dinner. I forgot to bring you the money immediately. I apologize.” She went in her bag and pulled out the coins the baker had paid for the eggs. She held them out to Lady Kenna and the woman stared at Ella’s hands, not reaching her own out to take the money.

“How much is it?” she asked.

Ella felt a pang of fear shoot through her, but couldn’t pinpoint why. Her stepmother was too cool to her now, and she’d never known the woman not to jump at the opportunity for money. “It’s the usual, stepmother,” she said, trying to keep her tone even.

Lady Kenna nodded and held out her hand for the money. Ella swiftly deposited the coins into her stepmother’s palm. “Did you stop and see anyone else while you were in town?”

There was an edge in Lady Kenna’s voice and the fear that had begun to chill Ella a moment ago was growing. Icy dread permeated her body. She smiled. “I ran into my friend Faye, but just stopped long enough to say, ‘Hello.’ I didn’t dally.”

Lady Kenna rolled her eyes at the mention of Faye’s name. She sighed and said, “After you serve us dinner, I want to see you in my chamber.”

Ella nodded. “Yes, stepmother,” she said. She really was frightened now. A meeting in her chamber only meant one thing, a beating. But for the life of her, Ella couldn’t figure out what she’d done wrong. She finished making dinner, but the worry over her punishment and over what she’d done to earn her stepmother’s wrath haunted her. In the back of her mind, she wondered if Lady Kenna could’ve found out about her job for Mr. Halliwell, but there was no way. Ella had kept her negotiations secret and Lady Kenna almost never had any dealings with Mr. Halliwell. So, there was no way she could know.

Ella ate a few bites of the soup before serving it to her stepmother and stepsisters. Usually, she waited and ate only after the rest of her family had eaten, but she was worried her stepmother would lock her in her room for days or take some other punishment that involved withholding food. Ella didn’t chance going to see the woman on an empty stomach. She wouldn’t have time to eat after serving them, so she had a few slurps of soup and a slice of bread, but not enough of the food that dinner would look scanty when served.

As soon as her stepfamily had finished eating, Lady Kenna called Ella to meet with her. No time to do the dishes, let alone eat something more. Ella walked up to her stepmother’s room. It was a fine room on the second floor with a hand-carved ebony bed, a beautiful golden canopy, ornate chairs, a large wardrobe for her dresses, and trunks filled with more clothes than any one woman needed. And way more than Lady Kenna deserved.

“You wanted to see me stepmother,” Ella said politely.

“Yes,” she said, smiling wickedly as she sat perched in a wing-backed chair. “You’ll never guess who I saw at the dress shop today.”

No, she never would guess because Lady Kenna never took her to such places, and knowing she had no money to spend there, she never went in to browse herself. Though, sometimes, she liked to stop and look at the window displays. Ella shook her head and replied, “No, I would have no idea about such things.”

“I ran into Renee Halliwell. Her husband owns the apothecary. She said to me that my girl was so helpful, making drawings so her husband could split his apothecary business among his sons. How he paid you to draw plants and herbs for him.”

Ella’s face crumpled and all the color drained from her. Lady Kenna did know. “I’m sorry stepmother,” she said, not sure what else to say.

“It’s alright dear,” Lady Kenna said, her voice icy and unforgiving. “I’ve gone through your room, found the loose board, and taken it all.”

Ella’s eyes widened and she shook her head. “Please, no,” she said. “You can’t do that. It’s my money.”

“What?” Lady Kenna asked. Her smile, dripping with fake incredulity, grew wider. “You have nothing, dear. You are an unmarried child of mine, and all that comes to you belongs to me and this family. Until you are in a home of your own or married, you cannot have your own. You are old enough to be married, to be under the care of a husband, but not old enough to strike out on your own. You do understand that, don’t you?”

“I earned that money,” she said. “Just because you are my stepmother does not give you the right to take it.”

Lady Kenna’s smile morphed into a sneer. “But it does. Do you not understand how a family works? Do you not understand how my reputation is tied to yours? Now, I have tried my best to distance myself and my children from your wayward ways. However, when you associate your name with mine in order to perform menial labor, you lower the station of our entire family. Do you think, when I am seeking a suitable husband for Bathilda, what it will do for that family to know you perform menial tasks for Mr. Halliwell? That it might call into question our family’s suitability when it comes to marriageable daughters?”

Lady Kenna stood and walked over to Ella, running her hands over Ella’s hair. “Cinderella,” she said. “The girls called you that because they thought you were so devoted to cleaning the chimney. Perhaps they were wrong. Perhaps you were covered in the smudges of drawing charcoal and pencils, and it was just a sign of your deception and lies. Cinderella.”

Beads of sweat formed on Ella’s forehead as she watched her stepmother circle round like a shark before it attacks. “I’m sorry, stepmother,” she said. It was all she could think to say, as it settled in that her money was lost forever. Lady Kenna would never give it back.

“You will not ruin my daughters’ chances for marriage with your low work,” she spat. “I have written to Mr. Halliwell that you will no longer have time to devote to his tasks. I will speak to him in person the day after tomorrow. My letter should have reached him by then.” Lady Kenna backed away from Ella and walked over to her bed. Leaning against it was a narrow wooden branch. Lady Kenna picked it up and walked toward Ella. Ice cold terror flooded her veins as she stared at the long, narrow rod. Lady Kenna had, in the past beaten her on the bottom with broad rods. But the woman had something else in store for Ella tonight, something that was causing the hairs on the back of Ella’s neck to stand at attention.

Lady Kenna said, “Pull down your dress and turn around.”

Ella opened her mouth to speak, trying to think if there was anything she could say to prevent this. The malice in Lady Kenna’s eyes assured Ella that speaking would do no good. Ella bit down on her lower lip, forcing down all the things she wished she could say to that awful woman. She lowered her meager dress and turned so her naked back was exposed. Lady Kenna did not speak when she gave the lashes. She simply hit Ella’s back, the small stick she used to deliver the pain searing Ella’s flesh. Even though it hurt, even though it felt like her back was being torn to shreds, Ella said not a word during the lashes. She clamped her mouth shut and breathed through her nose and stuffed the pain down inside her, like she had so many times before. When it was done, Ella headed toward her room, her tower, as she liked to think of it. The cylindrical tower was an addition to the house, which had storage space at the bottom, and a room at the top for a servant. Once Ella’s father had died, she had been moved there, rather than Marigold and Bathilda sharing a room.

She went through the door that led into the tower area and walked up a spiral staircase. When she reached the top, Ella’s eyes widened. The tower used to be a sanctuary from her family, but now… now… Lady Kenna had caused it to be another place of misery. It looked as if a cyclone had torn through. The few clothes Ella owned were strewn about, her mattress overturned and scraps of drawing paper littered the floor. The squeaky floorboard that had revealed to Ella that the wooden floor was actually two levels deep — with the top floorboards, a gap and then a second layer of boarding beneath that — was now broken in half. A hole remained where Lady Kenna had pulled it up.

Ella shook her head as she looked at the room, at the utter destruction Lady Kenna had wreaked upon it. She walked over to the hole in the floor and knelt, even though her back ached. Ella stared at the empty space. That space that had been filled with coins this morning. Months of saving, months of hard work. It was gone. All gone. All because of that evil woman. She was tired of stuffing down the pain and the hurt only to have nothing left. Ella felt a few tears form in her eyes and wiped them away. She knew what she had to do. She had to get out of here and she needed money. She was going to take Faye’s friend up on his offer. No matter what he wanted, it couldn’t be worse than what she was enduring now.

Ella hadn’t been in her room for more than 10 minutes when Lady Kenna demanded that she clean the kitchen and bring in the clothes that had been hung out to dry. Ella did as she was told, despite the searing pain in her back, made worse by every move.

Ella had been glad to be sent outside. Even through this pain, the scent of the laundered clothes, which now smelled of honeysuckle, wind and freshness, had lifted her spirits. And it was then that opportunity and idea met. When Ella put Bathilda’s dresses away, she reached into the back of her stepsister’s wardrobe and squirreled away an old dress. It wasn’t one of Bathilda’s finer gowns. It was a plain thing that wasn’t the girl’s style. In fact, the dress was three years old. Back then Bathilda was thinner, though tall for her age. She had liked a boy who said he thought plain girls were the prettiest. It had taken Bathilda too long to realize he’d said that because Ella was standing nearby, and he’d wanted Ella to know he thought she was pretty. Though it wasn’t fair to think Bathilda was stupid for failing to realize the boy had been dropping a hint to Ella. At the time, Ella had heard it herself, and not realized his aim. It had never occurred to Ella that she was pretty, as she didn’t think she was anything beyond the ordinary.

But that boy, his name had been Robert, had come to talk to Ella one day when she was walking home by herself. Her stepsisters liked to talk with the other girls and always left Ella to herself. That was when she realized Robert had wanted Ella to overhear his remark to Bathilda. That’s when he told her she was beautiful. And that is when she screamed at him to never ever say such a thing to her again and ran off.

She knew then that if Bathilda thought for even one second that Ella had tried to “steal” the boy, her life would become more miserable than it was. It was also then that she knew it was imperative that she never looked pretty. She always fixed her hair in two simple braids, one on each side, and covered her head with a dust rag when she went out. She tried to keep her head down and speak little so that she seemed so very unremarkable when compared to her stepsisters.

She faced so much ire from her stepfamily, she had determined to do everything in her power to make sure that she gave them no cause for more hatred. But, tonight, that was it. She stole the dress — for that is exactly what Lady Kenna would call it if she found out — and went back to her room.

Once in her room, she made up her bed to look like she was asleep in it. Though, she doubted anyone would come check on her. Then she went down the spiral stairs to the bottom of the tower, but before she exited the door back to the main house. Ella held a candle in her hand so she could see in this darkness. There was a secret door to this tower, a small one for the dog her family used to have, Badger. Ella had named the pup when they’d first got him because he had a white stripe on his face, but none on the rest of his black body. The dog reminded her of badgers she sometimes saw in the woods, even though he eventually grew to be quite large. Badger slept on the floor of the tower because there were no servants at the time, and he could go through the opening to relieve himself at night. When Lady Kenna moved in, she’d said dogs made her sneeze. Kind man that her father was, he gave Badger away, even though it broke Ella’s heart.

“And if Lady Kenna had brought with her an animal that made you sneeze, do you not think she would give it away for you?” her father had asked.

Ella remembered she had sniffled a little but thought that surely her father was right. Lady Kenna loved her and as sad as she was to see Badger go, she was gaining a stepmother and two wonderful sisters, so it would be more than a fair trade. Little had she known. Badger was worth twenty Lady Kennas. When Badger was gone, her father had boarded the door and planned to hire a paver to cover the opening with stones. Only, he had died before he could, and only a few loose boards kept the air out. Ella quietly pried the wooden boards off, for they were old and ragged. Luckily, Badger had been a fairly large dog, so the opening was wide enough for Ella to easily slide through. Ella was sure that Lady Kenna had only cared that the dog was gone and hadn’t remembered the door. She would have no idea that Ella was escaping. While there was a window in her room, it was too high up and too narrow for her to squeeze through. This door was her only option.

Ella blew out the candle and set it to the side, then crept through the door, ignoring the aches of her body. It was already dark and Ella knew she was running behind, but hoped she’d be able to make it to town quickly. The good news about her stepmother and sisters is they all believed in the importance of “beauty sleep.” Ella wished that sleep did actually make them beautiful — at least beautiful on the inside. Whether the rest did them any good in the beauty department or not, they would be down for the night and not rise again until morning.

She trudged back into town, walking quickly in her old frock. She planned to stop at Faye’s and slip into Bathilda’s dress. By the time she got to Faye’s room in the boarding house, Ella wasn’t sure she could move. Maybe this was a mistake. Her back felt like it was on fire. She knocked on Faye’s door, Bathilda’s old dress wrapped tightly in a bundle and folded in her arms. Faye opened the door and, upon seeing her friend, knitted her brows and said, “Ella, what’s wrong?”

Too tired to answer, Ella pushed past Faye and slipped the top part of her dress down before Faye had even closed the door. Faye gasped as she stared at Ella’s back. “Lady Kenna did that to you?”

“Of course,” Ella responded, her voice tight as she tried to hold in her emotions and grit through the pain. “Just wipe it with water and help me change into this dress.” Ella took deep breaths, hoping they would offset the pain but it wasn’t helping. Faye had a small pitcher of water in the corner of her tiny room. Ella could hear the people in the next room screaming at each other, some type of marital spat. And the whole place smelled of ale. It was noisy and raucous here, but at least Faye had freedom. Ella wished she had as much. She took a deep breath and waited for Faye to find a clean rag to help deal with the wounds. Soon Faye was behind her, gingerly wiping the bloody wounds on Ella’s back. The cleaning seemed to hurt more than anything else had tonight.

“Ella, why did you walk all this way?” Faye asked. “Wouldn’t Marigold help you with this? She’s not as mean as Bathilda or Lady Kenna. And the walking, I think, made it worse.”

Faye was right about Marigold. She was generally kinder than her mother and sister, and probably would’ve helped. But Ella hadn’t even thought of that. She should’ve thought of that. Hopefully, Marigold didn’t come to help tonight.

“I came because I’m going to meet that fellow. I’m going to do what he wants for the money.”

“With your back all torn up?” Faye blurted out. “Ella that’s crazy.”

Ella gritted her teeth. Faye, without realizing, had blotted with too much force, causing severe pain. She turned and looked Faye in the eye. “Lady Kenna found out about the extra money, and she found my stash. She took all of it. I can’t stay with them much longer. I can’t let her do this to me again.”

Faye nodded. “She’s never been so mad as to do anything like this before, has she?” Faye asked.

Ella shook her head. “No, never like this,” she said. Usually, a whipping by Lady Kenna meant a few slaps of a paddle or stick across Ella’s bottom. Never before had Lady Kenna been so cruel, but never before had Ella supposedly ruined Marigold and Bathilda’s chance at a marriage. Ella tried taking small even breaths to dull the pain, and let Faye finish wiping down the lashes.

“I don’t know if this is such a good idea, Ella,” Faye said tentatively. “The man wanted healthy girls with no scars or disfigurements.”

“I am healthy,” she said, turning back to Faye. Then, Ella set about putting on Bathilda’s dress, grimacing the entire time. “I can do this. Besides you said men enjoy it if you, umm, if you suck on their dangler. I can do that.”

Faye laughed. “Ella,” she said. “You can barely say it without your nose wrinkling up. How you gonna do it?”

“I’m gonna remember the pain in my back and the money Lady Kenna stole and that’ll get me going.”

Faye frowned. She looked down at the floor, then back up at Ella. “You sure you want to do this?”

“You’re the one who suggested it,” Ella said incredulously.

“I know,” she said, pausing. “It’s just, I didn’t think you’d do it. And I just worry that it will make you too hard, Ella. The thing I like most about you is your optimism. You don’t never let nothing get you down, s’bad as stuff gets for you, you still think you can make it work. Always makes me feel good to know I’ll see ya, ‘cause as bad as living in this squalor is, as bad as not having folks is, I know that I could have it worse and that I’ve got a good friend in you.”

Ella was stunned. She’d never known Faye to be sentimental but here she was, being it. Ella reached out and hugged her, regretting it almost immediately as the pain of her outstretched arms was unbearable. She cried out and Faye had the good sense not to try to hug her back.

“See what I mean, Ella? You can’t do this.”

Ella shook her head. “I can. I have to,” she said without regret. She walked to the door and opened it. “Goodbye Faye. I’ll be back to change.”

Ella ran out before Faye could say anything else. She hurried to the castle gate Faye had told her about. She heard the giant clock tower begin its 11 o’clock chime right as she arrived. There was an older man standing there in a long cloak. He had a gray beard that fell to his belly and he wore a hat. The man was sturdy and stood almost stock-still. If she hadn’t seen his chest move up and down, she might have thought he was dead. As there was no one else around, Ella assumed that must be the man she was supposed to contact. She walked over to him and said, “Hello. I’m Faye’s friend.” She swallowed and looked down at the ground as she said the next part. “I’m looking for a royal nut.”

The man laughed, a gruff robust sound that startled Ella. A laugh wasn’t what she expected, so she stepped back to take a look at where she was. Was this the wrong gate? Had she said it wrong? It
was
a weird thing to say. The man reached into his cloak and pulled out a small cloth sack. He opened it so Ella could see the shine of gold coins inside. Her eyes widened at the sight. While the currency was common among the wealthy, she rarely saw it. The man drew the satchel shut and handed it to Ella. She was confused, as she clutched the bag in her hand. Was she getting the coins for doing nothing?

Then the man opened the gate and said, “Follow me.”

She obeyed, walking behind the man as he led her toward the castle, to a lower entrance in the rear. They wound through damp stone corridors lit by torches and stopped only when they reached a brown wooden door. “You have your pay,” the man said, his voice raspy. “You do everything he says or else he takes every bit of it back. You leave when he’s done with you.”

Ella looked at the coin bag, then at the man and nodded. He pushed the door open and bade Ella to enter. She stepped inside to see a large bed, a fireplace and a regal chair, where a man wearing a loose shirt and trousers sat. He was wearing a small mask to cover the area surrounding his eyes, but she could otherwise see his face.

She heard the door close behind her, the noise startling her. The man in the chair appeared fit and was possibly handsome. He had hazel eyes that glimmered in the light from the wall lanterns. His hair was chestnut brown and cut neatly on his head. He smiled as he watched her. “Set your bag on the hook. Then come and stand close to me.”

Ella obeyed, setting her bag on a hook near the door and walking over to the man in the chair. The pain in her back was flaring, but she managed to look calm as she stood in front of the mysterious man.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

Part of her was ready to say, “Ella,” but then, in her mind, she had a flash of her stepmother saying, “You’ll never guess who I ran into today — the man you’ve been whoring yourself to. Told me he loved this girl named Ella with golden hair in two braids.”

She froze. She knew it was irrational that a man would ever tell Lady Kenna what he’d been doing with some unknown girl, but the thought froze her in place. “My name?” she said hesitantly.

“Yes,” the man said. “What is it that people call you?”

Maid, mostly, she thought. If not in speech, in action. Of course, there was Cinderella too, but they rarely called her that, and only if she was covered in chimney grime. Only she couldn’t say that. “Cinders,” she said.

He squinted at her, his face hardening slightly. “Cinders?”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s a nickname, for I have to clean the chimney where I live.”

He considered that for a minute, giving her a scrutinizing stare, and finally he laughed. “Cinders,” he said. “I like it.”

Ella smiled. A wave of relief washed over her, knowing he wasn’t mad. “And what shall I call you?”

He leaned back in his chair, stared at her, as if no one had ever asked him such a question. She wondered if maybe she wasn’t supposed to ask him questions, if she was just supposed to take orders. That was her life already, though, a life where she only got told what to do. He smiled after a moment and said, “You may call me Ash.”

She curtsied. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ash.”

This seemed to amuse him more, as his lips curled into a broad smile. She wondered if she were doing everything wrong. These are the things her father taught her — proper manners, and this man was supposedly a relative of the royal family, so why would he be so surprised at her manners? She now wished she hadn’t curtsied as it felt like elves were dragging tiny daggers across her back. She tried to keep a genteel smile on her face, in hope of suppressing the pain that made her want to grimace.