"Look at him, my sweet. See how wide his shoulders are? How graceful his hands?"
Marcel peeped an agreement.
An entourage of six surround Prince. Another gentleman off to one side held a wooden box. He opened it with a show of spectacular theatrics.
She gasped. Her glass shoe.
Cinderella blinked away sudden tears. Prince knelt on bended knee before Pricilla. The breath rushed from Cinderella's body. How had she never noticed the sun's brilliance glinting off Pricilla's silvery blond locks? A lightheaded sensation assaulted her. Her knees shook. She forced short breaths to keep from fainting in despair on the spot.
Cinderella concentrated on the dark curl that had fallen over the prince's brow. He reached for Pricilla's foot. The effort not to scream squeezed her heart in her chest. He pulled it forward, a bit too gently in Cinderella's opinion, and slipped the shoe on-tugged, rather, shifted, wrestled. Cinderella watched his face carefully. He seemed quite determined, she thought irritably. He risked a glance up to Pricilla and a smile lit his face. A smile that sent Cinderella's heart fluttering like Esmeralda's nervous eye-affliction.
Thankfully, no amount of manipulation could make Pricilla's large foot slide into Cinderella's glass shoe. Triumph surged through her as he moved to Esmeralda's waiting foot.
Was that…relief on his face? Oui, she was certain of it. Most telling in the stiffening of Pricilla's spine, as Cinderella's view consisted of her sisters' backsides, leaving her the opportunity to gaze upon Prince.
She was, however, able to observe Stepmama's jaunty, over-exaggerated features scowl as the chance for one of her daughters to marry genuine royalty suddenly drop by a colossal fifty percent.
What if she ran out the door and demanded Prince to try the slipper on her dainty foot? She glanced down at her patched frock and slumped. He would never be convinced that she was the girl he was looking for. And Stepmama's violent temper...it could prove a deadly, foolish mistake.
Cinderella let out a soft relieved breath and glanced toward Esmeralda. Prince began the same ritual of slipping off her one shoe replacing it with the glass one.
Awe turned to astonishment, then stunned horror, when Cinderella's glass slipper slid on with surprising ease.
Cinderella choked on a gasp and fled from her veiled place at the window.
*****
A surge of panic that began deep in Prince's abdomen roared through his veins when the slipper in his one hand glided neatly onto the foot he held with the other. He froze, unable to think coherently. He snuck a cautious glance to the face belonging to said foot. Her eyes blinked so furiously, he was almost certain she hadn't caught his glance. He stood slowly, steeling himself to meet the eyes of this new and unexpected affianced.