Emilie of the Royal Heart

Chapter 41: The Emperor, Very Eager

 Lady Rebecca went into labor. And Rebecca being the woman that she was, when Emilie found her lying in a profuse sweat on her bed, she told her she had arranged another teacher for her dance lessons. She told her to return to the palace and that her new instructor would be waiting there. The midwife closed the door on Emilie after this.

Emilie did as Rebecca said, if only to honor her dedication even in the midst of labor. She had been looking forward to practicing the Midnight Lovers with music however, though she wasn't sure that her new instructor would have arranged for the accompaniment.

She found the doors of the ballroom and she opened one of them, feeling very much like a mouse entering a human-sized kitchen.

"Hello?" she called out into the gargantuan dancefloor.

Her voice echoed off the embellished walls. She wore a dress with as many skirts and a similar silhouette to the blue dress she would be wearing on the Deyism Unification Day festival. It swished as she walked into the center of the room. From there, she could see the total expanse of the dancefloor, but she couldn't spot her teacher.

With little else to do but wait, Emilie decided to practice the dances she had learned. With the Fox Prowl, it was easy enough to know when she messed up because her feet wouldn't create the same rhythm on the dancefloor. The Loom Skip was almost impossible to know if she messed up, but she tried practicing it again anyways.

Emilie was excited to try out the Midnight Lovers, but her instructor was still missing so she decided to see if she could remember the steps to a dance Agatha had tried to teach her the day after her first dance lesson. This dance was much slower and was far easier to do without a partner because in the real dance, her partner would be standing behind her.

She figured it was safe to stare at her skirt as she moved, considering she had been weirdly abandoned by Lady Rebecca's stand-in instructor. As Emilie swayed side to side, slowly rotating from her starting position, she thought to herself that if her instructor didn't show, she might get Agatha to teach her something.

As soon as she knew she messed up, she started over again with a blade of focus. She even took a breath and closed her eyes, imagining the tune that Agatha hummed when she taught the steps. Emilie opened her eyes and she whistled the song as best she could recall it. After cycling through the musical phrase once, she stepped into the dance as she sang it again. She kept one hand hovering in the air where her partner would hold it and the other on her stomach where Agatha told her to keep it. Her brow furrowed in concentration.

She noticed she skipped a step and so she stopped whistling and readjusted. When she was ready, she whistled the number of beats and then started off from her mistake. Her feet wanted to glide across the polished floor and she fought to keep them steady as she moved. Her skirts swished grandly with every sweeping motion. Suddenly, the dance was practically dancing itself and Emilie dared to look up at the gorgeous painted walls of the ballroom as they blurred and tilted before her.

She smiled at her success and then she leaned back into her partner.

And then she leaned back into her partner.

Her partner.

All at once the senses came back to her. She was so focused on learning the dance she hadn't noticed the hand holding hers on the left and the other one bracing at her waist on the right. Or the gentle breath wafting by her ear. Or who was sailing her along the dancefloor. Her whistle song comically withered into a puff of air as Emilie swallowed and twisted her head to the side to see her mystery dancer.

"That was excellent. You didn't step on my toes at all this time," Elias beamed at her.

"Elias!" Emilie screamed, tearing out of his arms only to spin and face him with her jaw dropped, "wh-what? I thought you!? There's still two days before the!? You -you!? And the!? Wait..."

He laughed at her bewilderment, standing there looking perfectly satisfied with himself. With such a look, even without his opalescent royal robe or the fine blue suit underneath, anyone might've called him out for being the Emperor.

"Did you think I was going to come on Deyism Unification Day itself and engage in the formalities and festivities after having traveled all the way here? Of course I had to come a bit early. That and there's this lady I'm trying to convince to marry me. You know how it is, don't you?" he poorly concealed a smile as he easily strolled in a circle around her. Emilie's head whipped around to keep her eyes on him as she tried to deal with the chaotic parade of feelings striding down the main street of her body.

"I can't say that I have ever tried to convince a lady to marry me," she sputtered, trying simply to grasp at something to say.

Elias reached out and took her arm, letting it fall gently through the air while his fingers trailed along her skin. His eyes roamed along her fingers, but then they suddenly jumped back to her eyes as he asked, "did you like my letter?"

"I did," she nodded in a breath, "I expected there would be more."

"A thousand apologies," he sighed, pressing his face into the back of her hand, "would you believe the Western Palace Post lost its two fastest horses and that as a consequence, our best postman quit?"

Emilie blinked at him and murmured, "did that... actually... happen?"

His eyes snapped to her and he replied, "I promised you more of a particular experience in that letter -you think I would have denied you it for any other reason?"

"You do have a penchant for a certain kind of storytelling," Emilie agreed, swallowing down her nerves.

"You think so?" he chuckled, lowering her hand down. Elias raised an eyebrow, his eyes snapping a full look at her before he licked his lips and whispered, "you know... I've got this new one rattling inside my head ever since you've been gone," his fingers brushed a curl behind her ear and he leaned in to ask, "would you like to hear it?"

Emilie shivered and on her tongue was poised something particularly witty for response, but at just that moment, the door of the ballroom swung open., and in rushed Analeigh, saying, "Emilie! Emilie! I have something I must tell you!"

That is until she skidded to a stop at the sight of her with the Emperor, eyes big like a doe and she whimpered, "o-oh... oh, excuse me, your imp-imperial highness. I'm so sorry, Lady Emilie, I suppose Lady Rebecca forgot to explain that... I'm your replacement dance instructor."