Roses and Black Glass: A Dark Cinderella Tale
Chapter Three
1
The carriage rolled up the hill with only the sounds of the two white horses pulling it closer. Christian sighed as he peered out the small window. For the past two weeks, he had been making what was known widely through Greenhaven as ‘The Charming Round’. It made him sick to think that this course had a title, but it had come to be called this for the four brothers ahead of him who had made this same path. They, however, were good-natured enough to handle this ridiculous facade. He was not.
He was traveling to different houses throughout the town, dining with different ladies who he cared nothing about. His mother accompanied him along this trail of days and he could honestly say that he had never been at a table so many times with his mother in the whole of his life. Today was not the first dinner he would attend, but neither was it the last. This luncheon was certainly the most dreaded for Christian, yet strangely, it was also the one he looked forward to most.
Time had passed on the young man. He’d changed more than with just the hair he’d decided to grow on his face. No longer was he able to look for the laughter in ignorance to keep him going. He had grown quite tired of everything and everyone. The same faces, all smiling at him, no longer made him feel anything – not even a taste of victory over them. Sometimes, he still found Isabella and Charlotte amusing, but probably not today; he only wanted to be back at home, smoking away the afternoon.
He sat there now as the carriage bounced gently up the path, more emotionless than before, letting the gentle wind blow through his hair as his blue eyes searched the area.
From across the carriage, his mother eyed him from underneath her grand hat.
“Christian, darling, is something wrong?” she asked, fanning herself lightly.
The young man raised his eyes slowly, the cold blue flashing in the sunlight.
“Why must I do this?” he asked.
The woman across from him shrugged, wondering why he would bring this up now after they’d already been at it for days. It was almost done, for Christ sakes!
“This is simply how your father and I would have you do it,” she explained. That reply was much too simple for Christian. His mother would have liked daughters so that she could play matchmaker, but since she had been given five sons, she found that she had been given an even greater advantage in that. There was more fame in that than daughters somehow, and Christian was her last chance to shine.
“Does it make you feel important to parade me around like this?”
“Enough, Christian!” his mother scolded. “I will not have you act today as you did yesterday! You were quite rude to the Gerards!”
“I think you’re the only one who noticed, mother,” he said.
The lady shook her head. “Whether or not that is the case, I will not have you embarrassing me today. These young women we are going around to visit are very lovely, from upstanding families, and all would be fine choices for you to pick a wife.”
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Roses and Black Glass: a dark Cinderella tale (novel preview)
Romance(Now available as an ebook and in print!) A dark retelling of Cinderella in early America. In an age when cutting up dead bodies is considered taboo, Cindy’s father is a mortician. She is happy with their fascinating life, though controversial, unti...
