Visions (The Daevas #2)

17 | Public Eye

December 31, 1777

Versailles, France

Here I am today, at the Palace of Versailles.

The Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, is hosting a very extravagant New Year's Eve party for only the rich and the famous in the palace. It is already eleven in the evening and, although I have been introduced to many new acquaintances for the past three hours -- dancing, merry-making -- I already feel exhausted.

Tonight is the Nuit de Richesse ball, and we are all wandering about the palace of the king and queen as we wait for midnight to strike and expecting the fireworks to happen outside the palace in the queen's garden. Marie Antoinette is a very close friend of mine; she is just a few yards away from me, talking to her husband along with her other friends who are gathered in the sitting room. The queen looks especially lovely tonight wearing the new French fashion in the Rococo style; the modern style. She is wearing a cotton candy pink dress with a white stomacher dropping down to a V while her bodice is square and her sleeves are up to the elbows, white ruffles billowing out of the pink fabric. Her neck, ears, wrists and fingers, are all covered with the most dazzling pink gemstones that blind everyone every time it hits the flickering candlelight lit inside every part of this palace.

I see her laugh her musical laugh as Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, tries to enlighten her with a naughty jest that, I have to admit, is indeed funny. The twenty-one-year-old duchess's husband, the Duke of Devonshire, is standing in the far corner, looking absolutely blank while drinking his wine, listening to Mr. Algérard's discussion about politics. I can hear him very well, but I cannot possibly listen now for I am too tired to do it. Besides, I don't even like eavesdropping.

My best friend and companion, Molly Whittaker, is here with me, garbed in her tangerine ensemble, looking very much bored and tired as I am. We stand here in one corner of the room, fanning ourselves with our jewel-encrusted fans, trying to keep our composure.

"I swear," Molly whispers in my ear, covering half her face with her fan, "I much prefer the old days -- say, the sixteenth century -- than this modern day. And I miss England, bloody hell."

Normally I would scold Molly and tell her not to swear, but right now, I feel the same way. Though Marie is a very lively woman and a good friend of mine, I am getting too exhausted with attending soirees all the time. I look at Molly, who has never aged one bit. She is still as beautiful as she was when I first saw her. The Frenchmen, all aristocrats and some mere misters, were ogling her a while ago, though she all turned them down. She cannot stand men who are too straight forward.

"What kind of man would even attempt to give me five bloody lemonades at a time? He might as well give me the piss pot then and there for he'll make my bladder explode from all the glasses of lime he tried giving me!" she had complained an hour ago to me, her face contorted in slight annoyance and rage.

That's what I like about Molly. She has not changed one single bit since I met her four centuries ago. Since she has all turned the men down -- but I must tell you that they are still eyeing her like hungry pack of wolves ready to take a delicious meat on a silver platter -- they all came to me. Not that they don't like me, because they do. They really do. They got so afraid to come near Molly that they turned to modest little me instead. They think that, for such a tiny girl such as my best friend, she has a temper of a boor.

"It was nice talking to you fine gentlemen," I had said to them all in my cultured accent, "but I may need some little space right now. It was lovely meeting all of you, and I do tell you that I shan't forget your handsome faces."

They all beam with such pride and arrogance that it makes Molly want to gag.

"Darling!" I hear my mother say, walking towards
me in a crimson gown, a red fan in her gloved hand.