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C ATHERINE BARELY MANAGED TO SMOTHER her grin as she was coaxed back to the house—for her safety, they told her—while the King was ushered into a carriage and carted away and the guards set up a method for searching the perimeter and recapturing Jest.

“He will be found,” the Marquess said, again and again, as Cath was loaded into the foyer of their home. “You needn’t worry. I know he will be found.”

“No, he won’t,” she said, gliding up the steps. “And I’m glad for it. You’re all wrong about him.”

“Halt right there, young miss,” her mother barked, and Cath’s obedient feet halted on the first landing.

She turned back to her parents. Their relief had settled into some sort of frazzled frustration.

There was a shadow on her father’s brow, and a twitch at the corner of her mother’s mouth.

“I don’t know what that boy has done to you,” she said, planting her hands on her hips, “but it’s over now and we are never to speak of him again.

We shall go on as if none of this has happened, and you are to start showing some appreciation for all we’ve done for you, and some gratitude toward His Majesty! ”

“Gratitude! What has he done to be grateful for?”

“He has preserved your honor, that’s what!

Any other man would have called off the courtship immediately after hearing that you were carried off, twice , in the arms of another man.

His Majesty is doing you a great kindness, Catherine.

You will respect that, and when you see him tomorrow, I expect you to reward such generosity. ”

“I do not want his generosity, or his kindness, or any other favors!”

Her mother sneered. “Then you are a fool.”

“Good. I’ve become rather fond of fools.”

“That is enough!” roared the Marquess.

Catherine clamped shut her lips, silenced by the rarity of her father’s temper. His face had gone flaming red, and though he was in the foyer looking up at Catherine, the look made her feel as inconsequential as a stomped bug.

He spoke slowly, each word carefully measured. “You will not disgrace this family any more than you already have.”

Tears stung at Catherine’s eyes, fierce with shame and guilt. Never had her father looked at her like that, spoken to her like that.

Never had she seen such disappointment.

“You will do as your mother says,” he continued. “You will do your duty as our only daughter. You will not embarrass us again. And should His Majesty ask for your hand, you will accept.”

She started to shake her head. “You can’t force me to.”

“Force you?” her mother cried. “What is wrong with you, child? This is a gift! Though you’ve done nothing to deserve it.”

“You don’t understand,” Cath cried. “If you’d only met Jest under different circumstances… if you talked to him, you would see that he isn’t—”

Her father threw up his hands. “I will not listen to this. That boy has done enough harm for one night, and until you are thinking clearly and can begin to behave like the lady we raised you to be, this conversation is ended.” The Marquess tore off his coat and draped it on the rack beside the door.

“You will do as we say, Catherine, or you will consider yourself no longer a member of this household. ”

Catherine clenched her jaw, tears pooling. Her thoughts were thrashing inside her head, clawing at the inside of her skull, but she kept her mouth shut tight.

Jest’s confession had destroyed any credibility she might have had. There was nothing she could say to them now, no argument she could make to persuade them she was not under some enchantment—that Jest was not a villain.

That she loved him. She chose him.

Turning, she fled from the foyer before she dissolved into a tantrum-stricken child.

Rushing into her bedroom, she slammed the door and slumped against it. In the hallway, a painting fell off its hook and crashed to the floor with a muffled Ouch!

Leaning over, Cath gathered up her skirt, pressed her face into the fabric, and screamed as loud as she could.

“Catherine?”

She startled at the meek voice and peeled the skirt away. Mary Ann stood before her—her black-and-white uniform blurred in Cath’s vision.

“I’m sorry,” she stammered, before Cath could gather herself.

Cath swiped her palms over her eyes. “You told them everything! How could you?”

“I had to. You don’t know him, Cath. Nobody knows him, and I was so scared—”

“I do know him! I trust him! But you’ve ruined it. He’s a wanted man now, a criminal. It’s all over, and it’s all because of you!”

“I thought you were in trouble. That sorcery he used to take you away from the theater—it was like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

We were all so frightened, but still, I wanted to believe he was taking you to the beach, and when it turned out you hadn’t gone there at all…

I thought you were in danger. You’ve been gone for hours and the Jabberwock is still out there somewhere and I didn’t know… ”

Cath pushed herself away from the door and yanked it open. “I don’t want to hear it. You had no right to tell them what you did.”

“Cath—”

“Get out!”

“Wait, please. Listen to me, Catherine. I think I saw… when we were at the theater, I could have sworn—”

“I don’t care!” Catherine shrieked. “I don’t care what you think or what you saw. We had a plan, Mary Ann. We had a future, and now you’ve ruined it!” Tears began to streak fast down her cheeks. “I never want to see you again. You can go be a scullery maid for all I care!”

Without waiting for Mary Ann to leave, she turned and stomped into the washroom and locked the door behind her.

With a sob, she slid down onto the tile floor and hugged her knees close, pushing her face into the folds of her skirt.

She tried to recapture the feeling of the meadow and the wildflowers and Jest’s arms and lips and how everything had felt so very, very right .

She couldn’t fathom how, so quickly, it had all become so very, very wrong.

***

W HEN C ATHERINE AWOKE the next morning, a new shrub had sprouted from the posters of her bed. The room was scented with dirt and metal and sadness and she could see a blur of red blooms beyond her swollen eyelids.

The vines drooped along the canopy, the flowers dripped toward her quilts.

Hundreds and hundreds of small, delicate hearts surrounded her—all of them bleeding.

She reached up and touched a finger to the soft flesh of the nearest bud, gathering a single drop of warm blood on her fingertip. Each bleeding heart bloom was a delicate thing, beautiful and haunting.

She crushed the flower in her fist, relishing the wet smear in her palm .

Mary Ann never came to start a fire. Abigail never brought her breakfast. Catherine stayed in bed, undisturbed, well into the afternoon.

She felt like a Jack-O’-Lantern hollowed out.

She wondered if Jest had been found and taken to prison, but she knew he hadn’t.

He was too clever for them, too quick, too impossible.

Her eyes repeatedly drifted to the window, hoping to see a white rose sitting outside, beckoning to her. But there never was. Jest had not come back for her.

Never in her life had she felt so abandoned.

She imagined that Mary Ann had not betrayed her, and that her parents and the King had discovered nothing.

She pretended that Jest would be there at the masquerade and she would walk straight up to him in his black motley and bell-twinkling hat and kiss him in front of everyone.

Then she would announce the opening of her bakery, and she would leave the castle with her head held high and begin her new life with Jest at her side.

The dream was fickle, though. If it had ever been possible, it certainly wasn’t now.

Jest was considered a criminal, and—as Cheshire had warned her—no one would ever be a patron at a bakery run by a fallen woman, no matter how delicious the treats.

Even if they could clear Jest’s name, they would forever be destitute and disgraced. They would have nothing.

It was past tea time when Cheshire appeared among the stems of the bleeding heart plant, his plump body curled in the corner of the bed’s canopy.

Catherine stared up at him, unsurprised. She’d been expecting him all day. Surely the kingdom’s greatest gossipmonger could not stay away.

“I thought you might like to know,” Cheshire said, by way of greeting, “that everyone is talking about you and your escape from the dastardly joker. What a lucky, heroic thing you are. ”

“I thought you might like to know,” she replied, “that it’s all a bunch of hogswaddle. The Joker did not kidnap me.”

She said it mildly, knowing it didn’t matter what she said to Cheshire or anyone else. Most of them would go on believing whatever was most convenient, and right now, it was convenient to think that the King’s bride, their future queen, had been taken against her will.

Cheshire scratched a gob of earwax from an ear with one claw. “I was worried you might say that. It isn’t as good a story, you know, though I shall continue to be amused as all the King’s horses and all the King’s men scramble to find him again.”

“They never will,” she said, believing it a little less every time she said it.

After all, Hearts was not a large kingdom. Where could he go? Back to Chess?

Maybe so, but it was little consolation. It meant she would never see him again.

“His Majesty is beside himself with anxiety,” Cheshire continued. “I don’t think he has the faintest idea what to do with all this madness, between the Jabberwock and the Joker and a plot to steal the heart of his future queen… He is not accustomed to real treachery, is he?”

“All the more reason he should not be wasting his efforts on an innocent man, and what for? Because his pride has been wounded?”

“What pride?” Cheshire folded his paws. “Our King is an ignoble idiot.”

A weak smile flittered over her lips. “So he is.”

“Of course, ignoble idiocy seems to be an epidemic around these parts.” Cheshire began to fade away. “So he shall not be alone.”

He vanished at the same moment a tap came at her bedroom door. Abigail poked her head inside. “I’m sorry, Lady Catherine, but it’s time to dress for the masquerade.” She crept into the room like a timid mouse.

Catherine sighed and slid from her bed without argument.

The night was inevitable .

She made no fuss as her cheeks were pinched to bring back some of their color, and Abigail made no comment on how her complexion was drawn tight from all her crying.

“Oh, Lady Catherine,” Abigail murmured. “It’ll be all right. The King’s a good man. You’ll see.”

Cath scowled and said nothing.

She was stuffed into a white crêpe dress striped with wide bands of burgundy, and a fine ivory mask covered in rhinestones. As Abigail went about tidying the discarded underpinnings, Catherine caught her own reflection in the mirror. She looked like a doll ready to be put on a shelf.

Then Abigail handed her the final touch.

A tiara, all diamonds and rubies. As it was settled onto her head, Catherine no longer thought she looked like a doll.

She looked like a queen.

Her lips parted, her breath escaping her.

She had promised Jest that she would reject the King. She had promised.

But that promise had been made by a girl who was still going to open a bakery with her best friend. That promise had been made by a girl who didn’t care if she was a part of the gentry, so long as she could live out her days with the man she loved.

That promise had been made by a girl with a different fate altogether.

Her eyes narrowed and she reached up to adjust the tiara on her head.

Mary Ann had betrayed her secret. Jest had condemned himself forever.

But maybe it wasn’t all for naught.

Cath lifted her chin and, for the first time, dared to imagine herself a queen.