The Last Princess Read Online Free PDF Page A

shiny silver stars. When I was little I usedto bring my blanket and pillow down there at night and just lie on the floor, staring up at it. I liked to imagine I was floating in the clouds, flying from star to star. After my mother died, I started to imagine it was Heaven and that I could come here to visit her.
    Balls had always been Mary’s specialty, but I did have a secret weakness for the Roses Ball. In the time before the SeventeenDays, on the day of the Roses Ball, we had fresh red and white roses delivered to the palace in great wooden cartons, hundreds and hundreds of roses, so many that the scent of them filled the whole palace and spilled out into the surrounding streets. But in the years since, we had to make do with brittle preserved roses. They had no scent and were the color of dried blood, not the fresh red colorof living petals. Father and Mary insisted on them for tradition’s sake, but they were so ugly they made me want to cry. I would rather have no roses at all than these horrible dead things.
    Mary and I walked inside the ballroom, and I noticed with relief that the roses hadn’t been brought up from the cellars yet.
    Two maids, Margaret and Lucille, came toward us wearing their black-and-white uniforms.“Hello, Princess Mary, Princess Eliza. Welcome home,” they said as we gave them each a hug.
    “It looks beautiful!” Mary skipped onto the dance floor, twirling in her socks, her arms spread out like wings. “We want to help. What can we do?”
    Margaret took a long handwritten list from her apronpocket. In the past no one would have let us even see the ballroom in its preparatory stages, much lessaccept our help. But Margaret nodded and said, “Well, for starters, the silver needs polishing and the napkins need folding.”
    I looked up to where Rupert, our butler, stood on a high ladder, lighting each of the white candles in the enormous crystal chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling. It had crashed to the floor during the Seventeen Days and many of the crystals were shattered,but when it was all lit up, you almost couldn’t tell.
    I looked down at the silver on the table and started polishing, while the rain danced on the frosted glass windows.
    “Princesses! To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” our father teased when Mary and I walked into the dining room an hour later. He stood at the head of our massive twelve-foot dining table, raising a glass of red wine.“I’m so glad you’re able to join our celebratory lunch.”
    “What are we celebrating?” I asked quickly. My heart started to race. Had Cornelius Hollister been captured?
    My father looked baffled, his glass in the air. “We’re celebrating being together again as a family.”
    I nodded and slipped my hand in my pocket, grippingthe letter, while my father drank the glass of red wine in one long sip.
    “Eliza, sweetheart. Aren’t you going to join us?”
    I glanced at Mary and Jamie, then down at the table, which had been set with my favorite china, each piece hand-painted with a different bird in red, gold, and yellow. A platter in the center contained brown bread and sliced cheese, a small pat of butter, and four bowls of broth with vegetables. The food looked delicious, but I knew I wouldn’tbe able to take a bite until I showed him the letter.
    “No,” I said, hearing my voice shake. I rarely spoke up to him and even more rarely disobeyed him. He was my father, but he was also the king of England. “Dad, this is important.”
    He grunted in anger, throwing his napkin down on the table as he pushed his chair back and walked toward me. I stepped into the hallway, out of earshot of the diningroom.
    “What’s this all about?” he asked roughly. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead and he wiped them away with his sleeve. I handed him the letter and watched as he read it, fury evident on his face.
    “Well, is it true?” I asked, unable to conceal the impatience in my voice.
    He folded the