The Spinner and the Slipper Read Online Free PDF Page A

amusement, intrigue . . . and, finally and most prominently, mischief.
    “This,” she said to herself, her voice like a cat’s velvety purr, “may prove most amusing.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    A Fateful Boast
     
    “Eliana.”
    At the sound of her name sharply spoken, Eliana sat upright abruptly in the kitchen garden, both of her hands still full of weeds. Her stepmother stood over her, arrayed in her finest dress—much too fine a dress for the widow of a miller. Eliana had cringed when, three months ago, Mistress Carlyn returned from town and unwrapped this and two similar gowns from paper bundles.
    But two years had done nothing to teach Mistress Carlyn any sense of economy. So while Eliana labored to keep the mill working—with the help of Grahame, the milkman’s boy, whom she hired to do the muscle work—and scrimped and saved whatever she could, her stepmother and two stepsisters did their best to ignore their reduced circumstances and live the same extravagant lives they had enjoyed back home.
    Mistress Carlyn fastened a pearl-headed pin at her shoulder, scarcely looking at Eliana as she spoke. “Bridin, Innis, and I are on our way to visit the vicar’s wife. Do see to it that the bread is baked, the hearth swept, and all the other little odds and ends are seen to that need to be seen to. Understand?”
    “Yes, Stepmother,” Eliana said, wiping sweat from her forehead with a dirty hand, leaving a streak of dark earth across her pale skin.
    Mistress Carlyn’s lip curled at the sight of the smear. Without another word she walked away, calling out to Bridin and Innis. Grahame led the donkey into the yard, hitched to the same little cart in which Mistress Carlyn and her girls had arrived at the mill two years ago. He assisted Mistress Carlyn into the driver’s seat then turned to help the girls. Eliana wondered if he noticed the little smile shy Innis sent his way. If he did, he certainly dared not respond in front of her mother.
    The trio drove off down the road. Eliana watched them go, a sigh in her throat. She had never minded hard work. She had worked hard all her life, brought up by both her father and mother to see honor in labor well done. So the fact that Mistress Carlyn ordered her about like a servant, well . . . she could shrug that off easily enough.
    It was the constant struggle to keep the mill afloat despite her stepmother’s extravagances that left her bone-weary each night when she collapsed on her straw pallet before the fire, shivering beneath a thin blanket.
    She looked down at the ring on her finger, so caked in dirt it was almost invisible. Rubbing it clean, she impulsively gave it a kiss and whispered, “Dear God Above, grant me courage! And give me strength.”

    Mistress Carlyn aspired to better things than the lot life had thrown her. And while there was little enough the widow of a humble miller could grasp, she grasped whatever she could.
    So she and her two daughters sat in the parlor of the vicarage, looking down their noses at the other middleclass ladies who inhabited the village. Mistress Carlyn considered herself superior to these women, but there was no better society to be had for many miles around. So she condescended to be part of this small circle, intimidating the vicar’s wife with her coldness.
    Bridin and Innis sat quietly on either side of their mother and dared not speak a word.
    “My boy Ailbert is back on a visit,” said Mrs. Barclay, the draper’s wife, smiling round at those in the parlor, though that smile skirted quickly away from Mistress Carlyn’s frosty stare. “He works as a stable boy up at Craigbarr,” she added with pride.
    Everyone murmured approvingly at this, even Mistress Carlyn. Craigbarr was King Hendry’s summer palace, some twenty miles away. Even a stable boy who worked there must be afforded some honor.
    “Surely young Ailbert must hear interesting news from court?” said the vicar’s wife, her eyes shining with dreams of kings, princes,