Crushing on Royalty (The Cuttings #1) [To Be Reconstructed]

Chapter 26: A Few Minutes of Vendetta

In an hour, the ball would begin.

Security was already in motion, walking everywhere in the giant, one hundred and eighty-three bedroom mansion. There were already guests down to the Venetian ballroom, as what it's called, and everyone was just waiting patiently -- and impatiently -- for the "glittering stars" of the party.

I was in my own room now, scrolling through my text messages on my new iPhone, a gift from Lady Cutting, who pitied me not having a decent one. It was rare, as they said, to see Lady Cutting show any pity or sympathy or whatever kindness you could think of from her.

As soon as I got my new phone, I immediately called Grams' back home, but no one answered. Not even my annoying brother Tommy. I kept worrying about it but one of the maids assured me that my grandmother was fine. Maybe she just went out to the grocer? Picked up Tommy? Tended to Cookie's needs? I resisted rolling my eyes on that one.

"You look beautiful," Perry Prince, my hairstylist, said.

"Totally!" seconded Connie Richwell, my makeup artist who came all the way to Los Angeles hours ago for the soon-to-be Marchioness of Sterling and, someday, Duchess of Rossington.

From the moment Perry and Connie's L.A. team came inside my bedroom, I never looked at myself in the mirror. I didn't want to.

So two of the team's girls painted my nails a neautral color of pearl, while Perry and his style team went about my hair, blow-drying it and straightening my stubborn waves and curls for nearly two hours. Connie, on the other hand, put professional makeup on my bare face with her own team.

Before they put on my makeup, though, they scrubbed it with some cream and a damp towel with rosewater scents. I was in a white fluffy robe, avoiding the mirror as I tried to distract myself by trying to call Grams in the States, and touching the edges of Lady Cutting's old, ancient diary that I knew she forgot about through the years.

I hadn't read the diary in a while, but when I read it, she never went on with her scheme, which was to humiliate Aurora Carter. She only wrote this:

I would feel ashamed of myself had I ever done what I thought I should have done.

-Margaret

I kept leafing through it while the L.A. team of stylists hovered over me and hearing some catchy pop love song. For some reason, I made one of the crew stop the music, begging them to change it to something less romantic. They played a song by the group, Aqua. The song before that really made me feel queasy. I closed my eyes, leaving Lady C's old diary in my lap, closed.

"Girl," Connie told me happily, "you can look in the mirror now. Come on, honey, lift your pretty head and tell me what you think. What you see."

With slow hesitation, I lifted my head and looked at myself in the mirror in front of me.

I sucked in a breath. This isn't what I look like, I thought to myself in surprise.

My hair fell gracefully behind my back and shoulders, longer than I thought possible. It was waist-length and sleek and shiny. Straight. Perry and his team made a small half ponytail and weaved a white rose behind. My face was dolled up: my lips a ruby red, my eyes slathered with light eyeshadow and eyeliner. My cheeks were glowing from the light blush applied on it, and my green eyes seemed to sparkle.

I looked closely.

Yeah, I looked gorgeous now, but I didn't feel that way. I could see that, though my eyes were fine and glowing now, it had that hint of red and puffiness that Connie and her team professionally diminished with the power of makeup.