The Princess Within Me

Chapter 17

Sarah's P.O.V.

As soon as we arrived, Ms. Lisa quickly led me to a room I'd never seen before. It was as large as my room though this one only had a few pieces of furnitures.

One side of the room was covered with mirrors and the rest were painted with beige. The floor was wooden and a small chandelier was hung on the ceiling. There was also a small equilateral table by the window with two chairs at each side.

What struck me the most was how the table was arranged. A teapot was placed on it and each of the two pairs of matching cups and saucers were parallel to each seats. Some cakes and pastries were also placed on a three-tiered serving tray. Beside it was some scones of jam. The table was just perfect for an afternoon tea.

On the opposite end of the room stood a cabinet with no doors. It was filled with some clothes which looked like gowns and on the shelf under them were boxes of, which I presumed, shoes. Next to the cabinet was a wall divider which was used as part of a dressing stall sometimes.

I sat on one of the chairs as I waited patiently to whoever lecturer I was going to have. Silence filled the room and nothing came to my mind except what Cedrick had shared to me moments ago. Because of that, I kind of understood his emotions. He didn't showed it a while ago to maintain his coolness but I knew that somehow, he was still in pain.

I was quite worried for him especially that the news articles about him was still all over the place. He was in denial most of the time so maybe he was still a bit affected by it. I just wished that he would be more open sometimes.

The door suddenly opened revealing the person that I was waiting for. Surprisingly, the person that would instruct me would be the queen.

I thought she would be somebody else because I knew that she couldn't stand my presence.

"Good afternoon, your highness." I greeted. She smiled at me curtly which made me taken aback. Did she just show some courtesy? That was a first.

She approached the table and she took the seat in front of me. She carried the teapot gently then she poured some of its contents into her cup.

She graciously raised it with one hand, allowing her pinky finger to point upwards, and she used her other hand to hold the saucer, placing it just below the cup then she drank the tea. After being contented, she placed everything back on the table.

"Now, would you care to do that for me?" I nodded my head then I obeyed her. Sadly, my attempts were drastic failures due to my clumsiness.

I had three trials. On my first try, I spilled the tea on the table making the queen sigh in dismay. My second try was almost perfect but the cup slipped off my hands making it fall back on the saucer. Luckily, it didn't shatter into pieces or else the queen would surely make me pay. The last trial, wasn't that great either because I unintentionally knocked off the three-tiered serving tray causing all the delicacies to fall off. Some of them were scattered on the table whereas the others rolled to the floor. The queen was already pissed off.

"I suppose that you're not ready for an afternoon tea. Maybe we can do it next time." She said through gritted teeth.

I was very sure that anytime soon, the queen would lose her patience. I was really doing my best to perform the task that she had assigned but it wasn't working my way.

The main problem for the mean time was that there were still a lot of things that she would make me do. If drinking tea wasn't successful for me then what more for the next assignments? Most probably, failure like the first task.

She stood up and made her way towards the cabinet then began scanning each clothing. After a while, she paused for a moment then grabbed the yellow frilly gown that her eyes had pointed at.