Twisted Tales

A Fashion Faux Pas

Cinderella's stepmother, Lady De Leon, was standing at the front of the watching crowd that had congregated once more around the prince, who was currently dancing with a beaming stepsister #1, while a sulking stepsister #2 glared at the couple from her mother's side. I gave a nod to Jack and Erik, who sprang into action; Erik heading towards the doorway to the nearest hall, and Jack dashed off to direct a passing servant carrying a tray of white wine in my direction.

I didn't waste any time. I headed straight for De Leon, forcing my way through the dense crowd of women with a judicious application of elbows.
I broke through the ranks of doe-eyed ladies, and came up right beside the stepmother, turning abruptly so I shoulder-checked her hard enough to spill my entire glass of red wine down the front of her dress.

She gave a cry of surprise and pulled away from me, staring in horror down at the dark, wet stain spreading across her bodice.

"Oh my gosh!" I cried, clapping my free hand over my mouth in shock. "Oh, I can't believe I just did that! I'm so sorry! Someone just bumped me from behind, and my drink went flying—"

Lady De Leon finally tore her eyes aware from the damage to her gown to see that the culprit was none other than little old me, and her eyes narrowed into slits. "You," she hissed through her barred teeth. "I warned you—"

I pulled out a handkerchief from my sleeve—thank you, fairy godmother—before she could continue, and made a pathetic attempt at patting the wine on her dress dry. "Gosh, I', sorry, it really was a complete accident, I didn't even see you standing there!"
She tried to pull away from me, as if even my touch was a stain on her dignity, but the woman 

around us were packed in so tightly in order to get a good look at the prince that there was nowhere for her to go. "Just get away from me, you little—" she began, but at the moment, I spotted the servant Jack had sent my way, having told him that the young lady in the light blue dress wanted some white wine.

"Ah—here we go," I said quickly just as the servant spotted me and opened his mouth, cutting him off before he could reveal that he was looking for me specifically. "Thank you so much, good sir, that will all—my dear lady, let me apologize again; that wine is going to stain terribly, but it happens that I know exactly how to get out a red wine stain from fabric. Please, if you'll just let me help, I can fix it before it sets."
De Leon hesitated, clearly torn between telling me to get stuffed, and wanting to know my secret for saving her dress.
"We have to deal with it right now, before it has a chance to dry," I press, trying to look wide eyed and sincere. "It's such a beautiful dress, it would be a pity for it to be ruined forever."
"This dress was new," she snarled at me. Then she drew herself up to her full height—and a fairly impressive height it was, too—and, with her nose in the air, just to drive home the point that she was still better than me, wine-stained dress or no, she said, "Fine. You have one chance to save my dress, otherwise I'll make sure you pay for it—one way or another."
The way she said that made a shiver run down my spine, but I forced an apologetic smile onto my face, and led her through the crowd towards the nearest hallway.
As we approached, Erik turned away slightly to conceal his face, and Lady De Leon didn't even glance at him as we passed by. I opened the door to let her through, and then followed after. If anyone had been paying attention, they would have noticed that the door didn't swing back shut quite all the way, stopped open just a crack by the toe of Erik's door, so he could listen in on the proceedings.
But Lady De Leon wasn't paying attention, she was absorbed in the drama that was her soiled dress. She rounded upon me once we were in the privacy of the hallway. "This gown cost my husband thirty sovereigns! Have you ever even seen a single sovereign in your life you... you... you peasant girl!"
I hadn't, but I had a real gold filling in one of my molars that I was going to rip out and stuff down her throat if she didn't change her tone.
But I only smiled sweetly. "If it's really worth so much, we'd better get it fixed up as soon as possible!" I raised the glass of white wine and started towards De Leon.
She scuttled back from me, almost running up against the wall. "What are you doing? Get away from me with that! Is this some kind of pathetic attempt at revenge for what I said—"
I sighed. "No, not at all." Well, yeah, a little. "You can't exactly take your dress off and wash it here at the castle, can you? And you're probably so far from your own home that the stain would dry by the time you got there. If you spill red wine on yourself, the fastest way to get it out is to neutralize it with white wine."
Lady De Leon looked at me as if I had just suggested spitting on the stain to remove it, but she didn't demand that I get away from her again. I inched a little closer, raising my handkerchief questioningly. She heaved a shaky sigh, obviously struggle to keep in control of her temper, and said, "Fine. Attempt it. If it doesn't work, or if I find that you are intentionally tricking me, you will be very sorry."
I got down on my knees in front of her, and used half of the handkerchief to continue to blot up the wettest parts of the stain on the front of her dress. Then a poured a liberal application of the white wine from my glass onto the handkerchief, and her eyes widened in surprise as the red stains melted away, dripping off into a small puddle on the floor. I wiped at her dress, gradually lifting a little more of the stain with every dab. It was slow going, and would have been more effective if I'd just poured the entirety of the glass over the original stain, but apart from the fact that I was sure she wouldn't take kindly to being doused again, I actually had a goal in cleaning her up like I was some kind of ladies maid.
As I patted away all over her bodice and hips, I was feeling for something long, thin, and hard that did not mean she was happy to see me, but was, in fact, Rumpelstiltskin's wand.
I started on her right side and gradually made my way to her left, making sure I was feeling around enough that I wouldn't miss it in passing. As a result, my attempts at cleaning the stain ended up appearing a lot more like the blatant frisking it actually was, and it was clear that the stepmother was uncomfortable. But it was working, and slowly the dark red wine stain was being lifted, so she kept any biting remarks to herself, at least for the moment.
And then, tucked into the waist of her underskirt, concealed by the high waist of the dress she wore, I felt it. The wand, right there, right under my fingertips, only separated by a layer or two of fabric. I was already on my knees. It would be a fraction of a moment to lift her skirt and pull it out. She would probably be too busy freaking out about why I was suddenly trying to undress her to realize that I was going for the wand and wouldn't think to defend it; and once I had it, I'd be running back out the door into the ballroom, Erik and Jack hot on my heels. We'd be out the door and sprinting all the way to the cemetery before she even had time to realize what I'd done, and Cinderella and her prince would be reunited within the hour.