Undesirable

Chapter 15

I have been prancing around the room with a book on my head for the last three hours. Christina insists that it's going to help me improve my balance when I dance, but I'm still as clumsy as I was at the beginning of the lesson.

Higher Tier dancing is so stiff and rigid. I can't move properly and I look like I've forgotten how to use my arms and legs. Christina tells me that I'm meant to look like a swan floating on the water's surface, but I look more like a bobbing duck that can't remember how to swim.

Basically, I'm far from graceful.

"You are getting it, my lady," Christina sings with a small applause.

She's obviously lying; not even the best actress in the world could convince me I'm improving. She's literally being paid to compliment me, so she's only doing her job. Or maybe she has just become so bored of watching me flail about, she doesn't see the point in trying to critic me anymore. Even a blind person would be able to tell I haven't got any better since we started.

"How many more of these do I have to learn?" I moan, growing weary of the task.

I thought that I would only need to know one, but at the very beginning of the lesson she handed me the list of dances she was going to teach me, and there were hundreds. I had lost count of the ones we'd already gone through, along with the steps that went with them. Maybe Cesare would let me stand on his feet as my father did when I was a child, and whisk me around the dancefloor. I am sure no one would notice. Not that much, at least.

"There are twenty-seven dances left, my lady," She informs me.

I want to scream. This is torture! Not only do I have to dance in this ridiculously heavy dress, that has too many layers to it for the heat outside, but I have to do it all in these stupid heeled shoes. I thought walking in them was bad enough, turns out dancing in them is much worse. I keep tripping over and stumbling every couple of steps, and my toes are being crushed together in the base to the point of numbness. At one point, when Christina turned her back to me, I decided to slyly slip them off unnoticed and hide my feet under the long skirt, but she quickly caught onto my trick.

"Can we take a break for a second?" I ask. I can't go on much longer, not without passing out.

"Yes, my lady." She nods. "Can I get you anything?"

"No," I politely reply.

I still pity her for getting stuck with me. I know I'm not the easiest project to work on, especially with the short time frame Cesare is eager to work in. I wouldn't be surprised if she needed a break too. She deserves it.

I would give anything to go outside in the gardens, even if it was for a few seconds, just to see something different other than the two rooms in the bridal house. I would walk a lap around the outside and rush back inside. That would be enough for me. However, I already know that Christina won't let me go, she is too scared of Signora Russo to even entertain the idea.

Still, it couldn't hurt to try.

"Can we go for a walk in the gardens?" I ask, going for the simple approach first.

Shock horror spreads across her face, as if I had just told her I'd murdered her entire family. Her words get stuck in her mouth and she babbles to herself, before being able to form a full sentence. "It's tradition for a bride-to-be not to leave her bridal house until the wedding day," She says, repeating Signora Russo's rules.

"I know, it's just...we have been stuck in here for days," I moan. It's enough to drive a person mad. I'm nothing more than a caged animal wanting to be set free, even if it's just for half an hour. I would kill to breathe some fresh air. The sun has been blazing through the windows for the past five days now and it has made the room so humid and stuffy.