The Rose Bride, page 4
“`Are you calling me a liar?” Ombrine asked in a cold, dangerous voice.
“She is, Mother,” Desirée assured her.
Rose clung to Elise, drowning. A tiny part of her knew that Elise was in trouble and she was afraid for her. If indeed this was her stepmother . . . but how could her father have a new wife? Less than half a year of mourning . . . how could he?
It was all wrong. Everything was wrong. False . . .
“For the love of the gods, give her the wine, if it will help to calm her down. In fact . . .” Ombrine reached into an inner pocket of her cloak and pulled out a small gold vial studded with rubies. She flicked open the hinged lid with her red fingertip. “Give it to me.”
Silently Elise handed her the goblet. Ombrine tilted the vial, and a black, viscous liquid seeped out. The first large, thick drop hung from the lip, then plopped into the wine.
Ombrine put in three more drops. Then she snapped the lid shut and put the vial back in her sleeve.
“Et voilà,” she said.
Elise took it. Studying it, she hesitated and said to Rose, “You’re calmer now, eh, mon enfant? You don’t need this?”
Despite her wild grief, Rose heard the urgency in her nurse’s voice. Elise didn’t want Rose to drink the wine. She didn’t trust Ombrine.
“Give it to her,” Ombrine bit off. “Or I’ll have you whipped for your disobedience.”
“I’ll take it, madame,” Rose said quickly. But as she took the cup, she pretended to hiccup and let go of it. The goblet crashed to the floor, spraying wine in a flume.
“Ah, non!” Ombrine cried. Her ebony skirts rustled as she leaped to her feet.
“I am sorry!” Elise said, taking the blame.
“It is as he said. Everyone here is dim-witted and clumsy,” Ombrine muttered. “Well, no matter to me. This is an old cloak and I have others. But this ... was one of a kind.”
She swept a graceful motion downward to the floor and gathered something up that must have fallen off the bed.
Rose cried out. It was her magnificent birthday gown. The starry skirt showed a purple wine stain the size of an embroidery hoop. Ombrine folded the delicate fabric in half, then in half again, then again.
“At any rate, you won’t be needing it,” she said, turning away with the gown crumpled like a rag against her chest.
Desirée trailed after her. “Give it to me,” she urged.
“Nonsense,” Ombrine told her daughter. “It’s ruined.”
“We can cut it down,” Desirée said, digging her fingers into the dainty tissue. “I’ve not had such a lovely thing in ever so long, Mother. Before the fire—”
Ombrine’s icy stare moved from Desirée’s fingers to her face. “Show some decency. We’re all in mourning.”
Ombrine stopped at the door and waited for Desirée to open it.
With a huff, Desirée stabbed her thumb against the handle and yanked open the door. “He wasn’t my father.”
As soon as the door was shut, Rose begged Elise to help her get out of bed. Her forehead was burning.
“Take me to him. It’s a mistake. It’s not my father.”
Elise sniffled as she laced up the back of Rose’s gown. When she was done, she laid a hand on Rose’s shoulder.
“I saw him, ma petite. It is Laurent. His own physician has signed a death certificate, and—”
“Don’t say that,” Rose begged. “It’s a trick. That horrible woman has arranged all this. My father wouldn’t . . . he wouldn’t die.”
Elise cupped Rose’s face with her hands and stared hard into her eyes. “Attends-moi. Listen to me, my darling. You did not kill him. No matter what happens next, it was not your fault.”
But Elise’s words carried no more weight than a whisper on a breeze.
The funeral was arranged at lightning speed. Monsieur Valmont had taken the liberty of sending riders to invite the masters and mistresses of the nearby estates to the funeral. Ombrine was livid, insisting that she was unprepared to meet her new neighbors in the midst of tragedy.
Laurent’s corpse lay on a bier in the family vault, and Rose could not deny that it was he. His skin was waxy and gray. His dear cheeks were sunken. He looked dead, but Celestine had told Rose stories of people who appeared to be dead, only to revive when someone who truly loved them gave them a kiss. So Rose bent over him and kissed his cheek. His skin was ice-cold. Life had left him.
Choked with despair, she ran from the vault and raced to the rose garden. Rose pressed her face into the purple blossoms and inhaled their perfume. They smelled like her mother.
The bitterest tears came, and she clenched her fists against her terror and her despair as the roses whispered to her, “You are loved. You are loved.”
“I’m not.”
She fell against the ground and wept, her fingers digging into the soil as if she would climb into the earth and hide in the darkness there forever.
“You are loved,” the roses insisted.
Elise found her an hour later. Her skirts furled wide, she ran to Rose’s side and lifted her from the mud. She ran her fingers through Rose’s silvery-golden hair, plaiting it quickly.
“Your . . . that woman wants you at the funeral feast,” the nurse said. She wiped Rose’s dirty cheeks and hands with her apron. “Vite, ma belle. She’s very angry.”
She led her to the silvery stream, and Rose looked at her reflection. Her starry midnight-blue eyes stared back at her, puffy from weeping. Elise dipped the hem of her apron into the water and washed her face. Rose was beyond caring what she looked like and whether or not her new stepmother was angry with her.
“That’s better,” Elise said, appraising her young lady. “Now . . .” She looked left and right, then put her finger to her lips. Then she lifted up her black skirts, revealing Rose’s birthday gown tied like a petticoat around her waist. It sparkled and glittered as she gathered up the skirts. “We can embroider a beautiful rose over the stain. It will be purple, like your favorite roses.”
“Oh,” Rose cried softly. “Oh, Elise, merci.” She thought then of the cloak she had been stitching for her father, and she had laid it across him in his sarcophagus.
“Not a word,” Elise warned her, smoothing down her skirt and pulling her dear young lady into her arms. “Tragedy will turn to triumph. Your dress will be even more lovely than before. And the tide of all this misfortune will turn as well. You’ll see.”
Elise walked Rose into the great hall, where the feast had been set. There were two dozen guests milling in a hall meant to hold two hundred. Most of the servants were not present, although Rose knew it was the Marchand custom to share the feast with everyone on all the important days. A few moved among the guests, pouring mulled wine into Celestine’s golden goblets. The main table, which was yards long, was covered with her mother’s most precious white silk tablecloth, and set with what was left of her precious dishes. It was spectacular. Haunches of venison and pork steamed on gold platters; cinnamon, cardamom, and nutmeg thickened the air. There were bowls of potatoes and vegetables and towers of sugared fruits. Rose had no idea how Ombrine had managed to arrange such an elaborate feast on such short notice.
“There she is,” Elise murmured.
Ombrine had changed into another gown of black lace and black silk with a plunging neckline. Like an elegant spider, she held court in Celestine’s favorite ivory silk-covered chair, a full plate of untouched food at her elbow. She daubed her eyes as a gentleman leaned over her, offering her a goblet of wine. The Widow Marchand wrapped her hand around the man’s and gave him a sad smile. His eyes glittered as he leaned closer. Then his gaze dropped toward her ample bosom.
“She’s already after another one,” Elise said under her breath. She turned to Rose and cupped her cheek. “Well, dear one, we all do what we think we must. Try to find your way in this. I’ll stay close by.”
Rose took a breath and looked at Ombrine, who was clearly very busy. Then she looked for Ombrine’s daughter.
Framed by the diamond windowpanes, Desirée leaned against the dark wainscoting, inspecting one of the plates. She had changed as well, which may have explained when and how Elise had stolen back Rose’s birthday dress. Desirée’s ebony satin gown was threadbare and patched. Her face was flushed, her eyes bright and eager. When she saw Rose, she raised a lazy brow and hugged the plate possessively against her chest.
“Sister,” she greeted Rose.
Rose stiffened.
“Go to her,” Elise whispered, giving Rose’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Keep the peace as best you can.”
Rose licked her lips and headed for Desirée. The two faced each other, dark stepsister, fair daughter.
“I like these plates,” Desirée announced.
“They were part of my mother’s dowry,” Rose replied.
“Well, they’re my mother’s now.” Desirée’s mouth twisted. “All this belongs to her.”
Rose’s stomach lurched. Her face tingled and her hands trembled. Then she caught sight of Elise, who was directing a servant to fill a plate and remembered what she had said.
“We had better dishes than these,” Desirée continued, raising her chin as if she were challenging Rose to say otherwise. “Our estate was much grander. It was at least twice as big as this one. We had a moat. There were swans in it.”
Rose swallowed hard. “You must have been sad to leave it. To come here.”
The haughtiness faded from Desirée’s face. She looked out the leaded panes at the summer sky. Her shoulders rounded and she was silent for a time.
“There was a fire.” Her arms closed around the plate so hard that she would have broken it if it were made of anything but gold. “Stupid Gypsies.”
“Oh,” Rose managed. Her voice cracked. When Desirée said nothing more, she ventured, “And so . . . ?”
“And so it was destroyed. All of it. Even my clothes,” Desirée snapped, wheeling around and glaring at Rose. “And now we’re here.”
Rose remained silent. She didn’t know what to say.
As the pause lengthened, streaks of color swept across Desirée’s hollow cheeks and high forehead. She took a step back from Rose. Her heel knocked the wall like a hollow laugh.
“We’re here,” she repeated. Her voice was a little less sure. “And were not leaving.”
She turned back to the window. Rose stayed where she was.
“Go away,” Desirée muttered.
Rose took a step backward, glancing around for Elise, when the nurse rushed up behind her and gripped her hand. Her fist against her mouth, she wordlessly shepherded Rose through the room. Ombrine was deep in conversation—with another male neighbor—and didn’t notice as the two left.
Elise sped down the hallway and rushed into the music room. Rose’s golden birthday harp stood in the center of the room and Celestine’s lute lay on an ebony table. On the wall, the portrait of a young woman holding a cat gazed down on them with a smile painted on her pink lips.
“Child, oh, “Elise said as she looked out into the hall. She shut the doors. Then she took a deep breath and calmed herself as she put her arms around Rose. Rose could feel her heart thundering.
“Ma belle, ma pauvre,” she murmured. She took another breath. “Rose, Monsieur Valmont has been arrested.”
“What?”
“For theft. The plates. The ones he took to pay your father’s debts.’ Elise was shaking. “As soon as she got here, she ordered an inventory of all your father’s possessions. She saw them missing and someone told.”
“But he took them to save us,” Rose insisted. “We’ll explain. We’ll set him free.”
“Oui,” Elise said. “We’ll save him.”
FOUR
A week later, in a trial lasting two hours, Monsieur Valmont was found guilty of theft. He had no records to prove that he had acted in order to satisfy his master’s debts and neither Elise nor Rose was allowed to speak on his behalf.
Laurent’s creditors realized that if they denied that Valmont had paid them, they could be paid again. Ombrine had the legal right to loosen the Marchand purse strings. So to a man, they lied—save for one honest graybeard. He described to the court how Valmont had struggled to keep the estate running despite the prolonged absence of his master.
“I asked him to pay me only because my own lands have fallen on hard times, and I needed the coin,” he announced. “One assumes that . . . others pressed him as well and that he took the plates only after his life savings had run dry.”
As a result of the man’s testimony, Monsieur Valmont’s sentence of death was commuted to a life of hard labor in the colonies.
“Imagine, stealing my dress,” Desiree sniffed on the night of his sentencing, as she, Ombrine, and Rose sat at table in the great hall. Their first course was rich pâté. Rose wasn’t used to dining so formally. She and her mother used to eat with Elise and play a game of cards with her after. Now Elise was banished to eat with the servants. The nurse had begged Rose not to reveal that she’d been the one to take the dress. The truth would do Monsieur Valmont no good, but it would do her a lot of harm indeed. So together they had wrapped it in tissue and muslin and laid it in an old chest, hiding it behind some old furniture beneath the attic eaves. It lay there now.
She had hidden her father’s cloak as well, in her sewing basket beneath her bed.
“It was your stepsister’s dress and it was ruined anyway,” Ombrine reminded her, placing a tiny morsel of venison on her fork. “No matter. Laurent’s ships are on their way and they’re bulging with goods. I’ll have twenty dresses made for you.”
“In pink,” Desirée insisted, reaching for her wine. “Grander than that other one. Rose’s dress was truly not that special. It needed more flounces and bows.”
“In black. And tastefully understated. Until our period of mourning is complete.” She smiled joyfully at her daughter. “Providence sent Laurent to me.”
“Oui. Thank the gods he had a heart attack so close to our house,” Desirée replied.
Rose ate silently, fuming at their insensitivity. She had threaded their story together. Ombrine’s first husband, Louis Severine, had been a wealthy man who lived an ostentatious life. Château Severine was a showpiece and Ombrine constantly redecorated it, adding rooms, and ordering new furniture. They had parties all the time and Ombrine and Desirée were the most sought-after hostesses in the region. Ombrine’s wardrobe was legendary. She socialized on a grand scale and Desirée had so many friends she had to keep a list.
Louis was a friendly sort as well. He was very fond of the local Gypsies and gave them permission to camp on his lands. It was said that he was fonder of their women than their men—a rumor Ombrine pretended she had never heard.
One night, a Gypsy husband discovered that his pretty wife was missing and he drank himself into a rage. He and his friends demanded entry into Louis’s château to search for the lady. Louis refused.
Drunken and furious, the Gypsies melted into the night. They returned three hours later with every man in their clan above the age of thirteen. Each carried a bottle of wine and a torch.
They set Louis Severine’s entire estate on fire. The disaster overwhelmed him financially, and Ombrine and Desirée, who had been used to the best of everything, were left penniless. Then he died—some say he drank himself into the grave. His widow and daughter lived in the ruins of the château like wraiths and no one came to call. Not one friend stuck by Desirée and all Ombrine’s wealthy acquaintances deserted her. Daughter and mother became all the other had and their hearts hardened at the lack of sympathy and friendship. It was no use to count on love and affection. From that time on, they would put their trust in the power of wealth.
And so Ombrine coveted nothing but wealth. She treated the glittering treasures of the Marchand fortune as if they were loaves of bread and she and Desirée were starving. Ombrine spent hours making inventories of all Laurent’s possessions—now hers. She hired jewelers and appraisers to put a value on every single object. If so much as a saucer went missing, she knew of it and fined the household staff its stated value against their wages.
Now at the table, Rose sat quietly. She wondered what Monsieur Valmont was having for dinner.
“Eat your venison,” Ombrine ordered Rose. “The meat is fresh and succulent.”
Rose never ate venison. Artemis favored deer and she was Rose’s patroness. Instead Rose took a sip of wine. Her hand trembled around the stem of her goblet.
“Look at her, skin and bones,” Desirée sneered. “She eats so little she can barely lift her cup:” She picked up her goblet.“And they are very nice cups:”
“All the more for us,” Ombrine said. She slid a glance at Rose. ‘Although with her so thin it will be harder to get her married.”
“Eat, sister,” Desirée sang. “Eat, eat, eat:”
Beneath the table, Rose squeezed her left hand into a fist. Her nails drew blood as they dug into her palm. Ombrine and Desirée bewildered her. Their tragedy could explain their greed but not their cruelty. They knew nothing of love, only of loss. She tried to have pity on them.
“The cups are cunning, but these plates are ugly,” Desirée announced. At first I thought they were lovely, but they’re awfully garish, aren’t they I think we should finish what that thief Valmont started.”
“You may be right,” Ombrine declared. “They’d fetch a pretty penny. Honestly, Rose, your mother had terrible taste.”
Their hearts were so hardened by their tragedy that they could find no soft spot for someone who had suffered just as much—if not more, for Rose had lost both mother and father.
I pray I will never be so hard-hearted, she thought, glancing down at the blood in her palm.
“You are loved.
“You are loved.
“You are loved,” said the roses in the bower.
Rose lay among them as the statue of the goddess stood watch. It was the night before her fourteenth birthday. In the morning, it would be one year since her mother’s death. Almost six months since the death of her father. At moonrise, Rose and Elise had furtively burned incense before her parents’ sarcophagi. Weeping, they held each other, a little family of two.
