CHAPTER TWO
GISELLA
Though it was the height of day, the convent loomed above the meager path that led to its study doors. The details of the building seemed incomplete no matter how long I stared at the place. An impenetrable darkness blanketed everything its shadowy edges touched.
The moment we passed from the sunlight a chill drew over us, settling to the corners of our bodies, a weight of cold in the heart of the day.
One of the girls—who had never spoken during the journey at all to my knowledge—pulled back her bonnet to stare up at the three-storied building, as though reveling in the darkness.
While the other girls quivered in the shadow of God’s house, this woman basked in it.
I repressed a shiver as we rattled across the cobblestones, my mouth clamped firmly around my tongue again. If I kept this up, I’d never manage to open the thing again.
“Do not be afraid,” intoned the nun, and settled back into her permeating shroud of silence.
No small shadow will bow my back.
I reassured myself with the mantra despite the gooseflesh that pimpled my bare arms. The nun’s gaze fixed on me, as though taking notice for the first time, and I could have sworn a hiss issued from between her lips.
“Afraid the archangel will take you, courtesan?”
I raised an eyebrow but refused to take her bait. Courtesan, indeed. Every one of the girls in the cart—herself included, I would wager, was a virgin, though we were sent to claim our marital beds.
I glanced toward the medieval building, so out place, out of its time. Such establishments were commonplace in Paris, but here... The structure looked as though it had been hewn from the stone of the earth in some archaic nation and set afloat in this backwater community.
We followed the nuns to the front door of the abbey—plain and solid as I assessed on my first glance. Last of the line to slide down from the cart, I trailed the girls as they clustered together in a hushed, reverent silence. Each of us clutched our tiny caskets, nothing more than a line of orphans entering the gates of someone else’s home that would never be ours.
Pausing at the threshold where shadowed tendrils clung to my boots, I placed my hand on the stone entryway. Even in the humid air, the building maintained its cold heart. No sliver of sunlight warmed its dank interior.
A shiver rippled along my spine, as though the air was changed with the presence of another, unseen. I turned, surveying the cleared drive, but the earth stood empty and alone. Shaking off the fancy as superstition I’d let the austere nun talk me into believing, I slipped beneath the stone lintel and stepped into the confines of the abbey.
My new home.
For now.
We climbed stairs to the third floor, following in the wake of our silent minder. Little furniture or decorations of any sort marked bare walls, their surfaces scarred and smoothed in an irregular pattern. One by one, each of us were ushered into small, sparsely decorated rooms with no more than an order to wait.
On what? The second coming, perhaps. My stomach grumbled. It had been a while since we last ate before the ship docked. That moment of stepping from the vessel seemed an age ago, though a few scant hours had passed since gnats nipped at my flesh, and I farewelled the friend I made during our passage.
Be safe. I hope he is good to you.
Whoever her he turned out to be. Yet another unknown in each of our futures, in my future.
Ignoring the residual swaying high in my belly, I focused on the present. Already I had spent too many hours fretting over things I couldn't control. My door was a stout fixture, the wood scarred from years of abuse from unknown prior occupants. The dull metal handle appeared to have been out of use for some time, matching my assessment of the entire third floor.
Why are they hiding us away up here like wraiths come to haunt the place forever?
More ridiculous notions. The abbey functioned on the lower floors, surely, though our tour hadn’t included a glimpse into that aspect of the nun’s life. Each room there would be taken up with a nun and her duties; they housed us above to prevent each orphan from inflicting change on their regular habit. That was all.
My feet began to ache, swelling within the worn leather. I looked around, surprised to find myself alone on the landing. The door leading from the stairs and the levels below closed with a thud that echoed along the narrow hallway. A halting screech added to the ricocheting sounds as a bolt was slung home on the other side.
Have the nuns heard the rumors we spread around the ship?
But how could they? We had arrived ourselves a few scant hours before.
With nothing else to distract me, I shot a glance in both directions along the empty hallway, pressed my hands to the heavy wood and pushed my door open.
The room—cell—was spartan, in keeping with the rest of the abbey. Walking beneath the lintel seemed a monumental effort, shedding my skin into a new life, though the mere barrier of a single step separated me from a bare hallway into an even more minimalist room.
A small table that held a bowl of thin, unidentifiable gruel sat next to a thin-framed bed. I placed my little box on the floor beside my mattress, hoping it was clean of earwigs and fleas. Those were rampant on the ship, and I’d taken pleasure in hunting down each critter and squishing it as a part of my pre-bedtime ritual.
I spooned the heavily spiced soup into my mouth. The lumps hid whatever the true flavor was, and I suspected I should be thankful for that. As the sun sank below the horizon through a small glassed, barred window, shadows lengthened across the room. Given no candle, I huddled beneath my thin blanket and tried not to think of the man who would collect me at dawn.
As it was, I didn't have to wait that long.
Wrapped in a threadbare, smoky-scented cloak, I got married to a nun. Or rather, married by proxy. A nun whisked me from my room with a hiss, bundling me and my meager possessions down the stairs to the ground floor where I waited alone in a shroud of darkness.
At the foot of the drive stood a carriage, a silhouette in the moonless night. The Abbess—noteworthy in her pristine robes at an indecent hour—performed the ceremony in a spate of Latin she rattled off while my brain wondered how on earth things could possibly be so different in this backward country.
The only words I recognized were my own, and my husband’s name.
Sebastian Lammert Aguillard.
I rolled his name—now my own—around in my head, memorizing it, testing it to see how our names sounded together. Gisella Marie Aguillard. It didn’t sound too bad, and Sebastian was a clean name on its own. I imagined a rotund man with a tanned face from the deadly bayou’s blistering sun, perhaps a donkey or a cart in the background.
Why go to such lengths to maintain secrecy?
I had no doubt that this midnight ceremony conducted in the quiet hours hidden away from any eyes whatsoever outside of its circle was of a covert nature.
While I had no objection in being married by a woman—to ostensibly yet another woman—I was certain Rome would have plenty to say about it. My father, too. But he’d given those rights away when he sold me to the King of France's pithy whim.
The ceremony concluded, the nun I’d married faceless in the dark of night pressed a paper-thin hand to my forehead, whispering a frantic blessing over me before I was hastened into the waiting carriage at the foot of the abbey’s drive.
Such a short time. A few hours and already I miss the peace of my threadbare room, away from the sisters who without whom I was suddenly bereft.
Better the devil you know…
My future merged with the present until I was left in a void between my past life and my future fate, alone and exposed in a midnight purgatory. Swallowing my fear where it joined uncertainty somewhere in the depths of my stomach, I studied the carriage before me.
Covered in the shadow of night, there was no detail, no coat of arms visible on the door. The door opened silently, well oiled. The driver, swathed in a heavy cloak of darkness, stared down at me from his high perch. Something about him seemed…wrong. I could see him, but not sense him, as though he were a painting and not really there at all. I nodded briskly, unwilling to trust my voice, and stepped into the void within.
A dark velvet covered the bench cushions as I settled into the interior. Without waiting for a rap of knuckles or a shouted order, the carriage lurched forward as soon as I had seated myself.
I clutched my little box against my chest until my skin ached, the bumpy road away from the abbey no better than the one from the docks. I hoped it would be a shorter trip, but my midnight rousing stilled with the miles of countryside passing by that I couldn’t see. Soon enough, my eyes grew bleary, and I closed them, seeking the silence of sleep.
When the driver stopped for relief, I stowed the casket beneath my seat, clamping my boots over it for the last part of our journey, however long it might be. Something heavy rolled against my fingers as I fidgeted with the box. A quick rap on the door startled me—he was much faster than I assumed.
“Madame.” A shuffling noise accompanied his fist, rapping on the roof of the carriage. “When you’re ready.” His voice was rough, carrying the edge of midnight secrets in it.
A frisson ran over my skin at his tone. I tugged my cloak about my body, as though it would be anything but a poor defense if the man proved untrustworthy. My mind disagreed; arguing its case that the man would protect me as efficiently as he towed me from one destination to the next in the midst of night should some unfortunate circumstance befall our voyage.
“Ready,” I called out, extracting what looked like an exceptional bottle of beaujolais . I fiddled with the neck until a corkscrew rolled timely onto my boot. When in need… Smiling at my own half-formed humor, I inserted the thing with little finesse and hoped the coachman wouldn’t hit any bumps in the interim.
Freed of its enclosure, the heady scent of berries and ash filled the small cabin. Glinting in the small light of the coach lamps, I made out the label, Sister’s Landing. A squat building was etched above the variety.
Yet another abbey.
I determined never to go there.
The bottle kept me company over many miles of rough terrain, and when we arrived at our destination, the ground was decidedly unstable. I rose on wobbly legs, unsure if the air had infected the wine, or if New Orleans had infected me . I teetered on my boots, muttering under my breath about sleepy feet and pitched unceremoniously forward.
The coachman caught me as I toppled from the step to what appeared to be several paces to the ground. Large, calloused hands gripped my body until I seemed impossibly fragile before his bulk. I gasped as his thick arm wound around my waist, tugging me back against his body.
His frame was hard, like granite. Leaning back into him was nothing like innocent forays with the youths of my limited debut; this man was colder than a gravestone, contained within the same stillness. I spun around, but his gloved hands cinched my waist, offering no release.
A jolt passed through my body, my core clenched as he leaned into me, his cool breath wreaking havoc on my senses. That same sense of nothingness despite the evidence my body offered niggled at me.
But the man’s presence…God above. Had he given me an order, I would have followed it without question. Authority exuded from him, and my body reacted to his silent demand, softening in his grasp.
“I am not, I mustn’t—” I couldn’t force the right words past my lips beneath his midnight gaze. His eyes were fathomless in the depths of the night. As the false dawn approached, he squeezed my waist as though testing my mettle. Sensation zinged through me at the contact, while my mind screamed at me to move . But I didn’t want to move. I whimpered and attempted to cover the moment of weakness with an unladylike cough. “Let me down,” I hissed. My breath puffed between the bared flesh of his neck and my cheek. “This cannot happen .”
I made it a statement; no sir as the English had their habit. Every word pushed against some insatiable desire to give into this man. But we were no longer in England, or France, or Europe.
Instead, I had been dunked into this edge of primordial sludge and told to make a life of it.
Lost in my reflections, I realized the coachman still had a hold of me as I reached back to collect my box. I froze, repressing the urge to squeal—for what an ignominious noise that would be—and waited for him to remove his hands, as requested.
As I demanded.
Donning defiance as my shield, I tilted my head back and stared haughtily down my nose; a habit picked up from a previous abbey and a past life I shucked in return for humid air and biting insects.
“Only if you do not wish it.” His reply to my demand brushed over the nape of my neck in a brief caress.
I shivered. His counteroffer had a finality to it as he swept inside, his thick cloak swirling around his shoulders.
Then the contact was gone, and a whisper of cold air remained in the wake of his touch.
Another footman rushed forward to attend me. I stood inert, wondering what just happened, mulling over his words.
Only if you do not wish it.