Chapter Four
CHAPTER FOUR
GISELLA
M y heart thundering in my chest in a delayed response after I left the carriage and the strange shadow man behind, I followed the tall valet who carried my tiny casket that contained my scant belongings to my room.
S uite was more appropriate.
I barely saw the house or its halls, stumbling over my own feet in my haste to keep up with the speedy man, but I saw plenty of my own room, turning circles on the plush, patterned carpets, standing in the starlight that filtered through the arched windows.
My new home was a tower room. Bring in the dragon if you will, sir. Perhaps a moat to complete the picture. My accomplice scurried off, leaving me alone in my second new home on the same day.
Married to a nun, swept away to a castle home.
Even I could see that the building, though common in my homeland, was out of place in this new world. All flat sands and rivers and archaic reptilian nightmares…my new home looked so out of place I struggled to understand how my husband had built the place unless by pure force of will alone.
Clearly, I’d hit the realm of fantastical notions. That thought could go right back into my casket, along with the intense coachman with his hungry eyes. I shivered, stepping outside my door and venturing a short distance along the hallway, but the shadows beckoned, and I darted back into my room, slamming the door shut and pressing my back to its unyielding surface.
I’d wake in the morning, still in my old room in my father’s house half a world away to discover this fairytale was all but a dream.
If it could be true.
I pushed away from the door, turning about the room too fast. The wine and my spinning took the mass of color with it, leaving me heady and swaying. I collapsed onto the bed, missing the pillows by a good measure. My aim didn’t matter; the mattress was enormous. I sank into its soft comfort, letting its plush surface curve around my weary body.
Too tired—or too drunk—to bother taking off my boots, I fell asleep in the same tattered dress I’d traveled across oceans to marry a man I hadn’t met yet.
My fleeting dreams were filled with shadows, midnight eyes in the face of a man I couldn’t see, and illicit kisses that faded as I awoke but craved all the same.
Daybreak, and breakfast, arrived far too early for my disposition; drapes were drawn aside with a combination of sighs and exclamations. Sighs from the army of maids who invaded my serene brand of darkness—such a happy plane to exist on a self-induced blue devil—and exclamations from me when sunlight burned my eyes. I rolled in my sheets, drowning in my pillow and using my sleep-matted hair as a barrier. If the staff were so enthused, couldn’t they visit another member of the household?
I burrowed deeper, swearing softly in my native tongue. A tap to my shoulder told me it was time to face the day. As gracefully as possible, I turned my rat’s nest of a head, certain it was nothing less, to the maid who proffered a pot of coffee beneath my nose.
“ Merci ,” I mumbled, attempting to sweep a tangle of frizzy knots from my face.
She gave me a bright smile and a bobbed curtsy. I watched the pot with no little trepidation. Being scalded on the morning I was to meet my new husband was not how I intended to spend my first day in a new life.
The young girl—she could surely be no more than six and ten, two younger than myself, perhaps—poured the coffee deftly into a porcelain cup decorated with minuscule cornflower blue patterns. It reminded me so much of the set Maman had kept for special occasions that my stomach lurched, accompanied by a prickling around the corners of my eyes.
I blinked rapidly, trying to disguise the panic rising inside me, and failed miserably if the look on the girl’s face was anything to judge by.
“What—” I swallowed with a dry throat, trying to form words. More coffee was offered beneath my nose, and I took a grateful sip. I nodded my thanks. “What’s your name?”
“Minette, madame.” Though her voice was clear and high, it was horribly mangled by the hideous accent I’d encountered on the docks.
Realizing that this was, in fact, the way they spoke here, I resolved to teach my maid— Minette —conversational French, at least.
“Well, Minette,” I enunciated each word as an example, but quickly, lest she assumed I thought her a simpleton, “Thank you for greeting the morning with me. Am I not to break my fast with—” I stumbled— what was I supposed to call him? “Ah, the Master of the House?”
Minette’s eyes widened, and she leaned forward, checking over her shoulder. I sighed; if this was their idea of intrigue, I was in for a very boring life. My heart panged at the mere memory of all that Paris encompassed that slipped away with every new moment I experienced in the new world.
“Oh no, madame,” she whispered, clutching the breakfast tray. Its contents rattled a little, and I was surprised to see her hands were shaking. “The master won’t be down until well into the evening. After the sun sets.” She gave me a sideways glance, fussed with the tray until she was satisfied it was set up correctly, and vacated the room without another word.
I stared into my bowl of congealed mess. Wilted berries swam in a scarlet pool of their own juices. The coffee that whisked my attention away a moment before turned nauseating in my stomach. I pushed the tray aside, extracting the coffee, and edged into the morning sunlight. My window overlooked the gardens, and a swampy forest beyond, dark and foreboding even in the morning light. There wasn’t another building in sight. Not a stable, nor a cottage.
Where was the plantation? We were all meant to be plantation owners’ wives, or so we’d been told. What other lies had we been fed? My throat tightened, restricting my breath in a noose-like style of my own making.
I was a continent away from everything I understood, in a place so totally unknown to me. Was I even in the right place? And who the hell had I married? In the space of a single night, I’d become the property of a man I’d never met.
“ Sacre bleu ,” I whispered.
I craned around the edge of my balcony, but was welcomed with the darkness we traveled through in the carriage and beyond, the bogs—pardon me, bayou, or so Amy had told me. Such a pretty name for a parasite-infested swamp housing ancient predators.
I slapped at one of the little insects, fat and healthy as it sucked on my arm. It exploded with the impact, splattering my skin in a stain that refused to budge. I swiped the gruesome mess away with the hem of my dress, ignoring the stain in both skin and skirt. Everything here seemed either intent on eating me or came from a myth that said they would.
My thoughts turned to my husband. Didn’t show himself until after dark? What a lazy man. And missing the best parts of the day, I groused, watching the sun rise. Light filtered over the odd trees below, giving it a sheen of life. I smiled, glad I could still appreciate the beauty of the sunrise, despite my own exhaustion.
My mind clicked back to my time on the ship with the other filles a la cassette , and the rumors we had encouraged. Was it possible the staff believed my husband to be a creature of the night?
I swallowed at the thought, tracing the landscape with my gaze alone as if seeking proof of the insidious idea, or assurance that I was as silly as the gaggle of girls I left behind at the convent. My gaze drifted across the greenery blooming amongst cultured gardens and wilderness beyond the heavy gray stone of the house. The foliage gave the impression of life, though the canopy protected whatever secrets lay beneath.
If the servants believed the Master to be a vampyre, I would struggle to find any sort of social life here, at all. That gave me pause. I dressed quickly in the pale peach gown the maid had laid out, grateful its simple ties allowed me the ability to dress myself. I knew I’d have to give that up at some point, but for today, I sent up a simple prayer of gratitude.
Brushing my own hair—a task the other Casket girls and I used to swap—felt strange, an almost lonely endeavor. Determined not to focus on the negative connotations, I took it instead as a foray into the independence of my new life in this new-to-me world. A smile bloomed across my face, and I headed for the door to my room with a lighter step.
Tying my blue sash to the door handle so I could find it again, I looked down the hall, which seemed to disappear into the darkness. This land is full of unearthly shadows . And…fanciful again. Fanciful, fanciful. It was my favorite word, one Amy taught me, her rose and pale skin glowing even within the ship’s lightless bowels.
Opposite my room stood a pair of doors, though I dared not open them in the event of waking said slumbering husband and finding an ogre in his place. Instead, I headed to the other end of the hall where an open staircase led to the lower floor—where I had entered last night, perhaps.
But the darkness beyond called to me.
The light flickered in brief spats along the walls. I took a hesitant step into the dim passage, my path lightened as I pushed forward, straining my eyes though I couldn't see much more than a dozen feet in front of my face. Still, I didn't let a little thing like lack of vision deter me. I was determined to make the most of my discovery time, free without servants clamoring household rules at me.
Finding my way through the enormous house—it missed out on castle status by perhaps a foot—was an interesting journey. Similar to my home, my father’s home, seeing as it hadn’t been mine in any aspect of the word for years, many of the rooms were furnished, but appeared not to be in use. Though each new door displayed an impeccably kept room, from the lack of any sort of warmth or feel, most hadn’t seen company for many years, or perhaps never.
A fa?ade of an enormous, out of place manor house, and an absentee master. It was the stuff that heralded fairy stories from my own country. If I turned widdershins three times around the gardens, perhaps the fêtes would whisk me away to yet another land, another life. Another Amy term I learned on board the ship.
So fanciful.
Servants galore passed me, bobbing their white caps with a slurred madame —I would never get used to their accent but promised myself to make the most of educating them as best I could as the mistress of the house. Another turn on a sharp corner, and I found myself in the same corridor I’d started in, staring at my own bedroom door. My blue sash dangled from the handle, exactly as I had left it. It moved slightly, though there was no breeze.
A breath brushed my nape, bringing my mind forcibly back to the erotic dreams I suffered through, their intimate, ghostly caresses, tossing me in my sleep to the thought that someone watched me in my room.
But when I woke, the dawn greeted me, bright and clean of any other presence. No phantom presence hung in my tower room, apart from the maid with her endless supply of happiness and food.
And yet, the same presence stood behind me now, in my wakeful moments.
Another breath, the barest caress on my skin meant my dreams were one thing, my reality another. In the lonely halls of a great house in the midst of nowhere, I wasn’t alone.