Chapter 2
Two
The nights were my retreat. A time away from the facade I am meant to play—to be the doll I was brought up to be.
I often lingered in Father’s old study. The smell of the musty books and the creaks of the house reminded me of the shifting loneliness eating at my insides from within these placard walls.
I opened the window to the spring air’s evening chill. The clatter of hooves and wheels on cobblestone mingled with the hushed whispers of men patrolling the streets.
The window was three stories up, a decent fall and more of a reasonable way out than wasting away.
Quick and simple.
I traced the window ledge with my fingers up onto the shelves to the small piano Father hidden in his study. I tapped lightly on the keys, which were horridly out of tune but playable.
The song came to me, the familiar melody haunting my sleepless dreams ever since Father’s death and the disease laid upon me.
As I pushed back on the bench, my fingers quickened the pace to a crescendo trembling—screaming in high trills and echoing off dusty books.
Fingers flew as I slammed into the keys the odd tune that had come to me night after night.
After coming down to an end into a softness, it took me a moment to realize Miriam was standing at the door fully dressed.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
“Mmm. What are you still doing up?”
Miriam winked, softly shutting the door behind her. “Promise you won’t tell Mama.”
“Tell Mama what?”
Miriam went to the window, whistling out to a passing group of men. With a wink, she hiked up her skirt and draped her leg off the ledge. She pressed her back against the frame, weaving her hands into her golden hair and smiling down on them.
“Oh my, I must have been stricken by that of the green faerie,” she lamented down below.
I raised a brow to Miriam, words pressing to my lips, when one of the men called, “Unto the sweet nectar does a goddess drink, mad that she may be to revel in dreams on tis of nights.”
Miriam knocked against the window, and a rope and hook made their appearance as she lowered them down.
The man placed a basket of brown bottles onto the hook and waved her on before disappearing into the shadows.
Miriam heaved the basket up, arms trembling. “Don’t just stand there, help me.”
I took hold of the rope until the bucket was inches from the ledge. Miriam collected the two bottles and placed them onto Father’s desk, then stashed the gear into the closet.
I pointed to the bottles. “Miriam, what is this?”
“It’s absinthe.”
“Absinthe?”
She popped open the cork, placing the bottle under my nose, the strong scent of licorice and spice coating my senses.
I fished out my handkerchief from inside my breast pocket and coughed. “Never heard of it.”
Miriam smiled, dancing her way through Father’s study, where she fetched glasses and poured the green liquid into the crystal.
“Well, it is delightful, and it is what many call the forbidden aphrodisiac of the self. Claris found a local supplier nearly a month ago. Want some?” Miriam held the glass out aloft and without hesitation.
I did not know much about the forbidden drink, but I did know one thing, if it was forbidden, then it is for a reason. But not without curiosity did I fully intend to tell her no.
I took the glass, the green liquid staring back. “How did you find this?”
Miriam sipped her drink, leaning back on the desk.
“One of the gentlemen walked into the tea shop that Mama is so fond of and asked for la fée verte, to which I overheard the man scolding the worker to hide the bottles better. I got interested enough to ask the newsboy about it and agreed to assist in my adventures.”
I sipped, the warmth coating my throat and burning its way through to my stomach. Licorice and mint buzzed against my taste buds languidly, intimate and tender upon the flesh.
“I didn’t know you were one to partake in such activities.”
“Life does get a little dull around here with Mama shuffling you around to these appointments that I ought to have a little fun, don’t you think, dear sister?”
“I assure you it is not for my own enjoyment,” I muttered into my glass.
“I’ve also gone to those wrestling matches that the men always go to. Now that was fun! Did you know that they have a whole betting system in place? Simply scandalous to lose so much money on the betting table, but, oh, isn’t it just thrilling! I can see why Father was so enticed!”
As I stared out into the endless night, the moon glittered against the faint stars, its roundness within the sky dictating the time in which I had left.
No possible time to figure out the meaning of enjoyment, not the way it was nearly six months ago.
The box of roses sat out on the ledge was all, but a barren box of dirt had all the time in the world to bloom and see night turn into day until a time it found its way back into the dirt from which it was born.
It had a purpose and a life to find those mysteries and adventures.
To me, I was nothing more than the box of dirt, promised to preserve others.
“Either way,” Miriam declared, “Mama is not to know. That would defeat the whole fun of it.”
“What about suitors?”
“What about them?”
“Are you not worried about what they might think of your lurid activities?”
Miriam sat her glass down. “Ladies of the ton talk, but the men do not. Besides, whenever I go out, I always make sure that I am disguised as a proper gentleman so as not to draw suspicion,” she said with a twitch of her brow, jumping off the table.
She tucked the bottles underneath her bodice.
Opening the door to the study, she wearily gazed back.
“Better get some rest. Tomorrow is going to be a pretty important day.”
I drank down the liquor, the cool buzz carting off the burning fire of my lungs with a different fire all the same. “I wouldn’t say meeting my husband-to-be is that important.” I sighed.
Miriam lingered at the door, returning a half-hearted smile. “I am sure that he is everything you dreamed,” she said, shutting the door behind her and taking off down the hall with la fée verte.
Remnants of the drink stained the bottom of the glass in that sickly green hue.
Much alike, the glass and I, remnants left within me were waiting to be refilled in whatever made me whole.
Unlike it, I’d never have the sweet aphrodisiac to fill me time and time, a blissful escape from the horrors I live in.
The nightmares of living.
Father’s grave was in the further part of the cemetery. The overcast sky provided a reprieve from the onslaught of heat, and the cool morning hours offered the kind of solace unfamiliar to me. The orange lilies in my hand bobbed as I walked the path to his gravestone.
The wet grass soaked into my thin dress, darkening its soft pink shade. Even in the somber embrace of the cemetery, I felt the world around me brighten, a welcome sensation against the darkness itching under my skin. When I arrived, I coughed into my handkerchief and laid the flowers at his grave.
“Father, it’s been sometime.” I sighed. “I hope you know that Mama and Miriam will be fine because of me, and I hate that for them.” I sat, the words Requiescat In Pace stared back, mocking me with every ounce of my fiber. “If you had just accepted your hubris, I would still have a life to live!”
Venom spewed from my lips, and I unfolded every single grievance I held for the man. The vile and vitriol I hid from others spilled out of me to a deceased man responsible for all our pain and suffering.
For my pain and suffering.
“After everything, you’re dead, and I’m sure to follow when all I wanted to do was escape, to see the world—perhaps, at one point, play the piano on a grand stage.
But now . . . now I’m trapped with no other choice but to dig us out of your mess.
” I picked at the dew-soaked grounds, tearing up blades of grass.
Dirt and water soaked my skirt, digging into my knees, as I flickered to the lilies I left on the stone, the irony of their meaning not lost on me.
I’d planned to leave this summer to travel, to carve out my own path in the world, in spite of Mama’s protests.
I had everything packed when the storm broke, and in a few short days, my dreams died.
Trampled into the ground as our family’s legacy was on the brink of collapse with the debt and my illness.
Once my chest felt lighter and all the words trapped within were spilled to dead, I lapsed into silence, listening to crows cawing in the distance.
“Those were quite the words for a dead man. You really didn’t hold anything back at all.” I snapped my head up to see the stranger from the other day.
He was wearing the trench coat, the brim of the hat lifted enough to see a playful grin cross full lips.
I stood, dusting my hands against my dress. “You heard all of that, yet you are bold enough to approach. Ever heard of privacy when grieving.”
The man gestured outwards to the empty cemetery, a silvery band glittering softly against his finger. “There’s no one around, and I was out taking a stroll when I spotted a beauty among the headstones.”
“Flattery will only get you so far.” I strayed a glance to the path behind him, heat rising to my cheeks.
It’d be troublesome if someone were to catch me talking with a man alone. Yet a part of me wished it to happen to make getting out of my impending circumstance a little easier than running.
Though I simply sighed and prepared to depart. “Pretend you didn’t see me. It would be hard to suppress a rumor that I was caught unchaperoned in a cemetery, and I don’t want to explain why I was here alone.”
“And why did you choose to come to a cemetery alone at this hour?” he asked, brows knitted together. A few strands of hair fell loose from a ponytail draped over his shoulder and shifted as he cocked his head. “I can’t imagine it was for the company.”
A murder of crows cawed at us from a moss-covered angel statue. Their beady eyes trained on us as they squawked with amusement—as if they were laughing.
“It’s not something I want to discuss with a stranger. After all, you chose to take a stroll in such a somber place, and I chose to yell at a dead man. Perhaps these are mysteries neither of us shall know of the other.”
“Yet you chose to come alone without a chaperone in sight, a little dangerous to do as a young lady. I could easily snatch you up and whisk you away without anyone to know your whereabouts,” he pointed out to anyone with a reasonable mind.
Yet I was not reasonable, not since my life had become theirs, with the likelihood of me lying next to Father by winter.
“Please.” I leveled my tone, suppressing the urge to speak my intrusive thoughts. “You wouldn’t be having a conversation with me if that’s what you intended to do, much less declare your intentions. I could very well scream, and someone will come running.”
The stranger shook his head, a small laugh reverberating in his throat, its velvety warmth out of place for a cemetery. “You are so different from what I had expected.”
I stilled, heart thundering in my chest. “I assume you were expecting a grieving mess, unable to string a sentence together without wailing.”
The grin faded, the stranger’s face falling into a somber expression. “I lost someone long ago, too, so I know how hard it can be to . . . adjust to their absence.” The stranger touched the brim of his hat, dragging it down over his eyes.
The unsettling appearance made me think it was a new fashion trend or a new cosmetic surgery to account for his strange appearance. Theories ran in my head. Perhaps a botched surgery was why he hid underneath a coat and hat.
“Sometimes, I come here as well to stalk along the gravestones to not feel so alone.” The man stepped closer, towering at least a foot over me.
His broad frame could easily swallow me whole.
If I were to die here rather than my slow-crawling fate, perhaps it’ll ease Mama and give her some pity points with the ton once the scandal is revealed.
Idle thoughts like these often pass through my head, which was why I came here of all places.
It appeared only the dead could listen to my despair.
Despite all of this, I wasn’t afraid when he took my hand, to be out in the open with someone who was not my betrothed. Although he was not my intended, the small comfort warmed my chilled body as a new strange feeling took hold.
I clutched my chilled fingers to my chest, muttering, “I fear I must be going.”
The stranger stepped aside, the motion rustling the tense air between us. “I won’t hold you up more than I already have.”
I walked down the path, my heels against the stone my only companion, as the early morning sun rose higher, dispelling the last bit of the cool air. Only when I reached the wrought-iron cemetery gates did I glance behind me to find the stranger had disappeared.