The Beautiful Ones (Field of Flowers #1)

PROLOGUE

ELIN

The frost on my windowpane had grown into the shape of gardenia petals—or perhaps it was merely the desire of my heart.

I noticed it shortly after midnight, when the fire had burned low and the wind off Lake M?laren rattled the timber walls of our cottage.

Such flowers did not grow in V?ster?s, certainly not in winter, and I had not seen a real gardenia in fourteen years.

Still, there they were—heavy, curling blossoms spreading across the glass as delicately as if some unseen hand had drawn them.

I could almost smell them. Indeed, I tried by pulling in a deep sniff but there was nothing.

Not yet.

I pulled the woolen coverlet beneath my chin and tried to look away.

Beside me, Lars slept with one hand tucked beneath his cheek. He was a good man, my husband. Good in the way a good man was. A mortal man.

Steady as the granite foundation beneath our cottage and gentle with his hands, even when anger might have excused roughness. His coarse socks hung beside the hearth, filling the room with the faint smells of pine smoke, wet wool, and honest sweat.

I loved those smells. They belonged to the life I had been given, even if it wasn’t the life I first wanted.

The gardenias belonged to the Other.

A branch scraped against the roof. I closed my eyes, but sleep did not return. Instead, I became aware of a sweetness in the room, faint at first and then unmistakable.

As if the Other knew that I was longing to see him.

I sat up.

The perfume thickened, settling at the back of my throat. I knew that scent. Once, I had believed it beautiful. Later, it had made me afraid.

“Not here,” I whispered. “Not now.”

The words were foolish. This was the moment I had been waiting for.

Lars stirred but did not wake.

I slipped from the bed and pulled my shawl around my shoulders. The floorboards were cold beneath my feet. I crossed the room quietly and stood before the frosted window, searching the darkness beyond it.

Nothing moved outside. The lake lay still beneath the winter sky, a vast gray sheet disappearing into the night. Snow rested upon the roof of the cowshed and covered the path leading toward the road. No carriage waited beyond our gate. No stranger stood among the pine trees.

Of course no one was there. Perhaps I was dreaming…

I touched the glass. The cold bit my fingertips, but I did not move my hand. A gardenia petal spread beneath it, white veins reaching across the pane.

Had the frost truly formed that shape, or had my tired mind supplied the memory?

I did not know which answer frightened me more.

Behind me, Lars breathed deeply and rolled onto his back. I waited until he settled, then turned toward the bed.

The trunk was beneath it.

For years Lars had allowed that little iron-bound box to remain there without asking what it contained. He knew I had carried it home from America. He believed it held a few letters, some keepsakes, and the papers relating to my service in Virginia.

That was partly true.

I knelt and reached beneath the bed. The trunk scraped softly across the floorboards as I pulled it toward me. I paused, listening for any change in Lars’s breathing, but he slept on.

The brass key hung from a chain around my neck. My fingers trembled as I fitted it into the lock.

“Foolish woman,” I scolded myself.

The lock clicked.

The smell of gardenias rolled out of the trunk.

I drew back so quickly that I nearly cried out. My heart fluttered against my ribs, quick and frightened as a trapped bird.

No flowers waited inside. There was only the folded contract bearing my old name, a small bundle of letters, a singed coral ribbon and a thin book of music tied with blue thread. Beneath them lay a pair of white gloves, yellowed with age and stained dark along the fingertips.

I had washed those gloves many times.

The stains had never faded.

I lifted the music book and traced the name written across its cover.

Cécile Lebon.

The letters were small and careful. She had written them herself during one of the long afternoons we spent together in the schoolroom at Le Champ des Fleurs.

Her hand had not suffered as her voice did.

On paper, Cécile never hesitated. Her words flowed freely, one after another, without a single cruel pause.

“Oh, my sweet girl,” I whispered. “I am sorry for what happened to you. I truly am.”

For a moment I could hear her playing in the schoolroom. Music rose through the hot Virginia air while white blossoms trembled beyond the windows. At the pianoforte, Cécile never hesitated. Her hands spoke with a freedom her tongue had never known.

A floorboard creaked behind me.

“Elin?”

I closed the music book.

Lars sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes. His pale hair stood up on one side, making him look younger than his thirty-seven years.

“What are you doing down there?” he asked.

“I could not sleep.”

“So you decided to unpack America?”

There was no suspicion in his voice. That made the lie harder.

“I wanted to find something.”

“Did you?”

I looked down at Cécile’s book. “I am not sure.”

Lars leaned forward, resting his arms upon his knees. The firelight shone warmly across his face.

“Was it the old dream again?”

He believed my silence began with the voyage home. I had suffered lung-fever aboard the ship and arrived in Sweden thin, weak, and nearly voiceless. Whenever I woke trembling or touched my lips in the darkness, Lars blamed the fever.

I had allowed him to believe it.

“It was not a dream,” I answered.

His expression changed. “What was it, then?”

The gardenia perfume lingered between us. Could he smell it? I searched his face for some sign of recognition, but he merely looked concerned.

I wanted to tell him.

I wanted to speak of the great house beside the James River and the beautiful, ruined families who had gathered there for one final summer. I wanted to tell him about the missing commander, the glasshouse, and the thousands of blue butterflies that rose from the earth when the truth was uncovered.

Most of all, I wanted to tell him about the man whose eyes glittered like river ice beneath a winter moon.

But where would I begin such a story? Even true stories were difficult to deliver at times.

With the contract I could barely read? How my parents betrayed me with servanthood? Poverty makes one do horrible things.

How would I begin? With Cécile seated at the pianoforte while the gardenias bloomed beneath the windows? With three strangers arriving in immaculate white clothing, untouched by the Virginia dust?

Or did the story begin much earlier, when three respectable men discovered how easily murder could be hidden beneath wealth and polished manners?

“Elin?”

I realized that Lars had been waiting for an answer.

“It is something that happened in Virginia.”

He glanced at the open trunk. “Something you have never told me?”

“Yes.”

“Are you in danger?”

The question surprised me. I looked again toward the window.

“No,” I said, but the gardenias filled my throat and made the word taste false.

Lars reached down and touched my cheek. His palm was warm and rough. Nothing in his eyes glittered. Nothing about his touch made me wonder whether I would survive it.

“Come back to bed,” he said. “You can tell me in the morning if you wish.”

He kissed my forehead and lay down again. The man I loved knew the path to my heart. My true heart. Within minutes, his breathing deepened, and I knew he had returned to sleep.

I remained beside the trunk.

The room grew quiet. The wind continued to worry the roof, but the gardenia perfume slowly faded. I began returning the contents to their places, setting the gloves beneath the contract and laying Cécile’s music book on top.

When I lifted the coral ribbon, I found a blue butterfly beneath it.

I had wrapped it carefully in a handkerchief after finding it caught in the lace at my shoulder. Its wings had once been brilliant, but time had dulled them to the color of an old summer sky.

One wing moved.

I froze.

The wing lifted again, slowly and delicately.

“No,” I whispered.

The butterfly righted itself in my palm. Its fragile legs touched my skin, light as eyelashes, before the wings opened to reveal a blue so vivid that no passing of years could have diminished it.

Then it flew.

I stumbled backward as it circled the room. Once, twice, three times it passed above the sleeping form of my husband. It settled upon the frozen window, directly over the largest gardenia etched into the glass.

Blue wings opened against the white frost.

The room grew cold.

I stared at the impossible creature until it disappeared. It did not fall or fly away. One moment it rested upon the glass, and the next there was nothing but frost.

I closed the trunk and locked it.

Sleep was impossible now. I went to the small writing table near the hearth, lit a fresh candle, and pulled a clean sheet of paper toward me.

For years I had avoided writing their names.

I feared that names carried power and that remembering might become a kind of invitation.

But silence had not protected me. Distance had not protected me.

Not even the cold waters between Virginia and Sweden had been enough to bury what happened at Le Champ des Fleurs.

I dipped my pen into the ink.

For a long while, I watched the black drop tremble at the tip. Then I touched it to the page and began.

They were young lions, or so we called them that summer, though there was nothing young in their eyes.