Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Charlotte closed her eyes, doubling over the moment Nathaniel placed her on his mahogany four-post bed.
She breathed in his scent as she wrapped herself in his plum sheets, wincing as heat soared through the mark.
Peering around, she noticed the faded pictures hanging over baroque black wallpaper, each one of beautiful landscapes with sunsets.
Flames crackled from the small, cast-iron fireplace, smoke pillaring from the burning logs.
“Get Katherine!” Nathaniel’s voice bellowed from the doorway.
She glanced up in time to see Zachariah speed away in a blur, and Alexander walk inside. They shared a quick, heated discussion before he too, left.
After a long exhale, Nathaniel turned to face her, his fingers gripping the deep wood of his dresser.
Coughing, Charlotte doubled over in pain, a fever consuming her mind. “I’m dying.”
She wasn’t sure if she’d spoken the words aloud until she heard his response.
“You will survive this.” His voice was so certain that she almost believed him.
“Agh!”
Pulled mercilessly from the comfort of his bed, Charlotte was plunged into a hallucination of a memory so potent she could smell her father’s cigar burning from the tray on the table.
“Charlotte,” her father said, smiling from the armchair. “Are you ready for your first ball?”
“I think so.”
She ran her fingers over her cheeks, trying not to wipe away the coverage, but it was so damned itchy. She’d tried her best to coat enough of the powder on her cheeks and nose to counteract the dust of freckles smattered across the middle of her face, but the faint tan still shone through.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“It’s the powder Mother put on my cheeks and nose.”
“Come, let’s wash it off.”
“I can’t. I need to be pristine tonight. It’s the only thing that covers my freckles.”
His brows creased. “Heavens, sweetpea. Why would you want to cover them?”
“Everyone thinks they’re ugly.”
He took a drag from his cigar pipe and blew out a billow of smoke. “Ridiculous. There is no girl more beautiful than my daughter. Believe me, one day, the woman in society will paint freckles on their faces so they can look more like you.”
A laugh bubbled from her mouth. She knew he truly meant it too. “I hope tonight goes well,” she said, picking at her cuticles. “I don’t want to be mocked.”
“You tell me if anyone says anything untoward to you,” he said with a lopsided smile and smoothed down the sides of his black hair. “I’ll have them exiled.”
She leaned forward and grinned. “You are silly.”
He walked to her and pulled her to his side in a hug before kissing the top of her head. “You know I’d do anything for you, sweetpea. Now, off we pop.”
Before she could hold on to him and give him another hug, she was forced out of her memory in a splash of icy cold water, meeting the sting of loss all over again.
Tears welled in her eyes when she sat upright to find Nathaniel holding her hand.
“What happened?” he asked, wide-eyed. “You were convulsing and muttering.”
Blinking slowly, fresh tears slid down her cheeks.
“I slipped into a memory of my father, one I’d forgotten until now.
” Heaving back a sob, she added, “I never mourned him. What they did to him tainted all the good memories,” she said, groaning as a fresh wave of agony seared not only through her body, but her tender heart.
Katherine’s sharp tone cut through the room just as Charlotte tipped her head back, her heavy lids closing to the dim light. She hadn’t even noticed anyone had returned.
“It’s the hex,” Katherine told Nathaniel and sat on the bed, judging by the sudden dip beside her. “It’s going to force her to relive her worst pain, heighten it until she wants to die. For her, it is grief.”
“I trapped the demon,” Charlotte spluttered. “In a salt circle.”
“It does not matter,” Katherine said. “She can still influence you from there. She wants her to end her life.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Nathaniel said gruffly. “What can be done?”
“I spoke with Gertrude, but she won’t tell us how to help. No matter what I tried.” She let out a long sigh and said, “But I might have something. I just need her grimoires, which I noticed were gone,” Katherine said, and Charlotte’s stomach knotted. She still didn’t trust her.
“They’re in my room,” Charlotte relented as the pain got worse.
“Do what you must and it better work,” Nathaniel warned. “Don’t forget our deal, Katherine. You know what I’m capable of.”
A brief silence hung between them before Charlotte heard muffled footsteps leave the bedroom. She felt someone squeeze her hand, the sound of her name echoing in her ears before she fell into another memory, this time at Lovett Manor with her sister.
Charlotte stood in the doorway of Alice’s room, pushing her slippered foot sliding across the threshold.
Alice’s mellifluous tone sounded from her bed. “What is it?”
“I can’t sleep,” Charlotte replied.
“Call Edith for some chamomile tea.”
Charlotte chewed on her lip and walked inside. “Can I sleep here?”
Alice’s head tipped back with a heavy sigh, her blonde waves spreading across the silk pillowcase. Even in her nightgown, with no powder on her nose, she looked beautiful. Not that Charlotte would tell her that. She wouldn’t believe her if she did.
“No. You snore,” Alice countered with a slight smirk tilting her rosy lips.
“I do not.”
“That must be why you’re not yet married,” she teased, dragging them back to a recent conversation.
Charlotte scowled in her direction until her smile cracked the tension, and they both laughed. “I don’t want to marry.”
“Liar,” Alice said and continued embroidering her tulips onto a small, square pillow. “That’s what Father says. I’ve seen all your poetry books. You’re a romantic.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes and sat in the armchair below the window. Beyond it, ribbons of navy-blue blended together, alight with pinpricks of a thousand stars. It really was a beautiful night. “I haven’t found anyone I like yet. Besides, no one calls on me. They think I am odd.”
“You are odd,” Alice teased and placed her needle and thread down. “It is not a bad thing. They are simply envious, for they are far too normal. You will find a wonderful man to marry soon. You must, if you have any hope of leaving here.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
Alice’s light brows knitted together. In the lightest of whispers, she said, “Of course you do! I won’t be here to protect you anymore and Mama is, well, she can’t help you either.”
“Father isn’t himself. He will be okay soon. It is the stress from business.”
“You make excuses for him,” Alice said, lowering her voice to a whisper, her green gaze flitting to the door before she stared at Charlotte, who felt two inches tall under her sister’s hardened stare.
Charlotte leaned forward, her fingers crowning her knees. “After the wedding, things will go back to normal. Of that, I am certain.”
Her lips parted, eyes turning cold. “So you are saying I am the problem? That it is my being here why he can’t control his damned temper?”
“No!” Charlotte spluttered quickly. “It’s just, well, your marriage will bring us more wealth and opportunity.”
She shook her head. “Why do you defend him?”
Goosebumps traveled over Charlotte’s arms and legs.
Her sister was right. He’d grown more aggressive as of late, but after she confronted him he promised her things were going to be different now.
No matter how dysfunctional things could get, they were a family.
They only had each other, and Charlotte desperately wanted them to be close again, like they used to be when they were children.
“He’s our father.”
A defeated smile passed through her pouted lips. “You know I love him, Lottie. I do. No matter what he’s done, but I can’t—” Her voice broke. “I can’t leave you here with him. I’m scared for you. Something has changed inside him. He can turn on a penny and if he hurts you or worse.”
“He would never go that far, Alice,” she said pointedly, her brows raised. “You know he wouldn’t! He loves us.”
“You’re just like Mother. You both try to rationalize his behavior. Just promise me one thing: that if you’re ever in danger, you will leave. You will always have a home with me, no matter who I am married to.”
Charlotte smiled the toothiest grin. “Is this your way of saying you will miss me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Alice replied, and put the pillow on her bedside table. “Now, I am weary. You should get some rest too. Tomorrow is the Pennyworth ball.”
“Okay. I will try.” She stood and walked to the door. “Goodnight, Alice.”
Alice called out to her before she could leave. “And keep that cat away from your new dress too. The last thing we need is for you to be covered in fur.”
Charlotte tsked. “His name is Duke.”
She could hear her exasperated sigh from inside. “Why you keep him is beyond me. He is a wild animal and is likely plagued with disease.”
“Well, so is Charles Eringhorn and you still want him,” Charlotte quipped, and stepped out the way just as a pillow came hurtling in her direction.
“Close the door behind you!” she shouted, but Charlotte purposely left it an inch open. If only to aggravate her for saying that about Duke.
“Love you, Sister,” Charlotte sing-songed and walked back to her room.
Her breath halted in her lungs as she hurtled back to the present. Sitting up, she spluttered and coughed, regret drowning her.
Nathaniel’s stormy gray eyes became the anchor in her sea of grief. “Katherine is bringing a potion,” he stated when she managed to fix her stare on him without toppling to one side from the dizziness. “It won’t be long now.”
With a sniffle, she tried to hold it back, but tears flooded again. “I said so many stupid things to my sister. If I had known what would happen, I wouldn’t have said them because she was right about what our father would do, but only because he was possessed.”