The Rose Bride (5 page)

It held the purple rose in its hand.

It whispered,
“I came from your lady, from Artemis. This journey will be hard. You may falter and you may give up. That is your choice. But if you stop, you stop before
journey’s end. And it is the journey your mother’s wish has set you on. If you will but carry the wound into the light, her dying wish will be granted. You are loved. If you undertake this journey, you will know that. And I promise you, little one, that is worth knowing.”

The being held out the rose.

“Do you accept it?”

“Oui,”
Rose said, in her dream on the cold mountain pass.

She reached out her hand to take the rose.

“Fear not. It is done.”

Who spoke against Rose’s ear?

“Papa?” Rose murmured into the warmth and joy and love. She had found him and her father was cradling her, calling her his own. He loved her. He loved her more than anything. . . .

“Oh, child, child,” Elise sobbed, rocking her back and forth.

Rose opened her eyes. She had been dreaming. It was her nurse who was holding her, not her father, and she was in her room, not on the mountain path.

“Papa!” she cried, trying to ease out of Elise’s tight embrace. But Elise wouldn’t let her go.

Over Elise’s shoulder, a long, pale face floated in the darkness like a ghost’s. It was a woman’s face, with unusually high cheekbones and deep hollows beneath. Slashes of black eyebrows arched over each eye. The lids were heavy and the eyes themselves, fathomless, ebony pools. As the face drew near, it became a woman, dressed in a hooded black traveling cloak. In her free hand she held a black scarf embroidered with the initials LM in red.

Laurent Marchand.

“I am Ombrine,” the woman said, biting off each syllable in a strangled voice as she twisted the scarf between her hands. Her French was heavily accented. “Ombrine Marchand. Your stepmother.”

Rose was astounded. Her heart thundered as she struggled to throw back the bedcovers and get to her feet. Her father, where was her father?

“Papa?” Rose rasped, searching the room with her gaze.

“He is dead,” Ombrine said flatly. “Laurent Marchand is dead.” Her features hardened; her brows drew across her forehead. “And you killed him.”

“No!” Rose cried and leaped out of bed. “Papa! Papa!”

Then the fever hit her, and she crumpled to the floor.

“He was on his way home for your birthday,” Ombrine explained to Rose, her heavily lidded eyes downcast as she touched Laurent’s handkerchief to her thin, bright-red lips. The lady was seated in a chair beside Rose’s bed. Elise had forced Rose back into bed and brought her a cup of wine, wrapping Rose’s hand around the stem of the cup with her own and tipping it back against Rose’s mouth. But Rose was too ill and shocked to drink. The wine sat on the table beside her bed, untouched.

Desirée, Ombrine’s fourteen-year-old daughter, stood beside her mother’s chair, her hand on
Ombrine’s elegant, straight shoulder. She looked like Ombrine, her black hair pulled back into a braid, revealing a long face of pale skin dominated by a high forehead and enormous, flinty eyes. Like her mother, she wore a black cloak.

Black became them well.

“When Laurent learned of your mother’s tragic end,” Ombrine continued, “he collapsed on the road. Some huntsmen found him and brought him to me. They thought he was dead, but I revived him. He lay in a stupor for nearly four months.”

“Four months is a very long time,” Desirée said.

“I devoted myself to his care, day and night, and I nursed him back to health. My own husband . . . my
previous
husband . . . died more than a year ago, and so it seemed . . . perfect. . . .” Her voice caught, and she lowered the handkerchief to her lap.

“There, there, Mother,” Desirée murmured as if she were bored. “You have suffered so.”

Ombrine glanced sharply at her daughter. Then she turned her attention back to her handkerchief.

“I am not complaining. I
told
him to stay abed. I told him he could send a messenger to let you know what had happened and to say that he would be home as soon as he was well enough to travel. But he wouldn’t have it. ‘No time for delay,’” she said, mimicking Laurent’s deep voice. “He was extremely worried.”

Ombrine turned her gaze to Rose. “Worried about you.”

You are loved
. She could almost hear the purple roses whispering the words to her.

“About me,” she whispered.

“
Oui,
” Ombrine declared. “He was
very
worried about you. He said you were high-strung and not very ... resourceful. He was fearful that you’d let the estate go to rack and ruin.”

Crushed, Rose slumped against her pillows. The room rocked crazily. Hot tears clouded her vision. Had that truly been his only concern? The estate?

Ombrine shifted in her chair and fingered the nearest creamy rose hanging, narrowing her eyes, seeing something there that Rose did not.

“I see that the deterioration has begun.” Ombrine snapped. “Or perhaps it was never quite as grand as he described it.” She gave the hanging a flick of her fingers.

“It’s not bad,” Desirée ventured. Then, at a look from her mother, she cleared her throat. “Although, not quite as grand as my stepfather said.”

Ombrine continued, sitting straight on a spine of iron. Her face floated in the dull light, her features blending with the shadows.

“So. Dear Laurent insisted on coming here with all due haste. He was still so weak. . . . When you were found this morning on the mountain pass, sick and in a faint, he thought you were dead. We all did. It was too much for him. His heart gave way.” She began to weep. “And now
he’s
dead.”

“There, there, Mother,” Desirée purred.

Rose burst into heavy sobs.

“Non, non, ma petite,”
Elise said, enfolding Rose in her arms. “It was not like that. He came because he loved you so and couldn’t wait to see you.”

“I killed him!” Rose moaned.

“Oui,” Ombrine replied. “It is so.”

“Madame,
please,”
Elise entreated.

“It’s better to have it all out at once,” Ombrine retorted. “And I will not have impertinence, do you understand?”

Elise pressed Rose hard against her bosom and raised her chin. “Madame, with all due respect.” Her voice shook and she held Rose so tightly that Rose couldn’t breathe. “I was told her father died in the afternoon. On the road, before the search party found Rose.”

“`Are you calling me a liar?” Ombrine asked in a cold, dangerous voice.

“She is, Mother,” Desirée assured her.

Rose clung to Elise, drowning. A tiny part of her knew that Elise was in trouble and she was afraid for her. If indeed this was her stepmother . . . but how could her father have a new wife? Less than half a year of mourning . . . how could he?

It was all wrong. Everything was wrong. False . . .

“For the love of the gods, give her the wine, if it will help to calm her down. In fact . . .” Ombrine reached into an inner pocket of her cloak and pulled out a small gold vial studded with rubies. She flicked open the hinged lid with her red fingertip. “Give it to me.”

Silently Elise handed her the goblet. Ombrine tilted the vial, and a black, viscous liquid seeped out. The first large, thick drop hung from the lip, then plopped into the wine.

Ombrine put in three more drops. Then she snapped the lid shut and put the vial back in her sleeve.

“
Et voilà,”
she said.

Elise took it. Studying it, she hesitated and said to Rose, “You’re calmer now, eh,
mon enfant?
You don’t need this?”

Despite her wild grief, Rose heard the urgency in her nurse’s voice. Elise didn’t want Rose to drink the wine. She didn’t trust Ombrine.

“Give it to her,”
Ombrine bit off. “Or I’ll have you whipped for your disobedience.”

“I’ll take it, madame,” Rose said quickly. But as she took the cup, she pretended to hiccup and let go of it. The goblet crashed to the floor, spraying wine in a flume.

“Ah,
non!”
Ombrine cried. Her ebony skirts rustled as she leaped to her feet.

“I am sorry!” Elise said, taking the blame.

“It is as he said. Everyone here is dim-witted and clumsy,” Ombrine muttered. “Well, no matter to me. This is an old cloak and I have others. But this ...
was
one of a kind.”

She swept a graceful motion downward to the floor and gathered something up that must have fallen off the bed.

Rose cried out. It was her magnificent birthday
gown. The starry skirt showed a purple wine stain the size of an embroidery hoop. Ombrine folded the delicate fabric in half, then in half again, then again.

“At any rate, you won’t be needing it,” she said, turning away with the gown crumpled like a rag against her chest.

Desirée trailed after her. “Give it to me,” she urged.

“Nonsense,” Ombrine told her daughter. “It’s ruined.”

“We can cut it down,” Desirée said, digging her fingers into the dainty tissue. “I’ve not had such a lovely thing in ever so long, Mother. Before the fire—”

Ombrine’s icy stare moved from Desirée’s fingers to her face. “Show some decency. We’re all in mourning.”

Ombrine stopped at the door and waited for Desirée to open it.

With a huff, Desirée stabbed her thumb against the handle and yanked open the door. “He wasn’t my father.”

As soon as the door was shut, Rose begged Elise to help her get out of bed. Her forehead was burning.

“Take me to him. It’s a mistake. It’s not my father.”

Elise sniffled as she laced up the back of Rose’s gown. When she was done, she laid a hand on Rose’s shoulder.

“I saw him,
ma petite
. It is Laurent. His own physician has signed a death certificate, and—”

“Don’t say that,” Rose begged. “It’s a trick. That horrible woman has arranged all this. My father wouldn’t . . . he wouldn’t
die.”

Elise cupped Rose’s face with her hands and stared hard into her eyes.
“Attends-moi
. Listen to me, my darling.
You did not kill him
. No matter what happens next, it was not your fault.”

But Elise’s words carried no more weight than a whisper on a breeze.

The funeral was arranged at lightning speed. Monsieur Valmont had taken the liberty of sending riders to invite the masters and mistresses of the nearby estates to the funeral. Ombrine was livid, insisting that she was unprepared to meet her new neighbors in the midst of tragedy.

Laurent’s corpse lay on a bier in the family vault, and Rose could not deny that it was he. His skin was waxy and gray. His dear cheeks were sunken. He looked dead, but Celestine had told Rose stories of people who appeared to be dead, only to revive when someone who truly loved them gave them a kiss. So Rose bent over him and kissed his cheek. His skin was ice-cold. Life had left him.

Choked with despair, she ran from the vault and raced to the rose garden. Rose pressed her face into the purple blossoms and inhaled their perfume. They smelled like her mother.

The bitterest tears came, and she clenched her fists against her terror and her despair as the roses whispered to her,
“You are loved. You are loved.”

“I’m not.”

She fell against the ground and wept, her fingers
digging into the soil as if she would climb into the earth and hide in the darkness there forever.

“You are loved,”
the roses insisted.

Elise found her an hour later. Her skirts furled wide, she ran to Rose’s side and lifted her from the mud. She ran her fingers through Rose’s silvery-golden hair, plaiting it quickly.

“Your . . . that
woman
wants you at the funeral feast,” the nurse said. She wiped Rose’s dirty cheeks and hands with her apron.
“Vite, ma belle
. She’s very angry.”

She led her to the silvery stream, and Rose looked at her reflection. Her starry midnight-blue eyes stared back at her, puffy from weeping. Elise dipped the hem of her apron into the water and washed her face. Rose was beyond caring what she looked like and whether or not her new stepmother was angry with her.

“That’s better,” Elise said, appraising her young lady. “Now . . .” She looked left and right, then put her finger to her lips. Then she lifted up her black skirts, revealing Rose’s birthday gown tied like a petticoat around her waist. It sparkled and glittered as she gathered up the skirts. “We can embroider a beautiful rose over the stain. It will be purple, like your favorite roses.”

“Oh,” Rose cried softly. “Oh, Elise,
merci.”
She thought then of the cloak she had been stitching for her father, and she had laid it across him in his sarcophagus.

“Not a word,” Elise warned her, smoothing down her skirt and pulling her dear young lady into her arms. “Tragedy will turn to triumph. Your dress will be even more lovely than before. And the tide of all this misfortune will turn as well. You’ll see.”

Elise walked Rose into the great hall, where the feast had been set. There were two dozen guests milling in a hall meant to hold two hundred. Most of the servants were not present, although Rose knew it was the Marchand custom to share the feast with everyone on all the important days. A few moved among the guests, pouring mulled wine into Celestine’s golden goblets. The main table, which was yards long, was covered with her mother’s most precious white silk tablecloth, and set with what was left of her precious dishes. It was spectacular. Haunches of venison and pork steamed on gold platters; cinnamon, cardamom, and nutmeg thickened the air. There were bowls of potatoes and vegetables and towers of sugared fruits. Rose had no idea how Ombrine had managed to arrange such an elaborate feast on such short notice.