The Rose Bride (6 page)

“There she is,” Elise murmured.

Ombrine had changed into another gown of black lace and black silk with a plunging neckline. Like an elegant spider, she held court in Celestine’s favorite ivory silk-covered chair, a full plate of untouched food at her elbow. She daubed her eyes as a gentleman leaned over her, offering her a goblet of
wine. The Widow Marchand wrapped her hand around the man’s and gave him a sad smile. His eyes glittered as he leaned closer. Then his gaze dropped toward her ample bosom.

“She’s already after another one,” Elise said under her breath. She turned to Rose and cupped her cheek. “Well, dear one, we all do what we think we must. Try to find your way in this. I’ll stay close by.”

Rose took a breath and looked at Ombrine, who was clearly very busy. Then she looked for Ombrine’s daughter.

Framed by the diamond windowpanes, Desirée leaned against the dark wainscoting, inspecting one of the plates. She had changed as well, which may have explained when and how Elise had stolen back Rose’s birthday dress. Desirée’s ebony satin gown was threadbare and patched. Her face was flushed, her eyes bright and eager. When she saw Rose, she raised a lazy brow and hugged the plate possessively against her chest.

“Sister,” she greeted Rose.

Rose stiffened.

“Go to her,” Elise whispered, giving Rose’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Keep the peace as best you can.”

Rose licked her lips and headed for Desirée. The two faced each other, dark stepsister, fair daughter.

“I like these plates,” Desirée announced.

“They were part of my mother’s dowry,” Rose replied.

“Well, they’re my mother’s now.” Desirée’s mouth twisted. “All this belongs to her.”

Rose’s stomach lurched. Her face tingled and her hands trembled. Then she caught sight of Elise, who was directing a servant to fill a plate and remembered what she had said.

“We had better dishes than these,” Desirée continued, raising her chin as if she were challenging Rose to say otherwise. “Our estate was much grander. It was at least twice as big as this one. We had a moat. There were swans in it.”

Rose swallowed hard. “You must have been sad to leave it. To come here.”

The haughtiness faded from Desirée’s face. She looked out the leaded panes at the summer sky. Her shoulders rounded and she was silent for a time.

“There was a fire.” Her arms closed around the plate so hard that she would have broken it if it were made of anything but gold. “Stupid Gypsies.”

“Oh,” Rose managed. Her voice cracked. When Desirée said nothing more, she ventured, “And so . . . ?”

“And so it was destroyed. All of it. Even my clothes,” Desirée snapped, wheeling around and glaring at Rose. “And now we’re
here.”

Rose remained silent. She didn’t know what to say.

As the pause lengthened, streaks of color swept across Desirée’s hollow cheeks and high forehead. She took a step back from Rose. Her heel knocked the wall like a hollow laugh.

“We’re here,” she repeated. Her voice was a little less sure. “And were not leaving.”

She turned back to the window. Rose stayed where she was.

“Go away,” Desirée muttered.

Rose took a step backward, glancing around for Elise, when the nurse rushed up behind her and gripped her hand. Her fist against her mouth, she wordlessly shepherded Rose through the room. Ombrine was deep in conversation—with another male neighbor—and didn’t notice as the two left.

Elise sped down the hallway and rushed into the music room. Rose’s golden birthday harp stood in the center of the room and Celestine’s lute lay on an ebony table. On the wall, the portrait of a young woman holding a cat gazed down on them with a smile painted on her pink lips.

“Child, oh, “Elise said as she looked out into the hall. She shut the doors. Then she took a deep breath and calmed herself as she put her arms around Rose. Rose could feel her heart thundering.

“Ma belle, ma pauvre,”
she murmured. She took another breath. “Rose, Monsieur Valmont has been arrested.”

“What?”

“For theft. The plates. The ones he took to pay your father’s debts.’ Elise was shaking. “As soon as she got here, she ordered an inventory of all your father’s possessions. She saw them missing and someone told.”

“But he took them to save us,” Rose insisted. “We’ll explain. We’ll set him free.”

“Oui,” Elise said. “We’ll save him.”

A week later, in a trial lasting two hours, Monsieur Valmont was found guilty of theft. He had no records to prove that he had acted in order to satisfy his master’s debts and neither Elise nor Rose was allowed to speak on his behalf.

Laurent’s creditors realized that if they denied that Valmont had paid them, they could be paid again. Ombrine had the legal right to loosen the Marchand purse strings. So to a man, they lied—save for one honest graybeard. He described to the court how Valmont had struggled to keep the estate running despite the prolonged absence of his master.

“I asked him to pay me only because my own lands have fallen on hard times, and I needed the coin,” he announced. “One assumes that . . .
others
pressed him as well and that he took the plates only after his life savings had run dry.”

As a result of the man’s testimony, Monsieur Valmont’s sentence of death was commuted to a life of hard labor in the colonies.

“Imagine, stealing my dress,” Desiree sniffed on the night of his sentencing, as she, Ombrine, and
Rose sat at table in the great hall. Their first course was rich
pâté
. Rose wasn’t used to dining so formally. She and her mother used to eat with Elise and play a game of cards with her after. Now Elise was banished to eat with the servants. The nurse had begged Rose not to reveal that she’d been the one to take the dress. The truth would do Monsieur Valmont no good, but it would do her a lot of harm indeed. So together they had wrapped it in tissue and muslin and laid it in an old chest, hiding it behind some old furniture beneath the attic eaves. It lay there now.

She had hidden her father’s cloak as well, in her sewing basket beneath her bed.

“It was your stepsister’s dress and it was ruined anyway,” Ombrine reminded her, placing a tiny morsel of venison on her fork. “No matter. Laurent’s ships are on their way and they’re bulging with goods. I’ll have twenty dresses made for you.”

“In pink,” Desirée insisted, reaching for her wine. “Grander than that other one. Rose’s dress was truly not that special. It needed more flounces and bows.”

“In black. And tastefully understated. Until our period of mourning is complete.” She smiled joyfully at her daughter. “Providence sent Laurent to me.”

“Oui
. Thank the gods he had a heart attack so close to our house,” Desirée replied.

Rose ate silently, fuming at their insensitivity. She had threaded their story together. Ombrine’s first husband, Louis Severine, had been a wealthy man who lived an ostentatious life. Château Severine was a showpiece
and Ombrine constantly redecorated it, adding rooms, and ordering new furniture. They had parties all the time and Ombrine and Desirée were the most sought-after hostesses in the region. Ombrine’s wardrobe was legendary. She socialized on a grand scale and Desirée had so many friends she had to keep a list.

Louis was a friendly sort as well. He was very fond of the local Gypsies and gave them permission to camp on his lands. It was said that he was fonder of their women than their men—a rumor Ombrine pretended she had never heard.

One night, a Gypsy husband discovered that his pretty wife was missing and he drank himself into a rage. He and his friends demanded entry into Louis’s
château
to search for the lady. Louis refused.

Drunken and furious, the Gypsies melted into the night. They returned three hours later with every man in their clan above the age of thirteen. Each carried a bottle of wine and a torch.

They set Louis Severine’s entire estate on fire. The disaster overwhelmed him financially, and Ombrine and Desirée, who had been used to the best of everything, were left penniless. Then he died—some say he drank himself into the grave. His widow and daughter lived in the ruins of the
château
like wraiths and no one came to call. Not one friend stuck by Desirée and all Ombrine’s wealthy acquaintances deserted her. Daughter and mother became all the other had and their hearts hardened at the lack of sympathy and friendship. It was no use to count on
love and affection. From that time on, they would put their trust in the power of wealth.

And so Ombrine coveted nothing but wealth. She treated the glittering treasures of the Marchand fortune as if they were loaves of bread and she and Desirée were starving. Ombrine spent hours making inventories of all Laurent’s possessions—now hers. She hired jewelers and appraisers to put a value on every single object. If so much as a saucer went missing, she knew of it and fined the household staff its stated value against their wages.

Now at the table, Rose sat quietly. She wondered what Monsieur Valmont was having for dinner.

“Eat your venison,” Ombrine ordered Rose. “The meat is fresh and succulent.”

Rose never ate venison. Artemis favored deer and she was Rose’s patroness. Instead Rose took a sip of wine. Her hand trembled around the stem of her goblet.

“Look at her, skin and bones,” Desirée sneered. “She eats so little she can barely lift her cup:” She picked up her goblet.“And they are very nice cups:”

“All the more for us,” Ombrine said. She slid a glance at Rose. ‘Although with her so thin it will be harder to get her married.”

“Eat, sister,” Desirée sang. “Eat, eat, eat:”

Beneath the table, Rose squeezed her left hand into a fist. Her nails drew blood as they dug into her palm. Ombrine and Desirée bewildered her. Their tragedy could explain their greed but not their cruelty. They knew nothing of love, only of loss. She tried to have pity on them.

“The cups are cunning, but these plates are ugly,” Desirée announced. At first I thought they were lovely, but they’re awfully garish, aren’t they I think we should finish what that thief Valmont started.”

“You may be right,” Ombrine declared. “They’d fetch a pretty penny. Honestly, Rose, your mother had terrible taste.”

Their hearts were so hardened by their tragedy that they could find no soft spot for someone who had suffered just as much—if not more, for Rose had lost both mother and father.

I
pray I will never be so hard-hearted
, she thought, glancing down at the blood in her palm.

“You are loved
.

“You are loved
.

“You are loved,”
said the roses in the bower.

Rose lay among them as the statue of the goddess stood watch. It was the night before her fourteenth birthday. In the morning, it would be one year since her mother’s death. Almost six months since the death of her father. At moonrise, Rose and Elise had furtively burned incense before her parents’ sarcophagi. Weeping, they held each other, a little family of two.

As they passed Ombrine’s door, they heard chanting. Rose looked questioningly at Elise. “Perhaps she is celebrating,” Elise muttered as she led Rose into her own room. She trailed her fingers down Rose’s cheek. “Have a care for the morrow, my girl. She’ll cast a shadow on your birthday. Of that I have no doubt.”

Rose shuddered. She thought to ask Elise to sleep with her, but her nurse snored dreadfully. She crawled into her bed alone and thought of her mother, and tears spilled down her cheeks.

After Elise fell asleep, Rose crept to the garden. Ombrine had ordered her to stay out of it—especially at night—and promised severe punishment if she disobeyed.

But it was in this garden she had last seen her mother and had heard the joyous news that her father was coming home.

“You are loved,”
the roses whispered.

“I
was
loved,” she said brokenly. “But now they’re gone:’ She began to cry again.

Moonlight gleamed around Rose like her mother’s sheltering arms and, after a time, she fell into a deep, heavy sleep.

And in that sleep, a glowing hand cupped a shimmering white mouth pressed against her ear.

A voice whispered,
‘Alas, daughter of she who made the wish, you still must walk through the shadows until you see the light. Once you learn the lesson, two broken hearts shall mend.”

Rose slumbered and didn’t hear the voice.

But her heart heard it.

“You are loved,”
the roses whispered as Rose woke with a start.

Above the statue of Artemis, dawn streaked the sky with washes of lavender and pink. Rose bolted
upright with a moan. She’d fallen asleep in the garden and Ombrine would have her head.

A deer had been drinking at the stream. Startled, it darted into the bracken.

Rose touched her cheeks. Her fingertips came back muddy. She hurried to the stream and examined her reflection. Her nose and forehead were filthy too.

“Oh, Artemis, please protect me now,” she murmured as she gathered up her skirts. “She’ll be so angry:”