The Wicked Fringe of Mystery: A Severine DuNoir Historical Cozy Adventure Read online

  “She looks like you,” Florette said, having no idea how Severine was struggling to face the truth in front of her. It wasn’t that she hadn’t accepted that the nun had been her aunt. It was more that it had never seemed real. This, however, changed everything. Three sons, one daughter. All together. Solange was seated, surrounded by her three brothers.

  It was Severine’s father, Lukas, who had placed a hand on Solange’s shoulder. Was that affection? Or was it an attempt at control? Would Severine have been pushed towards someone like the Ruggles’s son if her father had lived? Would he have controlled her with his fists as Uncle Henry attempted to control Florette?

  “If you really want to go,” Severine said, staring down at their aunt’s image, “I’ll give you money.”

  “What?” Florette gasped.

  “If you want to travel, if you want to take off into the night and escape, I’ll give you money,” Severine said again. “You can’t tell your family that I will, but—”

  “Why would you do that? How could I go alone?”

  “Because she did,” Severine said, turning the photograph around. “Solange was the youngest of my father’s siblings, and when they tried to control her, she left and made her own life.”

  “She’s dead,” Florette told Severine. “She didn’t run away. She got a fever and died. Mother told me when I asked her and then she said I was never, ever to bring it up to Father because it continued to be painful.”

  Severine shook her head and then her head tilted. “Solange is Sister Mary Chastity. She ran away and joined a convent. Well, there might have been some in-between adventures, I rather suspect there were. My father sent me to that convent because she was there.”

  Florette’s mouth dropped open, and Severine didn’t need Florette’s doubts to be voiced. It was clear she thought Severine was wrong. It was like she had been trained to believe that females were always wrong.

  Severine nodded. “I was raised by her, Florette. I assure you that Solange is alive, living the life she chose for herself.”

  “But who wants to be a nun?”

  Severine laughed and reached again for her cocoa. “Most of the people that I love.”

  Florette blinked rather rapidly and then admitted, “I supposed they were all like Bernadette and didn’t really want the life.”

  Severine shook her head. “Quite the opposite. It isn’t like it’s prison. You can leave. Those who don’t want to be there don’t even get to take their vows. They realize that the life doesn’t fit them, and they leave.”

  Florette almost seemed incapable of understanding.

  “Listen Florette,” Severine suggested, “elope—not with Andre, but with traveling. Don’t let your father choose the rest of your life. He clearly isn’t as worried about your happiness as he should be.”

  Florette seemed almost offended, but she didn’t say anything other than, “They are older and wiser than we are.”

  “Is your mother happy?” Severine demanded low. “Because mine wasn’t. Not in either of her marriages. I’m not sure the age-old wisdom of marrying for business or some modern version of the old feudal ways is actually a good idea.”

  “How would I even run away?”

  Severine stared for a moment and then she said, “You would buy a steamship ticket.”

  “Me?” Florette laughed. “Someone would tell Father. He has people everywhere.”

  Good point, Severine thought.

  “So have Bernadette or Lisette buy it for you. Or Charles. All you would have to do is show up right before the ship leaves and stay hidden until the ship is far enough away that no one realizes what you’ve done.”

  “Would your Bernadette go with me?”

  The needy tone made Severine’s skin crawl. Again, she choked back the desire to shake Florette and said, “No. And I wouldn’t suggest trying to recruit a friend either.”

  “Then what do I do?” Florette sounded almost desperate. “How would I do it? What about my things?”

  “I would suggest that you leave your things.”

  Florette’s denial was so frustrating that Severine shook her head. Surely a lifetime of your own choosing was worth more than a few dresses. “What about traveling? It’s fast to travel alone.”

  “So hire someone.”

  “Who?”

  Severine didn’t want to admit that there was a mounting headache above her eyebrows, so she took a bite of her beignet and told herself that she was just hungry. “I don’t know.”

  Florette’s glance was almost triumphant.

  Severine hid a sigh and then said, “Perhaps you could talk to Bernadette and see if she knows anyone who might suit. She’s already better connected than you or I. Someone to play the chaperone. Maybe a schoolmarm or some impoverished aunt.”

  To Severine’s surprise, Florette seemed struck by the idea. Then she shook her head. “If Father caught me, he’d almost murder me and then force me to marry the next man who met his needs.”

  Severine stared at Florette who flushed.

  “I’m not brave like you, Severine.” Florette’s eyes filled with tears. “I couldn’t even wear that dress and that lipstick. I couldn’t have made that first journey to your nunnery or the one back. I barely handled school with the girls who weren’t kind. I’m the one who falls into line and spends a lifetime trying to make the best of something awful.”

  Severine didn’t nod, but she wanted to. She wanted to nod in agreement with Florette’s forecast for her future, then Severine wanted to shake her cousin, to tell the dumb girl to act like a woman. For centuries women had been making the best of things. They had been given bad lots and they put on smiles and carried on, and Florette didn’t have to. Didn’t she want to take her life for herself like those who hadn’t been able to before? Didn’t she want a measure of freedom and happiness?

  “Florette,” Severine told her, “we both come from women who weren’t happy, and we both have an aunt who is happy. We would both be wise to recognize the difference between our mothers and our aunt and ensure that we follow Solange’s example rather than our mothers’.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  For that, Severine didn’t have an answer.

  Chapter 3

  Severine didn’t go immediately back to the house. She was hoping her headache would fade and she wouldn’t have to confess that she’d had another one. Instead, she sought refuge under the oaks in the park and walked far longer than was probably safe, given all the things that had happened in the last few months. Even still, she threw a stick for Anubis until the light started to fade and then she made her way back to her auto.

  To her surprise, her Uncle Henry was leaning against the Phantom, blocking the circular door. She hadn’t interacted with him directly since she realized that he was responsible for Florette’s bruises, and seeing him now chilled her. Especially given how seeing him also included seeing remnants of her father. With the bruises on Florette, it was a horrifying twist.

  Her uncle was tall, like her father. Like herself, Severine thought a moment later. Then, she added, like her aunt, Mary Chastity. The idea of her aunt, whose photograph was in Severine’s drawstring bag, who had said that bad things had happened to her amongst her family, was painful. Especially with this cruel man in front of her. Was Uncle Henry the perpetrator of Mary Chastity’s crime? Had he been the one who had driven her aunt away and eventually landed her in a nunnery?

  “Uncle Henry!” Severine said, taking hold of Anubis’s collar—both for comfort and to keep him controlled. “Why, what a surprise!”

  She was proud of herself. She hadn’t let her dry disgust appear. Almost, she had sounded like Florette with her bright happy talk and her cheery tone. Given enough time, maybe Severine could channel her cousin and discover how to be a bright young thing.

  “Is it such a surprise to see me? Especially with such a flashy vehicle?” he asked. It was clear that he disapproved of her auto, her dog, and with the way he glanced down at her, he didn’t approve of her looks either. “I wish it wasn’t. Your father would be disgusted with me. I fear I have been failing on being a good uncle to you.”

  Severine murmured because she wasn’t sure what to say. She had all kinds of thoughts about how he was looking at her, but maybe he hadn’t had to edit his expressions for so long with a young woman that he didn’t realize had a brain.

  As for her father? Severine felt it was far more likely that he would have had different thoughts about his brother. As far as she guessed, her father knew his brother was a swine and had learned that he couldn’t be trusted. There was a reason, wasn’t there, that Charles Brand was Severine’s guardian rather than her uncle.

  “I wonder if I might treat you to a cup of coffee and beignets. I remember that Lukas used to take you every time you came home from school.”

  “Thank you, Uncle,” Severine said, shaking her head. There was nothing she wanted less than her good memories of her murdered father to be overridden by her uncle. He didn’t seem to hear her, or he refused to accept, until she stepped back when he reached for her arm. “Unfortunately, I have an appointment.”

  He didn’t quite hide the flash of anger at her denial and then he tried for a smile. He pulled it off, but only if his intention was to personify smarminess. Severine gave him an equally unconvincing smile and said, “Uncle, perhaps we can arrange something when my guardian can be there was well.”

  There was far less attempt to hide his anger at that statement, but Severine smiled evenly and refused to bend when he tried to intimidate her.

  “Surely we don’t need a buffer to catch up on how you’ve been. I have been concerned for you. As your uncle—” he started, and she had no doubt that he intended to lay a thick coating of guilt and manipu
lation on her, but she cut in.

  “I’ve been as well as can be expected,” Severine offered. Which did not mean she had been well. He heard what he wanted to hear, and she didn’t really want to tell him how hard it was to have lived her life. Her parents had been murdered, obviously terrible. She had found their bodies, and she was haunted by their death. But she also had been pulled from her home, from her family, from her country, her language, and her pets, and ended up somewhere else without one pause for what she wanted.

  Severine’s greatest blessing had been that those nuns knew exactly how hard it was to make that change, so they gave her the space to struggle. Severine let her fingers curl into Anubis’s fur and leaned into his warmth.

  “Perhaps Friday?” he offered. “You and I?”

  Severine kept her smile, but she shook her head. “I shall be happy to meet you; however, I do feel more comfortable to have Mr. Brand along.”

  “I am your uncle. I hardly think we need an unrelated escort.”

  Severine refused to say anything further, but she knew her face had gone mulish. She wasn’t going to apologize for it.

  His eyes bored into her, but she refused to yield. A moment later he snorted, “You’re too much like your father.”

  Severine murmured wordlessly again, as she wasn’t going to apologize for that either. Truthfully, Severine didn’t have any desire to be compared with her father, but she wasn’t going to apologize for not letting her uncle push her around.

  Instead, she walked around the car and put Anubis into the front seat, hoping it would get her uncle to remove himself from blocking her automobile door. It did, but he moved just slowly enough to ensure that Severine knew he was stronger, larger, and that she couldn’t force him to move. He was all too right about that, but she wasn’t without options. In the end, she got her way. She settled herself into the seat, started the car, and then looked up at him through the window.

  “It would probably be better to talk to Mr. Brand for a specific time and place,” Severine said with a smile and then rolled slowly away from her uncle. She could see his irritation, but it was too late to stop her. She grinned cheerily, thinking deeply of Florette until he couldn’t see her face anymore. Once she was out of view, the smile slipped away.

  He was intimidating, Severine thought. Now that he wasn’t right in front of her, she was breathing shakily, and she realized her stomach hurt.

  Severine drove back to her house and paused outside of it for too long. She couldn’t help but stop and look at the home. The same pretty balconies of her childhood, the same color. It was so easy to imagine her mother in the parlor or her father coming up the walk.

  Those memories of her parents were inextricably linked with the other one. The darker one. She closed her eyes, trying to avoid the scene, but it was playing in her mind. Walking down the steps into the hidden garden, the tinkle of the fountain playing against the sound of the wind. Lights had come from the house party, pouring into the darkness without really illuminating anything.

  She’d seen their bodies first, but she hadn’t realized they were dead. It was the stillness that clued her in. Looking back, she was surprised she’d called “Mama” first.

  Her relationship with her mother had been fraught almost from birth. Yet, she’d called “Mama” once, twice, three times. It was the last time that her voice had cracked and she’d dared a, “Papa?”

  He didn’t answer, of course, and Severine had slipped between standing and sitting without even realizing she was going down. Maybe it was being closer to their bodies, maybe a cloud had blown away from the moon, but she saw the pool of dark liquid beneath them. The color was off in the darkness, so it took too long to realize they had died. That the liquid was blood. That…that…everything had changed.

  She didn’t remember what happened next. She’d heard that she’d screamed and screamed. She had been told that Charles Brand had lifted her and carried her away while everything else descended into shouts and madness. She didn’t remember being tucked into bed or being locked in, but she remembered waking and trying the door and finding she couldn’t leave her room.

  It had been early, and no one had expected her to wake, so she slipped down onto the floor next to her bed and stared, dry-eyed, into the darkness until someone opened the door and let her out.

  Looking back, she realized that they’d been trying to protect her. But in her little girl’s mind, the murderer was certainly in her room. Perhaps under her bed or in the closet, and she had been terrified until long after the door was unlocked. She didn’t know then that either Mr. Brand or someone he selected had kept a close eye on her until she was sent away to the nunnery, but she’d felt as though it would be mere moments until she—too—was slain.

  By the time she exited the Phantom, Fabian, their footman-butler-driver, had opened the front door of the house and given Severine a long look. “You all right, Miss Sev?”

  She nodded and slowly shut the automobile door after letting Anubis out of the passenger seat. He pressed his nose against her hand and his tail thumped for Fabian.

  “Want me to park the car for you, Miss?”

  “Put it in the garage,” Severine agreed with a friendly smile. “I don’t think I’ll be going out again this evening.”

  Fabian nodded and waited to put the auto in the garage, so he could open the door for her. “Miss Sev, you look a bit pale.”

  “Bernadette will scold me,” she told him with a laugh, but the sound fell flat, and his eyes searched her face before he nodded once and shut the door behind her. She turned to face the front hall with the stairs that rose towards the second floor and then into the parlor, which was empty. She could hear the sound of Sister Sophie playing the cello and constrained noise from the kitchens, and then Severine headed towards the back of the house where Bernadette was probably puttering in the conservatory with her dangerous plants.

  Severine found her way back there and took in the glass room. Bernadette had had much of the glass cleaned and replaced.

  Bernadette hadn’t been satisfied with ordinary plants or pots. She had replaced the empty terracotta pots with beautiful artist-made things, and the plants inside were even more lovely. In the few weeks she’d been working with them, there were mostly sprouts here and there, but Bernadette had acquired enough large plants that the room was coming together.

  The former nun slowly turned and faced Severine. Bernadette and Mary Chastity had been the nuns who had stepped in and loved Severine. She hadn’t known then that Mary Chastity was once Solange DuNoir, and Severine had never seen their similarities.

  “You don’t look well,” Bernadette said. “I assume you were wandering the park again.”

  “I was,” Severine admitted, “but my Uncle Henry was by my auto when I got back to it, and I—” Severine shook her head, feeling a little helpless on how to describe what had happened next. He’d somehow done nothing all that threatening and yet Severine had felt very threatened indeed.

  “Henry?” Bernadette asked, naming the elder of the two remaining uncles.

  Severine nodded.

  There was something in Bernadette’s face and then she said, “Mary Chastity told me about him. I’m not surprised he’s left you upset.”

  Severine nodded and wanted to ask, was he the one who let her aunt be hurt? Had it been her father? Did Severine want to know? If it had been her father…would she be able to handle the pain of that as well?

  “I can see you have another headache,” Bernadette said, her eyes searching Severine’s face. “Better lie down until dinner.”

  Severine turned to leave, mentally crossing her fingers.

  “Better as well to avoid coffee for another week, just to be sure.”

  Severine made a face and left Bernadette behind, wishing that her friend wasn’t always so right, let alone so observant.

  Chapter 4

  There was a rather frantic ringing of the doorbell while Severine was dressing for dinner, and she paused, wondering what was about to happen next. Would it be the aunt who had reluctantly taken on Lettie and her siblings? Aunt Marguerite, Lettie’s only adult relative, had wanted the money to help with her own children and hadn’t wanted to take all the other children as well.