Cursed be the Crown (Cruel Fortunes Book 1)

by RAE STAPLETON

  “Well, you sure have a funny way of showing it.”

  I shoved him back out the door.

  “Sophia, wait. I want to talk to you. Is this because of that ginger asshole?”

  “It’s none of your business. We’re through, Nick. I mean it,” I yelled and slammed the door. Bolting it immediately.

  I heard him shout, “I don’t think so! I’ll never give up, Sophia. I’ll never give you up.”

  FORTY

  “I

  can’t believe that guy,” Leslie said, in a whisper that somehow managed to sound menacing?

  I stood at the window, watching the flashing lights of the police car parked across the street until they were switched off. Leslie had busied herself with the task of brewing tea while the police questioned me but I could tell she’d been eager for them to leave. I shook my head.

  “You heard the officer.” I took a seat on the couch. “He’s got money. He can buy his way out of most everything. I feel helpless.”

  Leslie sat beside me on the couch, patting my back.

  When she handed me my cup, the tremor in her hand caused it to rattle in its saucer. She touched my wrist gently.

  “How about some wine?” she asked, walking toward the kitchen.

  “Sure. There’s a bottle under the counter.”

  Outside the window, across the street, the police car remained parked. I’d answered all their questions, and they’d promised to keep a cruiser in the area for the night until they tracked down my ex.

  A faint uneasiness continued to course through me. What was my problem—the residue of violation? I hadn’t really been harmed. I should feel lucky, right?

  With a jolt, I hurried down the hall and into my bedroom. Satin pillows and a crumpled blanket lay on my blue velvet couch, flanked by a book and empty coffee cup. My belongings in my room and yet I no longer felt like this was my sanctuary. Opening my purse, I retrieved my cell phone. I knew what I had to do.

  I pulled my suitcase from the closet and dialed Cullen.

  I was just saying goodbye when Leslie came in and handed me my wine.

  “Who are we gonna see soon?”

  “I was on the phone to Cullen.” I took a sip of my wine, and then set it on the dresser.

  I felt her scrutinizing my face, “Cullen? Is he coming to stay with you?”

  I shook my head.”

  Before I could utter a word, she let loose with a string of expletives that would have brought tears to a truck driver.

  “Sophia, you can’t move to Ireland. You barely know him.”

  I shrugged. “What else is there to know? Nick’s after me, Les. And according to Madam Brun, he’s going to kill me.”

  Epilogue

  Almost One Year Later, Dublin, Ireland

  T he antique table against which I tapped my fingers in the O’Kelly’s redbrick Edwardian mansion had once belonged to my boyfriend’s ancestor, museum curator Tandy O’Kelley. I thought it fitting that it was now covered with stacks of books, police reports, and assorted papers pertaining to the very cursed sapphire he’d sold to my family over a century ago.

  Leslie and I had been at it for an hour, searching through musty books in Cullen’s parent’s library. We were looking for some clue that might shed light on the baffling cursed nature of my inherited sapphire gem set.

  As I spoke, Leslie walked the perimeter of the room, leaving crumbs from cookies Cullen’s ma, Lucille, had made. Leslie’s auburn hair was styled up in a bun, and her large brown eyes were framed by tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses. They reflected the fire Cullen’s Da had been gracious enough to light before heading out with the family for the day. The fire crackled and spit as it bit into the dry wood.

  I paused from reading the text to pour a cup of tea and decided to take another run at cracking Leslie’s reason for visiting. She smiled too widely and held eye contact for far too long. Guilty, just as I suspected.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Cullen seemed perfectly normal to me.” She feigned innocence with an authenticity in her voice that a used car salesman would have envied. I wasn’t buying it.

  Cullen, my cool and aloof beau, had been particularly secretive for the past month. And last night Leslie had surprised me by popping in from Canada for Samhain, the Gaelic festival weekend. Just a hop, skip and a seven-hour flight—no big deal there.

  Leslie tried to hold my eye, but her gaze kept wandering to the door.

  “No one’s coming to save you, Les,” I said, dryly. “Now spill it.”

  “Fine.” She threw her hands up in the air. “The dinner that the O’Kelley’s are holding tonight is not an All Hallows Eve dinner but rather a celebration in honor of your six-month anniversary. Way to spoil the surprise.”

  “Six-month anniversary, seriously? That’s not a thing, and you flew all the way to Dublin for that even though you’re broke as hell?”

  “I am not broke as hell and Cullen flew me here on his dime. I’m your best friend…”

  “And…?”

  “And…he thinks you’ve been a tad bit melancholy lately. He’s hoping you’re just bored, but big surprise, he feels like there’s something you’re not telling him.”

  “Like the fact that I’m cursed, that I time traveled,” I added dryly. It was hard to believe that in the last year I still hadn’t told him the truth: that when he had seen my ex-boyfriend push me off a cliff, I hadn’t just landed in the water beside his yacht, but had plunged into the body of a nineteenth-century princess.

  “Why haven’t you told him?”

  “Leslie, what sane person would believe that what had been only seconds underwater to them had been weeks to me?” I tapped my pencil against the side of my head. “So, he sent you in to ferret out the truth, huh?”

  “I hope you know that I resent being compared to a ferret—with its weasel-like qualities. My spirit animal is more akin to the panda bear. I like to eat and sleep and I am definitely not as cuddly as I look.”

  “You’re a hundred pounds and barely five feet two inches tall. You’re hardly a bear.”

  “Okay, so maybe I’m more of a red panda,” Leslie said, following it up with her trademark chuckle.

  “Those are hideous looking raccoons, that’s no better. Anyway, we’re getting off topic. So, where is this All Hallows Eve dinner? He won’t tell me where we’re going.”

  “I don’t know. Some fancy restaurant downtown. All I know is that there’s a new dress in a box upstairs and the limo is picking us up at four.”

  “A new dress, huh?”

  Leslie grinned. “Long, silky and emerald green, you want to go try it on?”

  I bit my lip. “Not yet. Let’s finish up here first.”

  “Right. Let’s review: What do we know so far?” Leslie asked.

  “The sapphire was stolen from the Temple of Indra by a treasure hunter named William Ferris during the Indian Mutiny, something about removing the stone activated a curse and because it was given and handled by my past life self, Princess Sapphira Grimaldi of Monaco, I am now cursed forever,” I answered from my perch at the head of the table.

  “How do we know this?”

  “I was pulled back in time and experienced it.”

  “Yes, but how do we know you are still cursed?” Leslie said. “How do you know plunging from the Palace balcony wasn’t the end of it?”

  “Madam Brun, the psychic we met, said that the dark spirit attached to me would not stop until he killed me in this life as well. She said I’ve experienced this cycle several times already –in the body of the Princess and in the body of my Great-Aunt Zafira. She said there may have been other times as well.”

  “As a librarian and a self-proclaimed scholar, I must tell you: Psychics are not exactly reliable sources.”

  “This from the girl who introduced me to her.”

  “Psshh. What do we know about your Great-Aunt’s life and death?” Leslie dusted off her hands on a napkin and immediately reached for another cookie
without breaking her stride. “We have a journal from the killer, do we not?”

  “Yes, we have the killer’s journal,” I said, picking up the familiar dark journal with the initials E. B. on the cover. It had once belonged to my Gigi’s father: Eugene Breathour.

  “Shockingly, he does not outright admit to killing his daughter in it.”

  “Damn! We just can’t catch a break now, can we?” Leslie smirked.

  I opened it, flipping to the beginning, and read the spidery ink.

  Velte has still not returned. He’s been missing since the girl’s body was found below deck. Coincidentally, two of Papa’s jewels are missing.

  “It recounts his family’s journey from Germany to Canada when he was fifteen. He talks a lot about his brother Velte. He was a troubled youth who died on the way over.”

  “Foulplay? Perhaps Eugene got his first taste of murder on that trip?” Leslie took a pen and wrote something down on her pad of paper. Then she paused and began pacing again. “How do we know he was the one who killed Zafira? Did someone see him do it? Did your Gigi tell you that her father killed her sister?”

  “No. My Gigi thought her father was a saint. She was in an orphanage at the time of her sister’s murder. Zafira was only released because she turned eighteen.”

  I picked up a sketch from the police file and handed it to her. “This is the man that the neighbors saw fleeing.” I picked up a family photo from my own keepsake box. “This is Zafira’s father—Eugene.”

  Leslie nodded. “Same man. Open and shut case.”

  “My Gigi’s husband was a private investigator. In his notebook, he talked about how Gigi never got over her family’s past so he began investigating the cold case without her knowledge to give her some peace of mind. He never told her what he found. That it was her own estranged father who’d killed her sister.”

  “How did he find out?”

  “There was an article talking about the prisoners in Kingston, and apparently Eugene’s name was featured in it.”

  I tried and failed to imagine Gigi’s father as a monster. Considering the stories Gigi had told me, it didn’t make sense that he could have done it.

  Leslie looked over the top of her glasses. “You say, ‘He was estranged’. Where was the girls’ mother?”

  I took a sip of my tea. The hot liquid singed my tongue.

  “Dead. Eugene’s parents also died that same year.” I paused for a second. “Eugene couldn’t deal with the loss of his family and had to be hospitalized. I think it was only supposed to be temporary, which is why the girls were sent to an orphanage as opposed to tracking down overseas relatives, only he went missing after he got out and so the girls were left behind.”

  KEEP READING FOR A SNEAK PEEK AT VOLUME TWO.

  Book Two: Mischievous are the Spelled ONE

  T he luminous moon peeked out from behind a thin stream of clouds, highlighting crimson leaves as they skittered across the damp October streets of Dublin. Cullen appeared to spot me from just inside the restaurant’s wide walnut doors as I approached the with Leslie, but he was surrounded by a group of his rowdy cousins.

  The doorman took my wrap—a fur stole lent to me by his mother and for a moment I felt almost naked. The smooth silk of the green dress flowed like water over my skin.

  I whispered to Leslie, “Do I look alright?”

  She paused for a moment and her face turned to mock horror.

  “What is it?” Had the dress ripped? Was it see-through? Could you see my nipples?

  “There is a hair out of place.” She pretended to smooth it.

  “You’re an ass. You know that?”

  “Sure do,” she said, with a smile. “But I’m your ass.”

  Cullen was only a couple of feet away now, making his way over to me with two glasses of champagne. He looked handsome in his sport jacket and tailored shirt. His hair, a coppery red with streaks of blond that looked almost golden in the sunlight, was slicked back.

  He made me over-the-moon happy.

  “Thirsty?” he asked, holding a glass out to me.

  Leslie leaned forward to kiss Cullen on the cheek. “Oh, Cullen, it’s like we were meant for each other.”

  Cullen’s brother, Liam with his dark whiskey-colored eyes and raven’s-wing hair roared with laughter from behind him. “I like her. She's great craic.”

  I took the other glass and laughed. “Yes. She’ll keep us entertained. That’s for sure.”

  Liam held out his arm and Leslie gave me a wink and wandered off with Cullen’s brother.

  “Looks like everyone is enjoying themselves,” I said, gazing about the restaurant. The walls were a rustic stone, a soft and whimsical Irish fiddle played in the background and there was a drink in every hand. “Seems strange to me to see devout Catholics such as yourselves celebrating a pagan holiday like Halloween. Am I wrong in my thinking?”

  Cullen laughed. “Aye, well, I don’t know about us all being devout. Liam’s the only true catholic. Half the people here are wiccan. However, there’s still the vigil for the saints tonight. No champagne there, I’m afraid. This dinner is more in honor of our anniversary, and I do know Leslie spilled the beans already, so you can quit with the fishing expedition. She already told me ye needled her.”

  Nice of Leslie to tell on me. I thought.

  “I can’t believe it’s been a year already,” Cullen said.

  “Sorry. Say that again. I was just plotting revenge on Leslie.”

  Cullen laughed.

  It wasn’t really our anniversary, but it had been a year since we’d met. Since that ill-fated day on the Lerins Island, half a mile off shore from Cannes, when I’d rejected the marriage proposal of that egotistical lunatic Nicholas Bexx and endured his wrath. Lucky for me, Cullen had been looking up from the deck of his family’s yacht and had seen Nick push me off the cliff. Cullen dove in and pulled me to safety, and subsequently into his life.

  It was hard to believe that it had been a year already and harder still to believe that Cullen didn’t know about my little adventure into the body of the nineteenth-century princess. I hadn’t even told him about Madam Brun’s plan for me to return on Samhain to end the curse. Hence, why I was still here in Ireland instead of back home with her attempting a spell.

  “Sophia, ye all right?”

  “No,” I said automatically and pushed away the bothersome thoughts.

  “Gah. It’s the restaurant. It’s too fancy, isn’t it? I said so, but ye know Móraí.”

  “What? I love this place.” The room buzzed with mixed conversation. “I just didn’t hear what you said.” Poor Cullen. I had been drifting off into the memories of my past life a lot lately.

  “Where the tongue slips, it speaks the truth. I asked if ye were all right and ye said no.”

  “I’m fine. I’m just soaking in the atmosphere. It’s so romantic in here.”

  That was partially the truth. The place was intimate. A combination of comfortable leather and floral high-backed chairs surrounded the long table and almost all of them were now full with Cullen’s family.

  “It is getting loud in here. Will this place hold your entire family?”

  Cullen pretended to boot his cousin in the rear. “Like that’d matter. Loud-mouthed arses. Let’s skedaddle and we can celebrate alone.”

  His eyes met mine, and it was just like that first day in the hospital after I’d awoken from the fall. He pulled me into an alcove around the corner that led to the washrooms. “I like your frock.”

  “I just bet you do. It is very low cut, Mr. O’Kelley—very Elvira Hancockesq.

  “Elvira who?”

  “You know, Michelle Pfeiffer’s character in Scarface.”

  “Never seen it.”

  “You’ve never seen Scarface? We have some serious old movie watching to do.”

  “I bet she doesn’t look as good in it as you do.”

  “That’s flattering, but Elvira is sexy—.”

  He leaned into me, pushi
ng my back against the wall, his kisses cutting off my words before moving down the side of my neck. There was no denying the attraction and it wasn’t just pheromones. It was more like a deep-seated connection between us, like my soul recognized his, which was exactly why I needed to be honest about what I’d been through.

  As his kisses got deeper and more fervent, one hand outlined the curve of my ear, lingering on my lobe before inching down my neck.

  Finally, it joined his other hand, which was slowly working the zipper of my dress down my spine.

  “Cullen, do that zipper back up, right now!” I said, squirming.

  From the look in his eye, I could tell he was tantalized by the decision before him: be a civil host or sneak me into the men’s bathroom like a teenage hooligan.

  “Cullen?” His mother’s voice rang out from around the corner and I chuckled. Guess she made the decision for him.

  TWO

  May, 1920

  Z afira Breathour pressed the cold cloth to her throbbing forehead. It was nine in the morning, but it felt like six, thanks to the pounding in her skull. Opa was talking, but Zafira was lost in her own thoughts. Her chin balanced on one fist, she stared, unseeing, at her coffee, which she was mindlessly stirring.

  For the past twenty minutes, her family had been laying into her about last night’s episode at the Brunswick House. Her drinking had been brought to their attention once before, thanks to an unfortunate raid on a speakeasy, but last night’s trouble had caught her even more hell.

  “Opa and I do not approve. Have you not heard of the Temperance Act? You should be focused on your education in the feminine arts. When I was your age, I was budgeting the housekeeping money and buying fresh produce.”

  Zafira couldn’t stop herself. She rolled her eyes.

  “Zafira Breathour! Do not disrespect your grandmother!” her mother snapped. “Your grandparents are German. Do you know what it was like for them to live here for the last six years with all of the anti-German sentiment. They have built a good name, our family name. The Bejeweled Case is finally a success.”