Mystery at the Edge of Madness

by Beth Byers

  “Severine, please,” she said for what felt like the hundredth time. “This is my friend, Lisette.”

  Clive’s eyes flicked to Lisette, dismissed her overtly, and then moved back to Severine. He took her hand, having to reach down and place it on his arm. “Let me introduce you.”

  Severine glanced at Lisette, who nodded slightly. She was fine, and they would divide and conquer. Clive led her to an older woman.

  “Grandmère, it’s Sevie.”

  “Severine,” Severine said easily though she had to hide her surprise to meet her grandmother so soon. She had thought by the way Clive had spoken that the old woman was at the big house. She stepped forward and kissed the air next to Grandmère’s face.

  “Child,” Grandmère replied. Their gazes met, and Severine was again surprised to see that they had the same color. They both had very dark brown eyes. Oh, Severine realized, they both had the same large cheekbones and the same fox’s jawline. They both had those arching brows.

  Severine realized that she may well look like this woman someday. She didn’t quite know what to say. She hadn’t missed Grandmère. For a while, she’d hoped for letters and updates, but what she’d received was a letter probably written by a servant on her birthday and Christmas. Each letter arrived with money that Severine couldn’t spend at the convent.

  Severine cleared her throat, pushing away that old frustration, and said, “Grandmère, you look well.”

  “Yes, well.” She glanced to the side, and Severine realized her grandmother had been speaking with someone. “Meet Grayson Thorne.”

  “How do you do,” Severine said easily. Her gaze moved to the man as he responded politely. She hadn’t been listening beyond his name—he was too young to know about her father—until she heard his voice, or rather, his British accent. It was so entirely unsuspected that she returned her gaze back to him.

  There was a question in her eyes and she could see a corresponding one in his as well.

  “Mr. Thorne has recently arrived from London. His mother was from near here.”

  Severine murmured politely as her grandmother added, “Severine has recently left Austria to come home. She’ll be joining us at the big house.”

  Severine kept herself from lifting a brow at that. It was as much a command as it was explanation.

  Mr. Thorne’s reply was all that would have been expected of someone with manners and conveyed nothing of his thoughts. Severine smiled slightly and began to survey the room.

  “I wasn’t aware,” Severine said easily, “that you shared my parents’ interest in the supernatural.”

  The comment was directed to Grandmère and she scoffed. “What did you know? You were a child. Still are.”

  Severine didn’t object. She had been raised to respect her elders and though every person who had been in the house was a suspect to Severine, her grandmother was barely on the list. She was the mother of Flora, not Lukas. She had little to expect from the death of her child and her child’s husband, and Severine would like to believe that the cold woman wasn’t quite so gone as to murder her own child.

  “Whereabout in Austria did you live?” Mr. Thorne asked.

  Severine explained the nunnery that was remote and unheard of. Far up the side of a mountain, surrounded by untouched forests where little had changed in centuries despite the evolution of the world around it.

  “Oh, ah,” Mr. Thorne said, struggling and Severine laughed easily.

  “Sister Mary Chastity would have something sharp to say about a reaction to being raised by nuns, but it was probably as you expected.”

  “Fresh air, long walks, many prayers, and much silence?”

  “Good deeds and learning a fair amount of odd little things.”

  “I suppose if unusual, it doesn’t sound too awful.”

  “I considered staying,” Severine told him simply, conveying the information to her grandmother at the same time. “There is much to be said for such a life.”

  “Posh,” Grandmère snapped. “There is far more to be said for family, friends, associations, and what your parents have left you.”

  Severine lifted her glass at that and sipped the wine with relish. It was well-made, and Severine had missed it in the last few days. She wasn’t one to drink alone and though the cellars at the New Orleans mansion weren’t empty, she hadn’t imbibed.

  “Sevie, how do you feel about seances,” Clive asked. “We intend to have one tonight.”

  Severine met the gaze of everyone that watched her carefully, taking her time to answer. “I certainly believe in spirits and the next life.”

  It was all the answer that was necessary, which was good because Severine certainly had thoughts upon whether a few worldly scraps arranged with the alphabet and a ‘yes’ and ‘no’ were necessary for the dead to reach out to the living.

  Grandmère rearranged their little group as they moved to another room, so that Clive DuNoir was nudged away from Severine’s side. A round table with a red velvet tablecloth stood in the center of the room, which was lit only by candles. A spirit board was placed on the center of the table, a richly made one of dark wood with brass letters.

  Severine sat in the chair her grandmother chose for her. It seemed most of the group would only be observing, for there were only enough chairs for a quarter of the attendees. On one side of Severine was Grandmère. On the other was Grayson Thorne. They both knew it had been deliberate, but Mr. Thorne’s only reaction was the slight crinkling of a smile at the corner of his eyes.

  She took the time to looked at him more fully. His black hair was smoothed back like so many of the men in the room, but it didn’t seem to be as glued to his head as Clive’s was. Mr. Thorne had dark green eyes and the commanding air of someone who was used to his own way and the awareness of someone who was clearly intelligent.

  That intelligence animated his features from his eyes, his hands, the cock of his head. All said, he was noticing the world around him and considering it more fully. When she went for another sip of her drink, he whispered low, “There’s more than wine in that glass.”

  Severine wished she could be surprised. She only pretended to sip and when she lowered her glass, she nodded at him.

  The room grew hushed as they began. A woman called Fanny Coutelier operated the board with an insipid blond who gasped every time the pointer reached a letter.

  “Geh zurück,” the insipid blond gasped. “What nonsense is it speaking?”

  “It means go back,” Mr. Thorne replied. “It’s in German. Perhaps there is someone here for whom that language makes sense.”

  The message was for Severine. That was clear enough. She’d spent the past several years speaking as much German as she had English in the convent.

  She wasn’t, however, shocked that spirits were warning her. No, it was someone else, probably in this room, sending a message, most likely with a bribe to the two women touching the planchette.

  Given Mr. Thorne knew she’d been living in an Austrian nunnery, the comment was for those who might not have known. Though it had been no secret where she’d been sent. They all knew and as one, they turned to her.

  Go back? She smiled slowly and took the merest sip of the doctored wine. Her reply was for whoever paid. “It seems the spirits are doomed to be disappointed.”

  Chapter Six

  “Who do you think was behind that, ‘Go back?’” Lisette wiggled her fingers and then moaned like a ghost. She was wearing dark glasses and a hat low over her head as she hadn’t been warned about the wine as Severine had. The effect of whatever she’d partaken had left Lisette dehydrated, irritable, and wincing at loud noises and bright lights.

  They had made their way to New Orleans City Park and were wandering under the Spanish moss-covered trees.

  “Was this what the forests in Austria were like?” Lisette asked.

  “These old trees with grass under and trails of Spanish moss? In Austria the trees were massive with a thick undergrowth that made it
almost impossible to walk through the wood off the trails. The colors were different and the forests were thick with different types of trees. It was just me and the animals, no people anywhere.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I could walk for a whole day and not see another soul. Occasionally I’d come across a woodsman or a hunter, but almost always it was just me.”

  “And did you walk that far? Was that what you did for fun?”

  “Often,” Severine said. “I’d take a book, perhaps an apple and some cheese, some bread, and I’d leave for the day with Anubis. I’d take a basket for the purpose of gathering truffles or berries or greens, but I rarely bothered.”

  “Did you like that?” It wasn’t the first time Lisette tried to discover what Severine actually enjoyed.

  Severine thought about it. “I did at the convent. I don’t know I would wish for such a day here.”

  “If you weren’t worried about your parents,” Lisette asked easily, as if it were possible for Severine to ignore that weight pressing on her, “and you could do anything, what would it be?”

  Severine closed her eyes, thinking that after dressing as her opposite, Lisette deserved the most honest answer Severine could give. Not that she intended to lie, it was just—she didn’t know. Slowly Severine said, “If I were to spend a day just doing anything, I think I would like to have coffee and beignets.”

  “And? What else?” There was a snappish edge to Lisette’s voice. That must be from the pain, Severine thought, and ignored the tone.

  “And oysters. I would get those with Father sometimes.”

  “You never talk about what you did with your mother,” Lisette accused.

  Severine considered. “We never did anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I would come back from school and I would have a tea with Mother and Grandmère and then I would be excused. Mother would appear again when I needed more clothes.”

  Lisette’s jaw dropped. “That was it?”

  Severine wished she had another answer, but yes. That was it. “I wasn’t what she wanted.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was quiet, always. I’m not pretty like she was. She was always laughing and playing. I’ve always had a serious side. It didn’t suit women, Mother said, and I should have tried harder. Only I didn’t know how to try harder or be different. I couldn’t decide to be giggly or blonde.”

  Lisette had stopped walking and pressed both hands to her temples. “So you were quiet?”

  Severine nodded.

  “And she didn’t like you.”

  “I don’t think she thought much about me.” Severine found her hand was pressed to her chest and she glanced down at it. It seemed that those feelings still hurt. She swallowed thickly and then focused on the sound of birds until the pain faded.

  Lisette had moved from holding her head to looking at Severine over the top of her lowered glasses. Her hand was lifted to shade her eyes, but Severine noted the fist that matched an anger she also felt under all that hurt.

  “Beignets,” Lisette said gently. “Coffee. Oysters. What else? We’re doing something else!”

  Severine followed Lisette to Cafe du Monde. They ordered all the different kinds of coffee and a near mountain of beignets. Severine got powdered sugar on her black dress and she knew it was on the edges of her mouth when Grayson Thorne walked in.

  She cleared her throat and then followed it with coffee to wash away the doughnut and powdered sugar.

  Grayson came over, then looked down at their loaded table and at the two of them, Lisette giggling from their sugared energy. “This looks fun.”

  Severine licked her lips nervously and then wiped them. She introduced Lisette to Mr. Thorne and asked, “You’re coming to the big house?”

  “Your grandmother’s house? Yes, she invited me. She said there’s been…activity.”

  Severine lifted a brow and glanced at Lisette, who was irritable enough to say, “Severine’s house.”

  Mr. Thorne glanced at Severine, who shrugged at the unspoken question. “It was my father’s house.”

  It didn’t answer the question, but Severine waved him to join them.

  “I don’t want to intrude,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lisette said. “You can tell me what was in my wine.”

  “I have no idea,” Mr. Thorne said, ordering a chicory coffee and accepting the offer of beignets from their mountain. “I just know that my first visit ended with a terrible headache and a lethargy that plagued me for a day or two. These days, I just hold the glass.”

  Severine spun her coffee cup in a circle and then asked, “What brings you to New Orleans, Mr. Thorne?”

  “A grandmother,” he admitted with a grin. “We have that in common, though I wasn’t so fortunate to find mine when I arrived. She passed just days before my arrival, and I found myself in possession of a house in New Orleans and nothing compelling me back to England.”

  The conversation turned to the windy weather and the coming trip to the house in the country. Mr. Thorne would be arriving the next day as well.

  Severine wondered if it would be different. Would her father’s library still be there? Was his office untouched? Had someone taken over her rooms with the cupola and the winding stairs?

  Had they gotten rid of her horse? When she’d realized she was putting off returning to the big house, she’d sent Mr. Brand to lay claim for her. She wanted her room.

  As her mind roamed, she watched the city move outside. The trees were massive and the sounds were so different from other cities. It seemed as though every city was wrong but this one. The day was warming, and she could feel the humidity in the air, but it didn’t bother her despite her long absence. Instead, it felt as air should, heavy and a little wet with the promise of coming heat and just the touch of a breeze off the water.

  Her city was surrounded by it with the Mississippi River winding past New Orleans to pour into the Gulf of Mexico. There was Lake Pontchartrain, and if she wanted to visit a little farther afield, she could find her way to Lakes Maurepas, Borgne, and Salvador, to name a few. Let alone, Severine thought, the bayou. She wasn’t sure she’d be home until she visited them all. Her father had loved going out on the water, and her silence hadn’t bothered him there.

  Or, she thought, she was avoiding the big house. The memories that would spring to life there would be tenfold what they had been since she arrive in New Orleans, and few of them pleasant. Even thinking on it brought the images back. The sight of her father’s body lying over her mother’s. The bloom of blood across her chest and his back. The pool underneath. Severine shuddered and turned from the street to find both Lisette and Mr. Thorne looking at her.

  “I’m sorry,” Severine said. “I fear that memories have been flowing heavily. My father was known to take me here. Just the scent of this coffee makes it feel as though he’s sitting a table over.”

  “I know some time has passed,” Mr. Thorne told her, “but I am sorry for your loss.”

  “I fear, for me,” Severine found herself confessing and wasn’t sure why, “it feels very recent. I was sent away so quickly and my life was so very different. It isn’t so much that time has passed for me here, but that I was living another life there. Now that I’m back to this one—I don’t know. It’s all muddled.”

  “There is no time limit on grief, Miss DuNoir.”

  She glanced at Lisette, who seemed as shocked at Severine’s confession as Severine was herself.

  “We’re going to the bookstore,” Severine told him, clumsily changing the subject. “I haven’t read novels since I left home.”

  “I hope you’ll get something quite frivolous then.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  “What did you do in the convent if not reading?”

  Severine laughed, surprised again to find herself doing so. “I helped in the gardens. I am quite good, you know, with plants. I baked the br
ead with Sister Sophie. I learned from the different nuns. I had lessons and sometimes I went for quite long walks.”

  “Did the nuns have much to teach?” The doubt was heavy and Severine laughed again.

  “They didn’t all appear like waifs in the nighttime, like I did. Sister Sophie was a nurse during the Great War. She taught me how to care for wounds and the sick. She was desperately in love with her soldier, Louis. He died in the trenches, and she served to the end of the war, tried to go home, and found it no longer suited the woman she had become.”

  “She sounds fascinating.”

  “No one is more fascinating than Sister Bernadette.”

  “Oh really?”

  “She was the gardener,” Severine told him. “She could make the most healing or the most deadly concoctions. She had learned from her father and wanted to go to university. They wouldn’t let her and told her to marry and have children if she wanted to contribute to the world. She said she’d rather set her hair afire than deal with the stink and demands of an idiot man for the rest of her life. She turned to God, though I suspect she turned to the quiet and solace of a nunnery. She’d kept writing her papers and publishing under a male pseudonym. They couldn’t keep her from it, after all, and now that they know who she is, she refuses to answer their questions or correspond with anyone who slighted her before.”

  “I like her,” Lisette announced. “Was she your favorite?”

  Severine shook her head. “Sister Mary Chastity was my favorite. She took that name out of spite though she refused to say why. When I first met her, she was a sister, when I left, she was the Mother Superior.”

  “Why did you like her best?” Mr. Thorne asked, no doubt expecting to hear an astounding story about Severine’s experience with the Mother Superior, but there wasn’t one. It wasn’t that she had been rebellious, rather, no one had been more herself than the Mother. When she was still Sister Mary Chastity, she had left the convent during the war and where she traveled, secrets traveled with her. The nun turned spy turned Mother Superior was all that a child who wanted adventure could love, but that had never been Severine.