He only had eyes for a woman who had nearly killed him as she had taken his virginity, and he gave no thought to the Estril power that had saved him that day.
I don’t even know her name, he reminded himself, but this thought did not stop his heart from hammering in his chest as he watched the manor’s doors open.
The voice he heard was thin. Its faintness belied the veritable distance that lay between him and his own world.
Still, he heard what the woman who had opened the doors said, and then he knew at last.
“Melisse,” the blond woman said while smiling a cruel smile as she looked the hooded woman up and down.
“You’ve come home.”
***
The masked Estril removed the key from the cell door and the misted structure turned perfectly solid at once.
Instead of walking down the corridor and away from the prison cell, she sagged against a stone wall and bowed her head.
A small sound escaped her.
Then she reached up to rake the mask away. It had been borrowed from her lady-in-waiting, but the need for it was over. In its place she let fall her fiery tears.
“So,” she said to no one. “Your heart’s desire is revealed just as I have been revealed to be a perfect fool.”
Her masquerade at an end, Lest straightened then marched resolutely away in a perfect mirror of a hooded woman in another world.
Chapter Six — Melisse
Helene's eyes dropped from Melisse's own intense gaze, then she frowned as she took in the travel-weary cloak she saw.
However, the blond woman brightened almost instantly and with a sweep of her hand, she said, "Please — be welcome, dearest Melisse. To see you again gives me more pleasure than you could possibly know."
Melisse stepped over the threshold, then turned to the smiling woman before her.
"Oh, I know quite a bit more than you realize … Sister."
Melisse drew her hood back while she watched Helene freeze for the briefest of moments, so quickly come and gone one might not have noticed at all, then her smile grew even wider.
“Yes. You speak the truth of the matter. How you have come by such information is doubtless a tale worth hearing all on its own, however, time is running short at the moment.”
Her smile faded as she went on.
“I suppose then that you have learned of our father’s fate?”
Melisse simply waited, saying nothing while her anger grew and her control tightened against the flames of true fury.
“I hope you can understand that I simply did what was necessary. House Perene — our house — was about to fall to ruin with Olivier as its master, and then when you left, Father grew even more foolish. I only did what I had to … what the situation required.
“It was not done without tears, yet there was no other way.”
Melisse’s eyes narrowed.
“What do you mean that he had become foolish?”
Oddly, Helene glanced back over her shoulder as if she thought she might be overheard, then she continued, her voice quiet.
“Oh, Father had become perfectly maudlin over Olivier and then, to my great surprise, over you. He knew. He had always known, so he decided to draft a letter to the authorities that you were not responsible for Olivier’s death, and he went even further, saying that he wished to begin proceedings for the legal recognition of his parentage of you.
“When I discovered this, I had but one question. How did he propose to remove the blame from our Melisse? He replied that it was a simple affair, he had but to name the real killer, the one living under his very roof and by whom he had been betrayed.”
Helene closed her eyes then opened them again, beseeching Melisse with her gaze.
“I knew pain, then.
“It was I who knew true betrayal. And I watched in tears as he ate the meal I had prepared him, the one made after I had already read the letter he had written earlier, the one he had so carefully, ineffectually, hidden away from me.
"He told me the trout was delicious just as he told me that I would be tried for the murder of his son. But he choked on his own poisonous words, and on the poisoned fish on his plate."
Melisse trembled with rage. Her fire rose inside her and it was all she could do to hold it back.
"I should destroy you. Right now — this very instant."
Helene’s eyes grew round as she saw that this was no meek and dutiful servant girl before her.
That person was nowhere to be found. And the one who had taken her place was frightening, with danger written clearly in her eyes.
"But, Melisse. I need you."
The fire threatened then faltered as she said, "What?"
"Perhaps I have made mistakes along the way, but I now know that I cannot do this alone. I have need of a sister. I have need of you, and let us not forget that you and I are the only family left to either of us."
"Helene, I am warning you," Melisse replied, "Your honeyed words will not save you.”
"Then look at this," Helene said as she pulled a folded parchment from within her bodice. "It is a letter, visibly in the hand of our father, stating that you are his daughter and that he intends that you carry the Perene name. The letter goes on to state that you and I are to be his sole beneficiaries in the event of his death, to the order of two equal halves.
"It is a fake, of course. For some time now, I would amuse myself by simulating his handwriting. It got to the point that I would find his notes on his memoirs and then add a paragraph or two of my own.
"Even our own father could not see the difference and continued on with no idea that I had written in his place.
"This, added to the fact that I feel sure we can bribe an official from the prefecture to have his personal seal on it, means that you and I will be sisters in every sense of the word.”
She smiled widely.
"Melisse, you will be of noble blood, as you should have been from your birth. Is that not enough reason to spare me from your judgement?"
She shook her head.
“The nobility you would give me is without interest, Helene. Instead you prove how truly false you are yet again.”
Somewhere a door opened and closed loudly, and Helene startled. Melisse saw something strange in her half-sister's eyes then. Something that looked surprisingly like panic.
The words that followed tumbled in a rush from her perfect red lips.
“If you will not help me for your own proper gain, then I beg you, Melisse, help me for the sake of our sisterhood."
Her voice fell to a whisper as solid footsteps sounded behind her. “To my great regret, I have invited a serpent into this house.”
The footsteps grew louder as did a second set of sounds, the squeaking of axles and the clattering of iron-bound wheels rolling over the manor’s flagstone floor.
Melisse stood where she was. Of all the things she might have imagined for her return to House Perene, she had never thought she would see Helene like this.
The blond woman stood stock still while trembling from one end to the other.
Melisse watched, stunned, as Helene mastered herself enough to mouth two words in silence.
Save me.
Then two figures surged into view.
One stood behind the other and at first glance, Melisse imagined that someone was being wheeled along in a kind of wheelbarrow.
She quickly saw, though, that this person was a gentleman of uncommonly handsome visage and that it was no wheelbarrow at all, but rather an elaborately made kind of chair with two wheels at its sides and a third centered at the back of the chair.
"Lady Helene," the man called out in a strong, clear voice. "I had no idea that we were expecting visitors, child. And in light of her stunning beauty, I shall be quite cross with you to hear that she does not mean to stay."
Helene wore a frozen smile once more, and to Melisse it looked like a kind of armor.
Her stepsister curtseyed deeply with downcast eyes.
The seated nobleman smiled widely.
"Ah, then the prodigal child has returned to the nest at last. If only I had known the true measure of her allure, I would have prayed the gods day and night to speed her on to this delightful moment."
Melisse curtseyed in turn and felt a flash of strange emotion. She did not understand at first, even though it felt so very familiar, then it became quite clear to her — her life as a servant in that place had come back to haunt her like a phantom that had never left her side.
"Darling girl, please approach, for you see…" and the Marquis brought both his fists down hard on each of his thighs, "… these two useless things cannot carry me to you."
Melisse stepped close enough for the nobleman to reach out and take her hand and he kissed the back of it ever so gently before murmuring, "Once again, and as ever, I curse the day that took my legs away from me, for a broken back does not allow me to do you the honor you deserve."
She had no idea why, but Melisse curtseyed again before speaking at last.
"The pleasure is mine, Marquis, to make your acquaintance, and it is in no way diminished whether you sit or stand."
He did not release her hand and Melisse felt a tickle of excitement deep in her belly. What he did was unseemly, yet as she had just stated, she did not mind in the least.
"Of course, I am blessed to have my devoted assistant," he said, gesturing behind him. "However, even her loyalty does not suffice in matters of etiquette when it comes to lovely maidens such as you and your sister."
Melisse had difficulty tearing her eyes away from the Marquis, but she did so just long enough to see the young woman standing behind the wheeled chair, her hands at two handles built into the chair's back, doubtless meant for steering the contraption.
She was of slender build, pretty enough, but otherwise unremarkable.
Melisse nodded in her direction while her instincts told her another curtsy was not required, not between two equals.
"Oh, I should have mentioned," the Marquis said as he release Melisse's hand, "no need to wait for my assistant to speak. As far as I know she's entirely mute and her name remains unknown even to me."
Melisse felt the pull of her attraction draw her eyes back to the Marquis, but at the mention of his assistant, Helene moved toward the mute woman. With the briefest of glances, Melisse saw her stepsister's eyes positively gleaming with desire as she beheld the Marquis’ assistant. Helene's tongue darted out from between her lips to lick them as if she was ravenous.
What is going on here? Melisse asked herself, then the Marquis’ voice rang out with authority to say, "Now that decorum has been duly served, I believe the time has come for Melisse to be shown to her chambers. Perhaps, dearest Helene, you can find some other attire for your sister? Something that will better complement this ravishing maiden in the way she deserves …"
Helene nodded quickly as she replied with a clipped voice.
"Yes, of course, my Lord."
Melisse shook herself.
What is coming over me?
"Thank you, sir, but I know the way to my bedchamber and as to Helene's clothing, there is nothing that interests me more than what I wear right now."
The Marquis frowned, deep lines forming at both ends of his lips.
"As you wish, my dear. Far be it from me, a simple man, to aspire to understand the subtly circuitous ways of the women around me. I shall content myself with your mere presence, gods willing."
Melisse curtseyed again, doing her best to avoid his regard, then stepped around his chair and his assistant to walk away as briskly as she could without breaking into an actual run.
It was only when she turned a corner that she came to a sudden stop. It was only then that she realized that the blazing anger she had felt for Helene had deserted her as had the force that had driven every single choice she had made in the past months.
Her fire had retreated as meekly as she had accepted the role of a subservient, witless girl.
There is something afoot in this house.
Melisse walked long corridors and up several flights of stairs until she came at last to that part of the manor the farthest removed from the rest and thus designated for the serving staff.
There was no one, not a noise to belie the least sign of life other than her own.
Why am I not worried?
But there was something, some shadow lurking at the edges of her thoughts — something just out of reach.
What have I forgotten?
She shrugged and opened the door to her bedchamber, and then it felt like she truly had come home. Her affairs were just where she had left them.
All was in order.
Soon, she would don her serving girl smock and go down to wait upon Helene and her handsome guest, the Marquis.
Melisse smiled.
It was good to be home.
***
For a very long time, Melisse lay upon her old, familiar bed while simply letting her thoughts roam as they would, directionless, without purpose.
At times she felt some nagging sentiment that she was forgetting something very important. It was as though she had left a kettle to boil somewhere and forgotten it, but she knew that it could not be.
She heard no whistle of escaping steam to remind her. Instead, she lay there, her eyelids heavy with a sense of weariness that felt as though she had cleaned the manor from one end to the other in a single day.
But that can't be right, can it? she thought. I've been away, if I understood Helene correctly.
She nodded, but the idea of having come from somewhere else, anywhere else other than House Perene, seemed more preposterous by the minute.
It was like she had dreamt it all.
As if it had happened to someone else, all of it merely a story that she had heard once and could barely recall.
For a while, she had tried working her way back in her mind's eyes, doing her best to remember those things that had just happened so that she might find the bridge from where those memories began to others that preceded them.
But each time, she could only go so far as the Marquis introducing her to his assistant.
And try as she might, Melisse could recall almost nothing of the woman. Not her hair color, nor the color of her eyes.
All that she knew was that the woman had seemed perfectly commonplace.
Perhaps that is why I don't remember. Looking at her must have been like looking into my own mirror.
She sighed, then sat up.
She knew what it was to be common, to be unnoticed for so long that one grew afraid of it ever being any other way.
For now, though, duty called and if she did not move quickly enough, then it would be Helene who called.
And that never turns out well, does it? she reminded herself, sighing once again.
Moving rapidly then, with the habit of gestures learned over many years, Melisse found some clothes folded in a chest and changed out of the strange, worn affairs she had been wearing until then.
She held the hooded cloak in her hands, turning it one way, then another.
It seemed so familiar, yet so foreign.
She let it fall from her grasp and left her bedchamber without looking back.
Melisse went quickly down to where she knew she would find the others. But she did so by way of the kitchens. She knew it as a welcoming, comforting place filled with life and familiar faces.
Once there, though, and to her great dismay, she found no one at all.
The steamy warmth and the delightful noise of pots and pans, cooks shouting out orders, all of it had disappeared, leaving no trace that it had ever been anything but a cold, empty room devoid of life.
It was also devoid of food.
She wrung her hands. Soon the Marquis and Helene would demand something for their dinner, and Melisse saw nothing she could serve them.
From one empty cupboar
d to the next, she opened every door she saw and not an old rind of cheese, nor scrap of dried sausage was to be found. It was unthinkable, but there was absolutely nothing to eat.
Dutifully, and thinking that if anyone ever did come back she could not leave the kitchens in such disarray, Melisse closed it all up again.
She raised her chin thinking that it would be best to look brave even if she did not feel that way. Melisse decided there was nothing else to do except go to the manor's dining hall and try to explain what she herself did not understand. At the least, and fortunately for her, she remarked that she was not particularly hungry and that that was just as well.
From the kitchens, the way to the dining hall was not far and just as she had expected, she found Helene and the Marquis de Berheuil seated at the great table destined for as many as thirty diners at once.
Melisse slowed her pace as she entered the room, but the Marquis saw her at once and with a wide, gleaming smile he said, "How wonderful for you to join us, my dear."
She tried not to, but Melisse flinched at the reproach couched in the nobleman's kind words.
Melisse dared to look up at him, then, and instead of hard, cruel eyes ready to unleash sarcastic remarks like thrown knives, she saw only the twinkle of honest, good humor.
"Please," he said, and indicated a place set to his right, "Do me a small honor and come sit beside me, Lady Melisse."
She nodded, then, biting back her words that would have announced that even though she had tried her best, there would no dinner this evening, Melisse went to seat herself next to the nobleman as he had asked of her.
The Marquis leaned toward her and spoke in low tones.
"Forgive me for not rising as a gentleman must in the presence of a jewel such as you."
She nodded again, blushing furiously at the compliment he paid her.
His words were nothing less than brazen, but she only hoped there would be more to follow.
Before her, as before Helene seated across from her and the Marquis beside her, were empty silver plates and empty goblets of crystal.
The Marechal Chronicles: Volume VI, The Crucible: A Dark Fantasy Tale Page 8
