“Okay, one question, but not about this.” Amnesty pointed at her face. “But anything else. Ask me, and I’ll tell you the truth.”
“You don’t live in that house on St. Charles, do you?” Evangeline blurted, before she realized she had so many other questions whose answers she desired more.
“No, and I think you just wasted your question. I’m a fair person. I’ll give you one more.”
Evangeline leaned forward over her folded hands. Some questions weren’t yet in a place to be asked… other questions needed to come first… and yet others, once asked, couldn’t be un-asked. “You came to me for a reason.”
Amnesty smiled. She winced as her lips stretched the gaping cut. “That’s not a question.”
“I don’t know how to ask it,” Evangeline admitted.
Amnesty unfolded her gangly limbs from the cocoon of safety and crawled across the swaying swing until she was lying across Evangeline’s lap.
“Then just hold me,” she said as she drew her legs up to her chest, and Evangeline’s hand rested against her flesh.
* * *
Charles paced the long hallway at the base of the stairs at Ophélie. His bottle of Hennessy swung with careless sweeps, back and forth, the occasional spray staining the cypress.
He wasn’t going to answer the door. He didn’t have to. Was he not the master of this fucking house? The master of this whole fucking family? No one made him do a goddamn thing, not now, not ever.
“Charles, please. Let me in.”
“Go home to your husband!” he slurred. He wasn’t that drunk, but it made him feel better to sound as if he’d abandoned all his senses to the booze. It wasn’t for lack of trying. He’d realized, too late, long after the liquor stores in driving distance were closed, that he was dry. This last holdout bottle of cognac he found buried in his duffle bag, but it was half-drunk and it wouldn’t be enough.
“Please, Charles. It’s Christmas.”
“Christmas Eve.”
“I came all this way.”
“Bully for you!” Charles took a healthy swig of the amber liquid and enjoyed the burn as it traveled southward.
“Darling.” Her voice dropped. He heard her lean into the door. “Please. Do this for me.”
Charles didn’t will his hand to release the lock, and later wondered what the hell his brain had been thinking, sending signals to limbs as if it, and not he, were in control here.
Catherine stood wrapped in her pink pea coat, looking far more a woman now than she ever had. She held her arms close to her body, and when she removed her gloves, a present appeared.
“This is for you.”
“I don’t want it,” he barked.
“I know you don’t, but I want you to have it.” Catherine closed the door behind her. She tended to her jacket, gloves, and purse, slow, dainty, like a woman entering a tea party.
“I didn’t let you in.”
Catherine smiled. “Yes you did.”
“Not intentionally.”
“Still. I’m here.” She wrung her hands over the torso of her dress that Charles could only describe as “Jackie O,” a cross between a stewardess and old Jack’s wife. Only thing missing was a pillbox hat.
“You sure the fuck are,” Charles drawled. “You’re here, and your husband is back home. Does he know where you’ve gone?”
“You know the answer to that.”
Charles wagged his index finger. The others were wound through the small handle on the bottle. “And that is a good test. If you can’t tell the old man where you’ve gone, you probably shouldn’t go.”
“You’re not one to give advice on life choices,” Catherine said.
“Being a hypocrite doesn’t make me wrong.”
She smiled. “You’re right.”
“Why are you here?” Why was she here? Why had she ever been here?
“I wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas.”
Charles spat on the floor. “Bullshit.”
“Why are you alone?”
“Preparing the family home for my future wife and whatever mutant children she manages to produce in her toxic womb. Why are you here, Cat?”
Cat dropped her eyes to her twiddling fingers. “I suppose I don’t really know.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“For who?”
For me. “For your husband at home who trusts you, and has no fucking clue that you keep playing with fire.”
“I love Colin,” she said, “but it’s not… you know…”
“No, I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. I will never fucking know, because your speech about security and safety didn’t make me feel better, it made me feel worse! Because all that sob story only for me to feel like I can’t give you that. What kind of man do you think I am that you decided for me that I couldn’t give you that?”
Cat’s face was covered in sadness. “It wasn’t that I didn’t think you could. I just didn’t think you would want to.”
“That I wouldn’t want to?” Charles chewed his knuckle, then ran the back of his hand up over his forehead before slapping his skull. “Why did you get to decide what I want and don’t want?”
Her shoulders lifted in a weak shrug. “Can you blame me? I’ve known you long enough to know what puts a fire in your belly, Charles Deschanel. How many times did you brag to Colin and me about your dating rules? You’re a proud man, and by listening to you, one would think you were most proud of the notches on your belt.”
Charles scoffed. He swallowed another swig of Hennessy.
“I know you were with other girls, when you were with me,” Catherine said.
“No, Catherine, I wasn’t.” He closed his eyes. “In the beginning I was, but not later.”
“I wasn’t mad… after all, I was the one who wanted to keep what we had between us. But when I knew I’d fallen for you, I was scared to death.”
“Scared? Of me?”
“Of loving a man who wasn’t capable of loving me back.”
Charles tossed the empty bottle aside. He charged forward, and when she recoiled, he gasped and stopped in place. “I have never loved anyone in my whole life but you, Catherine Connelly!”
Silent tears cut a path down her cheeks. “I think Shakespeare wrote a story about this.”
“Oh, not that fucking guy,” Charles hissed. He covered his face with both hands. “Why are you here? Why are you torturing us both?”
Catherine’s soft hands peeled his away. Her lips fell on his. “I try,” she said. Her tongue ran across the spot where his lips had been. “I force myself not to think of you. Of how you touched me… the way you brought out the best in who I was, and who I wanted to be. With you, I was the Cat in Paris writing poetry. I was the free spirit, unafraid of the world. I told myself the cost of feeling this way was my heartbreak when you inevitably let me down. But it was me who let you down instead.”
Charles ran his thumbs over the tops of her hands. Her skin felt like silk against his rough touch. “Not everything in life works out,” he said. He brought both her hands to his lips and kissed them each, one by one. “But I know one thing for sure.”
“What?”
Charles lowered her hands back to her sides. He took a step back. “I can’t get over you if you keep showing up, with your heart in your damn hands.”
“My heart is yours, though. I can’t help it. God help me, I wish I could, but I can’t.”
“I’m giving it back.” Charles dug his hands into his pockets before he could put them somewhere else, somewhere more dangerous for his head and heart. “It’s not mine anymore.”
“It will always be yours.”
Charles’ eyes burned, but he wouldn’t fucking allow it. “I don’t accept this gift anymore, Catherine. Go home. Go home to Colin.”
Catherine bowed her head and sobbed.
Charles opened the door. He didn’t look at her, he couldn’t. But he had to say this, because if he didn’t, he would risk now and always
wanting to walk back through the door she held perpetually half-open for him.
“I love you, Catherine. I loved you from the first time you smiled at me, and I’ll love you until the day God takes me away. And it’s because of that love that we’re done here. I love you too much to let you ruin your life, and Colin’s, for something that will never, ever be. You’re not mine, and next time you come knocking, I won’t answer. I won’t be here. Not ever again.”
Charles gently nudged her out the door and closed it behind her. “Merry Christmas, Catherine. This is the most important gift you’ll ever receive.”
He climbed the stairs, dragging himself up by the bannister, one by one, and collapsed in a heap at the top.
Epilogue: Irish Colleen and the Seven
Colleen Deschanel, known as Irish Colleen to her family and friends, walked past the faces of her seven children, as she did every night of her life.
It was Christmas, the most sacred day in their household, but after dinner they’d scattered back to their lives, such as they were. This new house, smaller, less welcoming and cozy than all they’d known before it, was a home, but it did not yet feel like her home. And it would never, ever be their home.
They were a house divided now. Hardly more than a year ago, they’d all been under the same roof, all except her sweet Madeline, who was with God now. Augustus had left first, then Evangeline. Colleen had announced her intentions to leave not only the family home, but the country, for a program that would keep her away for years. It had been Irish Colleen’s decision to leave Ophélie with Maureen and Elizabeth, to allow Charles to begin his life as a new man, before marriage tied him down, but she was allowed to be sad about it.
All seven of her children lined the marble mantle of the townhouse that would be her home now, and possibly always.
Charles. Her heir. Her darling boy, and her reckless, impulsive failure. He was both, and he was neither, and she loved him so fiercely that his indiscretions carved large gashes in her heart, which now held scores of ticks and tacks. Of all her resentments toward her late husband, his terrible judgment the day Franz Hendrickson killed John Hannaford sat at the very top. Charles had wanted to know the story so badly, and Irish Colleen couldn’t blame him, but there was no satisfying answer. Charles’ father had made a bed that Charles now had to lie in, and his road ahead would be fraught with joyless struggle.
He blamed her, too. For going along with August’s wishes, long after he’d died. For giving in to a blackmailer. But life had taught Irish Colleen a lesson Charles might never learn. The universe was not so evenly balanced between good and evil. God had given them so much evil to contend with as a test of faith and pulled back the goodness so they might prove their faith under duress. But Charles had no faith, and so he would have none of the comfort faith provided in the days ahead.
Augustus had just that evening shared his blessed news. Irish Colleen had always feared the most for the happiness of her second son. He’d never been as impassioned as the others. Even Colleen had her desires. Augustus went through life with all the outward signs of a man with a passion, but Irish Colleen, as disconnected as she might be with the finer edges of emotion, understood he was going through the motions, as if one day he might wake up and find himself happy quite by accident.
Ekatherina had been there, at his side. She was a slight, nervous thing who said five words the entire evening. Her eyes lit up as she watched the others open their gifts and gather around the tree and hearth, and Irish Colleen thought she understood the girl for a moment. Family was her spark, and Augustus could give her that, even if he himself had never been sparked by anything real. He mentioned to her in passing that he was determined to bring Ekatherina’s family here from Russia, but she suspected the path to do so would be harder than he was expecting.
Colleen floated from house to house. She would stay at one until she grew restless, no more than a few nights, and rotate to another. She’d had news of her own on Christmas. Her dates for Scotland had moved up. There was no explanation given for why the change, and Irish Colleen didn’t ask. This was what her daughter needed. She’d do nothing, say nothing, to jeopardize that.
Colleen would be leaving her, soon. Very soon. And if she was smart, she would never, ever come back.
Irish Colleen turned around and looked at her middle daughter. Evangeline had fallen asleep on the couch before Augustus left with his fiancée. She didn’t want to go home with them, not that she’d said anything of the sort. Irish Colleen sensed the turmoil in Evangeline; had always sensed it, but lacked the skills to address or soothe her pain. She’d wake soon and say, groggy, “I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” but they’d both know this wasn’t true. Irish Colleen would kiss her on the forehead and assure her this was her home, too. This townhouse wasn’t much, but her children were welcome without question, now as always.
Irish Colleen gave one last longing glance to the mantle. Madeline’s troubled face, framed by her beautiful mahogany hair, smiled back at her, and she closed her eyes. Her prayer for her daughter was between her and God.
She started up the stairs, to where the bedrooms lined the hall in a neat row.
Maureen snored softly from her daybed. Had she done the right thing, bringing her troubled child back to New Orleans? Maureen had been doing so well at Ophélie, minus a few bumps in the road. She’d even become something of a student. And now, she’d pulled her back into the lion’s den. Maureen didn’t know her mother was aware of the Virgins Only Club, just as the other children assumed Irish Colleen was an old, blind fool. But she didn’t miss much. She wasn’t so very different from Ophelia in that way.
Irish Colleen blew Maureen a kiss and closed the door with a gentle click.
She hadn’t told Elizabeth to pick the room at the end of the hall. Lizzy had chosen it herself, as she had in their old New Orleans mansion, and later at Ophélie. She gravitated toward the farthest space from the rest of the living, as though there was protection in being alone.
Elizabeth was awake and crying. She was no longer the waif drowning in her soaked nightgown, but a young woman now, with breasts and curves, and soft lines around her smiles. She was nearing an age where Irish Colleen might have to stop her daughter and Connor from being alone together in the bedroom, but she hadn’t the heart to take Elizabeth’s single joy in life and taint it with the stench of insinuation.
Irish Colleen didn’t ask her daughter what was wrong. This day would forever and always be the bridge between what was and whatever lay against the horizon, waiting.
“You can talk to me, Lizzy.”
“I know, Mama.” Elizabeth crossed her arms over her chest. She was at the age where she’d become self-conscious of all the tell-tale signs of her passing over to womanhood.
“This was a strange Christmas. But God has deemed it time for some of our family to begin new lives, and He will provide.”
Elizabeth curled her mouth in a sardonic smile. “God had nothing to do with Franz Hendrickson killing John Hannaford and sealing Charles’ fate with that wretched hag.”
“You know about that?”
Elizabeth laughed. “We’re not blind to your secrets, Mama, any more than you’re blind to ours.”
Irish Colleen pulled her shoulders back with a small hmph. “Charles will find his way.”
“If you say so.”
“If there’s something you want to say, be direct, Lizzy.”
“What can I say, Mama? You don’t need my visions to tell you Charles will be miserable. Cordelia is only the beginning.”
“That’s all you’ll tell me?”
“You don’t want to know more.” Elizabeth pulled her long blond hair over one shoulder. “You always ask, but I know your limits.”
“Elizabeth, who is the mother here, pray?”
Elizabeth laughed. Irish Colleen joined in after a too-serious pause.
“The truth is, I never see anything but pain,” Elizabeth said when the brief joy died away into
the night. “I asked Tante Ophelia if this is what she saw, too, and her visions are more balanced than mine. She thinks mine will become that way, but what if they never do? Every Christmas, Mama, you ask me what the next year will bring, and every year I tell you that the sadness ahead is more than we’ve ever known. And every year this is true. Next year will be our worst year yet.”
“Why, Elizabeth?”
“Charles and Augustus…” Elizabeth shook her head. “No, not this time, Mama. I can’t give this to others anymore.”
“Doesn’t it help to relieve the burden?”
Elizabeth shook her head. Her hair slipped back down her back. “Not anymore.”
Irish Colleen closed her eyes and said a silent prayer for her baby.
“Not with what’s coming for us,” Elizabeth finished.
The brothers embark on happy—and dangerous—marriages, while one of the sisters falls in love for the first time. And yet another will fall down a rabbit hole that alters the course of the rest of her life.
* * *
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Looking for more Crimson & Clover to soothe the book hangover?
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The House of Crimson & Clover: Present day. The Seven are all in their middle ages now, and their children are stepping into their own adult lives. But sinister curses and ancient foes have slept for too long, and the battle their parents never needed to fight has now become theirs to own. Start with The Storm and the Darkness.
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Vampires of the Merovingi: Etienne de Blanchefort knows he’s being watched. Worse, he knows his specter isn’t human. Let this historical fantasy, set initially in the tropics of Saint-Domingue, whisk you away in The Island.
Also by Sarah M. Cradit
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The Seven Boxed Set Page 59
