by Minda Webber
The Daughters Grimm
Minda Webber
To Will Watson, for sharing starry nights, moonlight, a Halloween night a monster would envy, and your stakes. Thanks for the amazing desk every writer should have, and for laughing at all the right parts in Young Frankenstein.
SISTERHOOD
(CAN BE A PAIN IN THE NECK)
“I don’t know why you’re so worried.” Greta Grimm sighed. “I’ve brought garlic, stakes, and we’re wearing enough silver crosses to out-holy the Pope. I have taken every precaution for meeting one of the fiendish monsters.”
“I only hope it impresses the vampires,” her sibling retorted. “I beg you, let’s leave at once.”
“I’ll protect you, Rae. I promise you that.”
Rae shook her head. “You’d better, Greta. I attract men like flies. If there are vampires here, they are going to want to drink my blood first. Of course, after draining me, they’ll probably be too full to attack you. So I guess I’m protecting you in a way.”
With a modicum of civility, Greta managed not to berate her sister. The hour was late, her feet were freezing and she was tired of Rae’s conceit. Enough was enough. “Perhaps they’ll be female vampires and ignore you altogether. Or, mayhap, a male vampire might prefer me to you. Not everyone falls at your feet you know.”
The shadows moved closer.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Sisterhood
Chapter One: Gentlemen Prefer Blonde Heiresses
Chapter Two: Frog Princes Are Never Found In Cornwall
Chapter Three: The Bully Aunt
Chapter Four: The Pursuit Of Happiness Is Not Easy
Chapter Five: The Countess Who Cried Vampire
Chapter Six: Prussian Pride And Prejudice
Chapter Seven: The Grumpy Guardian
Chapter Eight: The Devil Wears Prada Petticoats
Chapter Nine: Mozart And Whalebone Corsets
Chapter Ten: Everybody Loves Rae, Mon, Even Vampires
Chapter Eleven: Ask The Dust (If It Answers Back, Run)
Chapter Twelve: The Baron’s Grudge
Chapter Thirteen: The Best Little Whore House In Prussia
Chapter Fourteen: Cock-a-Doodle-Didn’t
Chapter Fifteen: Beauty & The Beastly Baron
Chapter Sixteen: The Gushing Bride
Chapter Seventeen: Yours, Mine And Outrageous
Chapter Eighteen: Behind Enemy Lines At The Schortzes
Chapter Nineteen: Bless The Beastly Little Children
Chapter Twenty: The Halls Have Eyes (Beady Little Ones)
Chapter Twenty-One: The Snow White Dress And The Seven Little Schortzes
Chapter Twenty-Two: Greta’s Red Riding Hood
Chapter Twenty-Three: Hickory, Dickory Dock … And Cuckoo Clocks
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Unmagnificent Seven
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Would-Be Princess And The Peas
Chapter Twenty-Six: Heads Will Roll
Chapter Twenty-Seven: May The Schortz Be With You
Chapter Twenty-Eight: My Life Is No Fairy Tale
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Don’t Throw The Baron Out With The Bathwater
Chapter Thirty: Sleeping With Beauty
Chapter Thirty-One: The Infatuated Wolfish Prince
Chapter Thirty-Two: Are We There Yet?
Chapter Thirty-Three: The Death Card
Chapter Thirty-Four: Someday My Prince Will Come … To His Senses
Chapter Thirty-Five: Where There’s Smoke, There’s Alden Schortz
Chapter Thirty-Six: Six Feet Under Is Six Feet Too Few
Chapter Thirty-Seven: A White Knight (Or Black Wolf) To The Rescue
Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Boy Who Cried Werewolf
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Truths Are Always Inconvenient
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Praise
Also by Minda Webber
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
Gentlemen Prefer Blonde Heiresses
The trouble with being a Grimm was that prospects were grim, Rae thought dejectedly. She was a remarkably lovely lady with no dowry. Alas, ladies with no dowries in 1786 were likely to remain spinsters unless they married beneath them. “A dowry—the stuff that dreams are made of,” Rae sighed. She did not wish to marry out of her station in life; this she could not, would not do. So she would remain in Cornwall, an unmarried daughter in an impoverished family, with her father, Baron Grimm; her mother, her two younger brothers and her three sisters.
Shaking her head dolefully, Rae headed in the direction of the rose arbor. The third sister in the Grimm family line, she had just finished listening to her mother’s latest complaints on the hideous embarrassment of having none of her daughters wedded. Since Razel (called Rae by her family) was the undisputed beauty of all the Grimm daughters, she often caught the brunt of their mother’s harping. As the baroness often asked querulously of family, friends, the cook, the maid, the storekeeper in town, her breakfast kippers, the vicar and his wife and her fat pug dog, “If a lovely creature such as Rae can’t capture a titled gentleman, what chance do my other daughters have for wedded bliss—or even wedded melancholy?”
It didn’t seem fair that all their futures fell upon her fair and slender shoulders. “Bah! Spinsterhood is a humbug,” Rae said, deciding that the best way to deal with misery was to share it with her loved ones. Thus, this afternoon found her traveling the well-worn garden path looking for her siblings.
Dark green foliage surrounded her, and sunlight sparkled off dew on the flowers in the English countryside. But for Rae, the pretty morning had evaporated into a most disappointing afternoon. First, she had been forced to listen to her mother’s latest sermon about marriage. Next, she’d had to sit through a visit from Timothy Sterne, the vicar’s youngest brother. “The man’s a fool,” Rae mused, even though she had to admit he had the good sense to be totally enraptured by her beauty. “But if I married a Sterne, what good would it do me? There’s not much difference between being Grimm or Sterne. I need a name to match my wondrous countenance. I need…perhaps, to be married to the Earl of Blithe or Comte Debonair. Yes, to be French would be nice,” Rae decided. After all, the French were often leaders in the world of fashion.
Hearing a shout in the distance, she headed toward it. Arriving on a crest near the bridge by the family garden, she spied her eldest sister and two younger brothers. All three were on bended knee, and were poking at something with a long stick beneath the deep shadows of the bridge.
As she took the slightly rocky path down the rise, Rae shook her head at the whole silly lot of them. The Grimms were the only family she knew who calmly sat around the dinner table discussing frog princes, trolls and werewolves—yes, wolves; even when the moon wasn’t full—until their mother retired early with nerves. Rae rolled her eyes. Yes, Greta and her brothers loved to read fairy tales. The darker, the better. Rae much preferred tales of handsome princes rescuing their fair loves.
She sighed. “More fairy tales, no doubt.” Once again, it appeared that her rambunctious brothers had somehow managed to drag Greta into hunting for witches, werewolves, vampires and trolls—or had Greta enticed them? One could never tell. But she could tell one thing, from where they were poking: “It must be troll day.”
Picking her way carefully toward the bridge and Greta, Rae wondered how her eldest sister felt about being an unmarried lady of almost twenty-five, certainly well past the first bloom of youth. Studying her, Rae could honestly say that her eldest sister was pretty, even if her hair was a
dark blondish-brown and not Rae’s own glorious color. Again Rae assessed her sister and could find no fault. It was true Greta’s eyes were a grayish-blue, really neither color but both, yet they were still large and expressive. It wasn’t Greta’s fault that she hadn’t been blessed with eyes the color of a bright summer sky like Rae had, or that her figure tended toward the slender side. Thousands of plainer ladies had married—but then, they had dowries or married men who smelled of the shop. Rae actually shuddered at the thought.
“I see it, I see it!” ten-year-old William cried out in jubilation.
As she caught sight of Rae, Greta’s face lit with the thrill of discovery. “We’ve finally done it! We’ve cornered a troll!”
“Oh, look at its beady little eyes,” Jakob exclaimed, hopping up and down and pointing to the deep shadows under the bridge.
“It’s horrid!” William gleefully slapped his hands to his face.
“It’s grotesque!” Greta’s mouth opened wide.
“It’s poppycock!” Rae complained.
“It’s grunting,” Jakob argued, his devious little mind plotting. “We shall capture it and—”
Before he could say more, the beastly little troll snuffled and charged out, covered in mud and with its porcine dignity affronted.
Rae quickly finished the sentence. “And serve it for Sunday dinner.”
“It’s a pig!” Greta’s disappointment could not be clearer.
The pig in question, as it did not desire to be stuffed with an apple and baked for some Bohemian feast, swiftly galloped away.
“We were so close,” Greta said. The boys both groaned.
“Casting trolls before swine. What will you think up next?” Rae asked. “But now it’s a waddler under the bridge. Really, you three, use your heads. Do you really imagine any supernatural creature would be caught alive or dead in Cornwall?” Rae knew that if she had eternal youth or could cast spells, she certainly wouldn’t be stuck in this small coastal hamlet, far from the maddening crowds of the world’s big cities, like London and Paris.
Shaking his head in dismay, Jakob, the twelve-year-old, glanced over at her. His brown hair was streaked with dirt. “It could have been a troll. A big fat one,” he peevishly pointed out.
“It was fat,” Rae admitted with a grin. “But why did you think you’d find a troll today? You never have before.”
Success, Greta had heard, could be a heady wine, while defeat was bitter vinegar. She herself had more than a few regrets poured over the salad of her life. For years she had been hunting for any truth behind fairy tales. There were monsters out there; the truth was out there somewhere, and someday she would find it.
“Hope springs eternal,” she said, frowning slightly.
“Evidently, so do pigs,” Rae replied. And fools, she thought, but politely kept that comment to herself.
“Never fear, someday we will find one,” Greta said wistfully, encouraging both her brothers and herself. “We’ll make a believer of Rae yet.”
“In a pig’s ear,” Rae teased, looking her siblings up and down and shaking her finger at them. “But that’s a truffling matter. Now, look how messy you all are! It looks as if you’ve been bathed in dirt.”
Greta laughed, but Jakob narrowed his eyes and said, “You sound just like Mother.”
Being the mature twenty-one-year-old that she was, Rae stuck her tongue out at him. She was nothing like their mawkish mother. “Brat-ling! I should give you a quick swat,” she warned, and was pleased to note Jakob’s sudden discomfiture. But the look passed quickly, and he laughed.
“Rae, you wouldn’t hurt a fly,” he retorted firmly.
She glared at him while her eldest sister brushed dirt off her gown, her expression discouraged. “It’s almost time for tea, and you two have Latin lessons with the vicar’s brother. I take it that’s why you’ve come, Rae, judging by your smile. Mr. Sterne is here?”
William and Jakob headed grumbling to the house. Rae nodded. “Yes. Unfortunately he came early, wanting to thank Faye and me for reading to his great aunt, Mrs. Wentzelle, since her eyesight is failing.”
“Well, it is nice that you and Faye are reading to her. Of course, she was your and Faye’s art teacher for a number of years. And—”
Rae cut her sister off, knowing what she was about to say. “I read to her because she is a dear old woman and I like her, not so that Timothy will note and comment upon my wondrously sweet nature.”
“As you say,” Greta replied.
Ignoring her sister’s teasing, Rae remarked, “Well, no good deed goes unpunished. Faye left after Timothy thanked her, which meant I, of course, was stuck listening to him—the foolish man.”
Greta shook her head. “Aren’t you ever going to forgive him? Mr. Sterne’s apologized at least a dozen times for his faux pas.”
Rae sniffed delicately. “He told me that gold makes me look pallid, when he should have been flattering me. How can I forgive that? The man is a nodcock.”
Greta studied her sister as they walked. It was true that Rae was the beauty of the family. Indeed, of all the countryside. She had a mass of thick, silvery-gold hair which hung down to her knees. Her figure was perfect, as was her complexion. Men were always making sheep eyes at her. But while Greta loved her sister dearly, she also knew Rae’s beauty was exceeded by her vanity.
“Rae, shame on you to still be in a pelter over something so silly. Where is your Christian duty? It’s been a good three months since Mr. Sterne made that silly comment.”
“It appears my Christian charity went the way of Timothy Sterne’s manners. Besides, I won’t be married to a grave or somber name.”
Greta laughed, the sound light and crystalline. It was a laugh that oft drew others to her side. “I rather think you marry the man, not his name,” she suggested.
“But the man is attached to his name—or the name is attached to the man. I want a sunny last name to go with the duke or prince I marry. If only there were some cheerful princes or dukes about! Still, I shall not let location stop me. Once I figure out how to overcome this territorial problem, I know I shall find my prince.”
Greta just shook her head. Her sister’s hopes were foolish. Their father had no coin to send them to a season in Town where there were dukes, earls, mayhap even a prince—or at least a titled nobleman with a handsome last name.
“Why is it,” Rae asked wistfully, “that there are so many wonderful unmarried women, and so few wonderful unmarried men? Or even mediocre unmarried men. With titles!”
Greta patted her sister on the shoulder. “That, my dear, is a question for the ages.”
As they walked up the terraced steps of their family’s small manor house, Rae gave Greta a long-suffering look.
“What?” Greta asked. “Is Mother kicking up another storm?”
“A veritable howler. Mother is in one of her unmarried-daughters-are-to-be-the-death-of-me moods,” Rae warned solemnly. “She received a letter from Aunt Vivian in Prussia.”
Greta’s face became a perfect blank, and she tried to hide her guilt. Something needed to be done about their abysmal situation, and she had taken the reins in hand and done just that. Aunt Vivian had written back at last. Greta hadn’t been sure that she would, and now her mother was in one of her black moods. Did that bode well, or ill?
Unaware of her eldest sister’s guilty thoughts, Rae sighed philosophically. “We’ll probably be subjected to the Shakespeare quote on ungrateful children and serpent teeth. I never knew that snakes had sharp teeth, considering that they don’t do so much chewing. One doesn’t often see a snake smile, does one?”
Greta fought a grin and patted Rae on the back. “I believe that a serpent’s teeth are fangs. You know, they’re pointy sharp.” She did love her younger sister, even if Rae was a bit silly. “Come, let’s brave the dragon’s lair and see what’s afoot.”
Whatever her aunt had written, it couldn’t be worse than the situation the family now found themselves in. And perhaps
, with a little good fortune, their circumstances might soon improve.
CHAPTER TWO
Frog Princes Are Never Found in Cornwall
Once upon a time some minutes later, the four sisters Grimm sat down to tea while their mother officiated. As soon as all her daughters were arranged, Mrs. Grimm began her afternoon ritual: “I am cursed!” she cried. “Some gypsy must have cursed me.”
The four sisters had heard it all before, and they sat quietly sipping from their cups, waiting for their father to enter and, with luck, end the unmarried-daughters lecture.
Rae leaned over to Faye and whispered, “Another thrilling tea at Grimm Manor.”
Greta held her breath, hoping her aunt had not written and revealed her as the viper in the nest, and one with sharp teeth, too! Her mother would never forgive her for secretly writing to Vivian, much less hinting that she was incapable of finding suitable husbands for her four pretty daughters and in need of her sister’s connections. Nonetheless, Greta had written, appealing to her aunt’s vanity and the long-standing feud between the two.
“Since you are at your last prayers, Greta, you should have been here when Mr. Sterne arrived. Mr. Sterne would be perfect for you or Faye,” Baroness Grimm scolded. “Neither of you can afford to be particular.” She stopped and gave her second-eldest child the eye. “I never should have delivered you on a Wednesday, Faye. The brother of a vicar may be all we can hope for, in spite of your grand lineage. You are my little child of woe.”
Faye, a typical Wednesday’s child, was rather pale of face, with a long nose that was not unattractive. This same nose she used to best advantage when people displeased her; she used it now as she glared at her mother. She knew she was a twenty-three-year-old spinster and settled quite firmly upon the shelf. Another year or two, and she would be gathering dust.
Although not a beauty in the true sense of the word, she had lovely eyes and coppery, brownish hair. Her pale blue eyes, irises encircled by a rim of pure gray, were currently bright with anger and hurt. “I would rather wither away and die than marry Mr. Sterne. His interest lies with Rae. As do the interests of all.”
