Cecily looked around the ballroom with a worried frown. “We really need to start on decorating this week. Eli has very strong ideas about how he wants things and has been ordering all sorts of decorations without asking Mr. Goode. The old man is used to it, but he is still flustered.”
“The theme?” Rosa asked as she started folding up the soiled tablecloths.
“The Winter Solstice of course. Ysbrydnos, when the spirits are meant to be walking.”
“How very dramatic, they would want to be careful that monsters don’t turn up for the party.”
“Perhaps they are hoping that they do,” Pearl said as she leaned against the doorframe. She was in a hand painted silk robe, her hair mussed and her makeup still on.
“Can I assist you with something, Lady Pearl?” Cecily asked.
“You stay here and keep an eye on the clean-up. I can help Pearl,” Rosa said quickly. She didn’t want that woman anywhere near her mother.
“I was looking for you anyway, Rosa. Grab those cloths, you will need them,” Pearl said with a bored flick of her hand. Rosa hurried to oblige her and went after her in the hall.
“Some of the guests got into the attic last night and made a mess. I need you to go up there and sort it out,” Pearl instructed as she led Rosa to a large, heavy oak door.
“I should get someone to help me if it’s such a mess,” Rosa pointed out. The door was heavily carved with leaves, swords, and other motifs. It did not look like the door to a set of attic stairs.
Pearl gripped her shoulder with one hand and lifted her chin with the other. As she did, Lily’s face appeared around the hall.
“What are you doing, Pearl?” she whispered tersely. “I told you that the Wylt girl was off limits. Do you want Eli to destroy you?”
“Stop being so dramatic, Lily. I haven’t harmed her. I’m sending her upstairs to clean. It’s a frightful mess up there,” Pearl focused back on Rosa. “Go on, Rosa, use your special keys and open the door. I want you to do as I say and go up the stairs. You are to touch and clean everything, and when I ask in a few days’ time what was up there, you will tell me.”
“Yes, Lady Pearl,” Rosa said shakily, doing her best to emulate Cecily’s tone from the night before. “Is there anything else, Lady Pearl?”
“Yes, you are to forget that you ever saw Lady Lily and me. If you are questioned about why you went up there, just say it was to help with the cleaning. That’s all. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Lady Pearl.”
“Good, now off you go.” She gave Rosa a hard shove towards the door. “Do what you do best and clean away.”
Rosa fumbled for her father’s keys until she found the right one and unlocked the door. She pushed it open and hesitantly stepped inside. As she closed it, she saw Pearl wrap an arm around Lily, leading her away.
Rosa took out the silver pendant and kissed it. Those evil bitches, she thought as she tucked it away again. Let them think she was their puppet. She would show them. She looked at the twisting staircase. Whatever was up there couldn’t be as frightening as they were.
***
Pearl curled herself around Lily’s back, holding her tightly. Lily was the only woman she had ever met that had suffered as badly as she had at the hands of men. The stories of the brutal times Lily had been born in, the violence she had seen during the Siege of Jerusalem, was enough to make Pearl weep. Lily had saved her just as Eli had saved Lily. Pearl scratched at the burn scars at the top of her thigh. Circular little marks that taunted her like a phantom limb.
I’ll teach you to smile at all those fancy people you sing for, Pete’s voice rose up in the back of her memory like a mocking ghost. No one will think your pretty now, will they, you little tramp. He had gotten his friends to hold her down while he had burned her with his cigarettes. Perfect little circles.
When Lily had found her behind the block of flats, she had been vomiting up blood from the beating that they had given her. Her avenging angel had torn through them like sacks of meat. Her fierce Lily.
Pearl stopped rubbing the scars and hugged Lily tighter. She had healed from the beating, and it wasn’t long after that Lily had changed her, but those damn scars from her old life were still there to haunt her. Pearl had once cut them off with a scalpel, but her new abilities had healed her skin back to the way it had been when she had turned. Lily had kissed them, told her how perfect and beautiful she was. That scars were a part of her beauty. Lily had her own collection of scars made by her oppressors.
Pearl didn’t like the way Eli bossed them both around. She had given up trying to get Lily to leave them. She said she wanted to overthrow Eli and Balthasar, but she loved both men far too much. It was up to Pearl to make the hard decisions because Lily needed her to. She rubbed her scars absently as her mind ticked over. Perfect little circles.
***
Rosa walked slowly up the stairs, a foreboding feeling taking root in the base of her spine with each step she took. It felt as if she was trespassing on some sacred place that no one was meant to go. What could be so terrible about an attic? At the top of the stairs was another door. She took a deep breath and pushed it open.
Rosa had been expecting cobwebs. She had been expecting broken furniture, bones of their victims, a Cerberus, any manner of horrible things. What she found was staggeringly beautiful. The large attic windows let in a flood of afternoon light that illuminated hundreds of canvases and sculptures. There were paintings on easels and propped up on desks and tables. There were framed works hanging from the walls and miniature paintings in between piles of books in oak shelves.
Very slowly, Rosa stepped around tables and chairs covered in paints, brushes, and easels. There was a neatness to the seeming clutter with brushes meticulously ordered and cleaned. There were writing desks covered in sketches and half-finished letters. She stepped slowly through the rows of works, each beautifully rendered in whatever style that took the artist’s fancy that day.
There was a magnificent painting of Michael the Archangel in the style of the Raphaelites next to an impressionistic work of the lake. Still lives were half finished next to portraits and landscapes. The baroque paintings were in the same style as the family portraits, a masterful use of light and darkness. It was like walking through an incredible warehouse full of stolen treasures.
Chaise lounges and comfortable couches were scattered throughout the large space and towards the back wall was a massive, four poster bed with heavy red velvet hangings. Rosa forgot all about cleaning or obeying Pearl’s orders. All she wanted to do was study the beauty around her.
Rosa no longer cared about how scared she was, how frustrated and rejected she felt by her mother, how she was serving a family of monsters and that she had fallen in love with a man from a bunch of old letters. Those feelings were all replaced by the bewitching play of color and light. Who had painted all of these? Why hide them all up here? Then something black blurred through the air knocking her over with a startled cry.
“What do you think you are doing in here?” Balthasar loomed over her, every inch of him radiating with violent fury. She got to her feet and backed away from him. “How did you get in here? What makes you think you have a right to barge into other people’s sacred spaces? How dare you!”
“I didn’t mean-”
“Didn’t mean to what? To come in here and snoop about in my private things?” He closed in on her, and she stepped in the wrong place, knocking over an easel. He moved, far too quickly to be real, and caught the canvas before it hit the ground.
“Just get out!” he shouted in frustration. His voice was changing, turning into a growl. His normal warm brown eyes changed to black as he stared her down. “Get out of here now or being a Wylt won’t stop me from killing you!”
Rosa turned and bolted through the artworks and bookshelves. She made it through the door just as the heavy oak slammed behind her. She stumbled on the polished stairs, slipping backward and landing hard on her side. She ignor
ed the pain in her hip and got to her feet, limping the rest of the way down.
Rosa pushed her way through the bottom door and back into the hallway. She hurried into the passages, and it wasn’t until she had the safety of wood and stone walls around her that she started to cry.
Instead of going into the kitchen, she went down into the cellar and hid behind a wall of red wines. She pulled her knees up to her chest as she shook. The way his face changed… How could the sweet man from the letters be that? Why the hell did Pearl send her up there to begin with?
Chapter Eight – The Tin Man
The door to the cellar swung open, and someone walked in humming to himself. He stopped at the reds, stuck his golden head around the corner, and spotted Rosa hiding.
“Hello there, what are you doing all the way back there?” Saul asked as he took down a bottle.
“Nothing,” she said, wiping her tears off with the back of her hands.
“I can see that.” Saul uncorked his bottle, took a swig and passed it to her. She hesitated a moment before accepting it and taking a large mouthful. He sat down on the dirt floor beside her. “I heard Bal shouting. I didn’t know it was at you.”
“It was my fault. I took the wrong door or something. I thought there was an extra room up there to clean,” Rosa mumbled before taking another drink and passing him back the bottle.
“Yes, well my brother isn’t the easiest person to get to know at the best of times. When he’s under pressure, as he is at the moment, he can become a real bastard.” Saul took another mouthful. He was still dressed in his tux from the night before as if he was just beginning his bender not twenty hours into it.
“I invaded his privacy,” Rosa sniffed. “Oh shit, I think I nearly destroyed one of his paintings.”
“Ah, well that would’ve definitely set him off. It’s the only thing he really enjoys these days. No doubt it was an accident. Who told you to go up there? I bet it was Pearl. She knows better than to go up there herself. She’s such a nosey little bitch.”
“I’m sure she has her nice side.”
“If she does, only Lily has seen it. She tried to flirt with Balthasar once upon a time, but he’s never been interested in her. The only comment he’s ever made is that he likes them nicer.”
“How was the party?” Rosa asked wanting to get off Balthasar and the type of women he liked.
“Boring. Same faces, same jokes, same old games. It’s all so tedious some days.”
“Hopefully, the Gathering will keep you amused. It seems like Eli is putting a lot of thought into it.”
“Yes, the great party of the millennium. If it weren’t for that damn thing, I would be asleep in a big hammock on an island with a gorgeous girl under each arm. You should come with me. You would have a grand time. Get away from the morbid bastards of Gwaed Lyn.”
Rosa laughed and took some more of his wine. “God, I can’t even imagine what lying on a beach would be like. I wanted to cook and travel around the world, but I was summoned back here.”
“Eli likes to have a Wylt around. I think he believes that they are a steadying influence on the rest of us. Salt of the earth and all that.”
“Why? Because there’s been a Wylt around forever and ever to clean up after the Vanes?” Rosa choked on her wine. “Ah, sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he shrugged. “You’re right. Eli likes to live vicariously through the Wylts. He will never have grandchildren, but he sees them live and grow and die and that seems enough.” Saul swore softly, “Damn I forgot they haven’t told you yet. If Eli finds out I was the one who let it slip, he will flay me.” He put a hand over hers and said calmly, “Rosa, you are to forget what I said about Eli and his fascination with the Wylt family. Understand?”
“Yes, Lord Saul,” she said quickly.
“Lord Saul, what a joke,” he laughed before he lifted his hand and touched her hair. “You really are beautiful when you let yourself be, Rosa.”
“When I let myself be?” scoffed Rosa. “That is so self-help. My qualities lie elsewhere.”
“I don’t want to argue against your other qualities. You have been the first person to get my steak right in years, but you’re still beautiful. You don’t seem to know it either, which makes you more so. Why do you think Pearl is so bitchy whenever you are near? She can’t handle the competition and hates that Balthasar likes you. The only attention she could ever get from him was the negative kind.”
“She’s not going to have to be jealous anymore, not after today.” Rosa drank some more wine. “I’ve never seen someone that angry before.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Balthasar will calm down, realize what an asshole he’s been and that you never intentionally invaded his Fortress of Solitude. He will come and apologize to you. He can be a right haughty twat when he wants to be, but he knows when he has messed up. I think it’s good you are here, Rosa Wylt, and that you went up there. Tin Man needs his cage rattled occasionally to remind him he still has a heart.”
“Doesn’t he go out and date or anything?” Rosa asked, her head feeling lighter and her tongue looser by the minute. “He’s a gorgeous guy, so I’m surprised he doesn’t have a trophy wife or three.”
“I’m not certain he’s over the last one yet,” Saul said, picking thoughtfully at the label on the wine bottle.
“Bad break up?”
“You could say that. It was before I was turned…damn, oh what does it matter? I can command you to forget later anyway. You’re a Wylt, so you are meant to know about our kind. As I was saying, Bal was in love, the proper kind, with a girl called Jane. Everyone was in love with her the way Lily tells it. Bal wanted to marry her and to turn her, but Eli wasn’t convinced that she could handle it. Bal never got the chance to finish convincing him.”
“What happened to her?”
“Jane went swimming in the lake and drowned. The swimsuits back then weren’t exactly streamlined. They found her caught up in the weeds and Bal went crazy. I was turned about forty years later in Russia, so I’ve never seen Bal interested in a girl. According to Lily, when he falls it’s hard and completely. He has no middle ground. I don’t think Bal has even been with a girl since Jane.”
“Maybe she’s haunting him in a very tragic, gothic love story manner,” Rosa joked. She expected Saul to laugh, but he looked curiously pensive.
“Maybe she is. I know Harold used to see ghosts from time to time. You’re a Wylt. Aren’t you guys meant to inherit some kind of witchy-woo abilities?”
Rosa snorted, “Not that I have been told.” Her mind drifted to the girl she had seen walking the grounds on her first night, then again on the roof. She felt the wine twist her stomach and she shivered. Saul shrugged off his coat and draped it over her shoulders. “Thanks,” she smiled. “Okay, enough about Bal and his ghost women. What about you? You seem too nice to be such a player.”
“I really like women! I’m not like Bal. I have never been swept off my feet by some great and tragic love. I would like to be one day. God knows I’m old enough.”
“You aren’t that old.”
“I was twenty-seven when I was turned in 1856 in Russia, but I have been looking to get jilted by love ever since.”
“So you are Russian? You don’t even have an accent.”
“I haven’t lived there since 1856 that’s why. I’m quite certain there is still a warrant out for my arrest.”
“What did you do?” Rosa laughed.
“Guess?”
“Seduced a princess?”
“How did you know?” he demanded suspiciously.
“Maybe it’s my witchy-woo powers. Which princess?”
“Argh…Olga Nikolaevna? Alex was pissed about it, but seriously, no matter how much she loved Charlie, Charlie was gay, and women have needs. Eli came to the rescue. We had become acquainted because he had traveled to Russia to check up on Bal who was fighting in the Crimean War. Alex tried to have me killed off, and Eli saved my skin.”
> “Alex as in Alexander II?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow, you’ve gotten around, haven’t you?”
“I’ve never gone where I wasn’t invited,” defended Saul. With his golden good looks and easy personality, Rosa could believe it.
***
Balthasar stared at the canopy above his bed, muttered a few choice curses in Italian, before rolling over. He had replaced the picture Rosa had knocked over and made sure everything else was in its proper order. He hated his things being moved or touched which was why he insisted doing his own cleaning in the attic. Cecily, Goode and the other staff knew this. The whole attic was Balthasar’s domain, and they were to keep the hell out of it.
So where did Rosa get off thinking she was above the rules? He rolled over again and put a pillow over his head. What if no one had told her? A small voice whispered. What if she was doing what someone had ordered her to do? What if someone had forced her to go up there?
Balthasar groaned into the mattress and sat up. There was a flask of blood beside his bed, so he drained it to try to take away the gnawing in his stomach. He knew it wasn’t hunger; it was old-fashioned guilt. It had been so long that it was a shock to realize he was feeling it. Rosa and her kind smile and her damn pretty hair were making him feel guilty.
The memory of their easy conversation in the kitchen over tea and her radiant smile as she looked over the paintings made the guilt worse. He had made that beautiful smile turn to fear all because he couldn’t stand to have someone in his space. His paintings were like his diary, and she had waltzed into his soul and poked about in it, whether she had realized it or not. She had looked delighted by it until he made her run in fear as if he was some medieval monster.
Balthasar ran a hand through his hair and got out of bed. He was tired from playing host and enduring the endless polite conversation with the other clan leaders. He had to flirt, charm and threaten to keep the peace. He needed to ensure that they were going to be on their best behavior during the Gathering.
Wylt: Book One The Blood Lake Chronicles Page 9
