Neferet's Curse (House of Night Novellas #3)(15)

When I wasn’t talking with Cook or standing for alterations or trying to remember the endless details of entertaining that Mother had mastered with what had seemed like no effort at all, I wandered silently through our huge mansion, trying to avoid Father and speaking to no one. Odd how I’d not thought of our home as huge until after Mother was no longer filling it. But with her gone it had become an enormous cage, filled with all of the beautiful things one woman had collected, including her only living child.

Living child? Before that Wednesday evening, I had started to believe that I had quit living and I was only existing as a shell, waiting for my body to catch me up and realize that I was already dead.

Miraculously it was then that Arthur Simpton brought me back to life!

* * *

This evening, Wednesday, the nineteenth of April, Father sent a glass of wine up to my dressing room as Mary readied me for my first social event as Lady of Wheiler House. I knew the wine was strong, unwatered from the special bottles Father had ordered up from the wine cellar. I’d sipped it while Mary combed and pinned my thick auburn hair into place.

“’Tis a considerate man, he is, your father,” Mary had chattered. “It warms my heart, it does, how much care and attention he’s been showin’ ye.”

I hadn’t said anything. What could I have said? I could easily look through her eyes at me, and at Father. Of course he appeared careful and considerate of me to the outside world—they had never seen his burning look or felt the unbearable heat of his hand!

When my coiffure was done Mary had stepped away. I’d stood from the chair at my vanity and walked to my full-length looking glass. I’ll never forget that first sight of myself as a woman fully grown. My cheeks had been flushed from the wine, which came easily to me as my skin is so fair—as fair as Mother’s had been. The dress fit me as if it had always been mine. It was the exact color of our eyes.

I stared and thought hopelessly, I am my mother, at the same instant Mary whispered, “You are so like her, ’tis like seein’ a ghost,” and crossed herself.

There was a knock on my dressing room door and Carson’s voice announced, “Miss Wheiler, your father sends word that the gentlemen have begun to arrive.”

“Yes. All right. I’ll come down in a moment.” I hadn’t moved, though. I don’t believe I could have made my body move had Mary not gently squeezed my hand and said, “There now, I was silly to speak so. ’Tis not your mother’s ghost you are. Not at all. ’Tis a lovely lass who does credit to her memory. I’ll light a candle for ye tonight and pray her spirit watches over ye and gives you strength.” Then she’d opened the door for me, and I’d had no choice but to leave the room, and my childhood, behind.

It was a long way from my third-floor bedchamber and private parlor that had begun as a spacious nursery for children that never came, but it seemed it took only an instant for me to reach the last landing—the one that opened to the first-floor foyer below. I’d paused there. The deep male voices that lifted to me sounded odd and out of place in a home that had been so silent for so many months.

“Ah, there you are, Emily.” Father had closed the few steps between us, joining me on the landing. Formally, he bowed and then, as I’d seen him do for Mother countless times, held out his arm for me to take it. I automatically rested my hand on his arm and moved down the remainder of the staircase beside him. I could feel his eyes on me. “You are a picture, my dear. A picture.” I’d looked up at him then, surprised to hear the familiar compliment he’d paid Mother so many times.

I hated the way he was looking at me. Even after the joy the rest of the evening brought me, that hatred is still fresh in my mind. He studied me ravenously. It was as if I were one of the rare cuts of lamb on which he habitually gorged himself.

I still wonder if any of the waiting men that evening noticed Father’s terrible gaze, and my stomach roils with sickness at the thought of it.

His gaze left me and he beamed effusively at the small gathering of men below us. “You see, Simpton. Nothing to worry about at all. Emily is right as rain—right as rain.”

I’d looked down, expecting to see a graying man with rheumy eyes, a thick walrus mustache, and a barrel chest, but my eyes met the clear, blue gaze of a dashingly handsome young man who was smiling good-naturedly at me.

“Arthur!” His name had escaped before I could control my words.

His brilliant blue eyes had crinkled at the corners with his smile, but before he could respond, Father cut in gruffly. “Emily, there will be no overfamiliarity tonight, especially when Simpton here is standing in for his father.”

I felt my face flame with heat.

“Mr. Wheiler, I’m sure it was surprise that caused your daughter to speak so familiarly. I am, alas, not the man my father is,” he’d joked, puffing up his cheeks and swelling his chest as to mimic his father’s girth. “Or at least not yet!”

A man I easily recognized as Mr. Pullman slapped Arthur on the back and laughed heartily. “Your father does have a love of good food. Can’t say I’m not guilty of the same.” He patted his own impressive belly.

Carson chose then to step from an arched doorway and call, “Dinner is served, Miss Wheiler.”

It had taken me several moments to realize that Carson was actually speaking to me. I swallowed past the dryness in my throat and said, “Gentlemen, if you will follow me to the dining room we would be honored by your company for tonight’s modest repast.” Father had nodded his approval to me and we’d begun walking toward the formal dining room when I couldn’t stop myself from peeking back over my shoulder for another glimpse of Arthur Simpton.