Neferet's Curse (House of Night Novellas #3)(2)

“Well, Mr. Wheiler, I know it is of little consolation after losing a son and a wife, but you do have a daughter, and through her the promise of heirs.”

“She promised me heirs!” Father shouted, finally turning to look at Mother.

I must have made some small, wounded sound because Father’s eyes instantly flicked to my window seat. They narrowed, and for a moment it didn’t seem he recognized me. And then he shook himself, as if trying to shiver something uncomfortable from his skin.

“Emily, why are you here?” Father’s voice had sounded so angry that it seemed the question he’d meant to ask was much more than why I was in that room at that particular time.

“M-mother bade me s-stay,” I had stuttered.

“Your mother is dead,” he’d said, anger flattened to hard-edged truth.

“And this is no place for a young lady.” The doctor’s face had been flushed when he faced my father. “Beg pardon, Mr. Wheiler. I was too occupied with the birth to notice the girl there.”

“The fault was not yours, Doctor Fisher. My wife often did and said things that perplexed me. This is simply the last of them.” Father made a dismissive gesture that took in the doctor, the maids, and me. “Now leave me with Mrs. Wheiler, all of you.”

I wanted to run from the room—to escape as quickly as possible, but my feet had gone numb and cold from sitting unmoving for so long and as I passed Father I’d stumbled. His hand caught me under the elbow. I’d looked up, startled.

His expression had suddenly appeared to soften as he gazed down at me. “You have your mother’s eyes.”

“Yes.” Breathless and lightheaded, that was all I could say.

“That is as it should be. You are now the Lady of Wheiler House.” Then Father released me and walked slowly, heavily, to the bloody bed.

As I closed the door behind me, I heard him begin to weep.

Thereby also began my strange and lonely time of mourning. I moved numbly through the funeral and collapsed afterward. It was as if sleep had taken me over. I could not break free of it. For two full months I hardly left my bed. I did not care that I grew thin and pale. I did not care that the social condolence calls of my mother’s friends and their daughters were left unanswered. I did not notice that Christmas and a New Year came and went. Mary, my mother’s lady’s maid, whom I had inherited, begged, cajoled, and scolded. I cared not at all.

It was the fifth day of January when Father broke me free of sleep’s hold. My room had grown cold, so cold that my shivering had awakened me. The fire in my hearth had died and not been relit, so I pulled the sash attached to Mary’s summoning bell, which tinkled all the way down in the servants’ quarters in the bowels of the house, but she had not answered my call. I remember putting on my dressing gown, and thinking—briefly—how large it seemed and how very much it engulfed me. Making my way slowly from my third-floor bedchamber down the wide, wooden stairway, shivering, I searched for Mary. Father had emerged from his study as I came to the bottom of the stairs. When he first saw me his eyes were blank, then his expression registered surprise. Surprise followed by something I was almost certain was disgust.

“Emily, you look wretched! Thin and pale! Are you ill?”

Before I could answer, Mary was there, hurrying across the foyer toward us. “I told ye, Mr. Wheiler. She’s not been eating. I said she was doing nothin’ but sleepin’. Wastin’ away, she is.” Mary had spoken briskly, her soft Irish accent more pronounced than usual.

“Well, this behavior must end at once,” Father had said sternly. “Emily, you will leave your bed. You will eat. You will take daily walks in the gardens. I simply will not have you looking emaciated. You are, after all, the Lady of Wheiler House, and my lady cannot look as if she were a starving gutter waif.”

His eyes had been hard. His anger had been intimidating, especially as I realized Mother wouldn’t appear from her parlor, buzzing with distracting energy and shooing me away while pacifying Father with a smile and a touch.

I took an automatic step away from him, which only made his expression darker. “You have your mother’s look, but not her spunk. As irritating as it had been at times, I admired her spunk. I miss it.”

“I-I miss Mother, too,” I heard myself blurt.

“Of course ye do, dove,” Mary had soothed. “’Tis only been little over two months.”

“Then we have something in common after all.” Father had ignored Mary completely and spoken as if she hadn’t been there, nervously touching my hair, smoothing my dressing gown. “The loss of Alice Wheiler has created our commonality.” He’d turned his head then, studying me. “You do have her look.” Father stroked his dark beard and his gaze lost its hard, intimidating cast. “We shall have to make the best of her absence, you know.”

“Yes, Father.” I’d felt relieved at the gentling of his voice.

“Good. Then I expect you to join me for dinner each evening, as you and your mother used to. No more of this hiding in your room, starving your looks away.”

I had smiled then, actually smiled. “I would like that,” I’d said.

He’d grunted, slapped the newspaper he’d been holding across his arm, and nodded. “At dinner then,” he’d said, and he walked past me, disappearing into the west wing of the house.