by Minda Webber
“Aren’t we all,” Rae replied, glancing from belligerent face to belligerent face.
“We do too mean what we’re saying,” Ernst stated, quickly backed up by the grumbling of his sister. Merri was complaining about wicked stepmothers and evil witches.
Fen shook his head. “We will have no more of this. Come, it is time for introductions. What will your new mother think of our sittens?”
What did Rae think? Sittens? Glancing at the horrid little monsters, she wondered if they were supposed to sit to be introduced. That seemed a strange custom, but then, from what she had observed so far, this was not your normal house hold. However, she certainly didn’t want them sitting on the pretty striped French sofa next to her. Not with her lovely wedding gown and their grubby nasty little fingers.
As she started to protest, she was interrupted by her loutish husband, who quickly explained, “Sittens are manners.” He must have caught her look of confusion.
However, at his explanation there were gasps of outrage. “She doesn’t even speak German?” his eldest asked.
“Nein, Nap. Rae speaks very little German. But then, she was brought up in England,” Fen replied, his tone abrupt.
“We live in Prussia, but we speak English,” Merri pointed out.
“Well, now we have a stepmother who doesn’t speak one speck of German,” Shyla said, her little face scrunched in disapproval. “What will my friends think? What will Grandmother Schortz think?”
“She’ll be mad and send her to bed without her supper,” Merri predicted with a cheerful glint in her eyes.
“Grandmother can’t do that. She’s in Paris right now,” Ernst spoke up.
“How fortunate for me,” Rae remarked. “And most people in England speak French not German, anyway, since French is the civilized tongue.”
Nap’s face got a crafty look. “Then, you speak French?”
Fen had begun to interrupt, but when Rae disparaged the German language as well as his country, he stood and let his little darlings work their magic. Rae frowned, realizing a trap had been sprung, and decided to ignore the fractious lad. Ernst got a crafty look in his eye, tapped his brother on the shoulder and whispered. Nap’s crafty expression took on a wicked cast.
Rae noted the two boys’ evil intent immediately, and couldn’t help but feel a chill creep over her soul. Her wedding day wasn’t even half over yet, and she felt not only weary in spirit and body, but leery as well. “I will learn German,” she announced boldly, forgetting that she had a terrible time with languages.
“Like you’ve learned French?” Nap questioned. A few snorts followed, all of disdain.
Rae lost her temper and replied snidely to the ugly little mob. “How hard can it be, if you all speak it?”
And with those few words, her fate was sealed. War was declared. It would be a bitter, winner-take-all battle, her against them, filled with wanton carnage, diabolical pranks and crafty maneuverings. There would be no flags of truce, no surrender. This was war at its most elemental.
Ignoring the ugly stirrings in the air, Fen proceeded to introduce his children. Pointing to a tall, lanky lad of twelve, with pale blond hair and deep gray eyes, he told Rae this was Napoleon—Nap for short. And Nap was dynamite. The child was a natural leader and quite intelligent, and the pride was evident in his father’s voice as he praised his oldest son and heir.
Next he introduced a chubby child with light brown hair and pale blue eyes. His eldest daughter, Meredith, was called Merri for short. She had just turned eleven. After Merri, Fen leaned over and straightened the jacket of one of the blond-haired boys. He then presented his twins: Quinn and Ernst, who were nine. The two were almost identical, with the exception that Quinn had light gray eyes and Ernst’s were a vivid blue with dark gray specks. (It would be much later that Rae took the time to notice the difference.)
Fen boasted of Quinn’s interest in living things, while Ernst liked to invent things, including stories. Ernst, it seemed, wanted to be an actor when he grew up. Rae made a mental note to keep that juicy tidbit in mind. Her sister Taylor could act, and the pranks the girl had pulled were downright scary.
Before he could finish introducing a girl named Shyla, a very pretty little eight-year-old with golden curls and eyes the color of sapphires interrupted. “My name’s Poppy.” And the incorrigible five-year-old climbed up her father’s leg.
Rae merely nodded. She was weary, and the restlessness of the child was not only distracting; it was tiring. Glancing at her new husband, she commented dolefully, “That child has been hopping, skipping or swinging her arms in constant motion ever since I opened my eyes. It makes me quite dizzy.” Why couldn’t the girl be still, like the littlest child, a boy, who was sitting quietly by the desk leg, playing with what looked to be like a dented lantern?
“I don’t yikes to be still.”
Shaking her head, Rae asked, “Why on earth would you saddle a child with a name like Poppy? It sounds like something someone would call their grandfather. Isn’t it bad enough she has to bear the surname Schortz?”
The room erupted with shouts of anger as Fen sucked in his breath at her rudeness. And he had worried about the effect of his children’s ill manners on Rae’s feelings? What a witch!
“I see. Poppy is a strange name, while Razel is nothing odd, even though you’re named after a member of the lettuce family.”
“An herb. A healing herb,” Rae cried out.
“Well, I see little difference. And what’s wrong with the name Schortz? It’s a fine, distinguished name! Schortzes have been in Prussia since the tenth century. And they have been barons for the past seven centuries. Can you say the same thing about your family name?”
Before Rae had a chance to defend her familial honor. she was rudely interrupted by Poppy, whose face had turned a deep red. “It’s my grandmother’s name, Schorz, and I yike it!” And with those words, the little girl jumped down from her father’s leg, ran over and kicked Rae in the shin.
“Ouch!” Rae squealed, and glared at Poppy. She turned her accusing glare at her husband. “She kicked me!”
Nap interrupted, his face flushed with anger. “You wouldn’t know a worthy name if it bit you on—”
“Nap, that’s enough,” Fen warned. He cut his son off and pulled the little warrior Poppy away from his new wife. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he turned to Rae and replied, “Some might say that you deserved it.”
“How dare you!” Rae was beyond being incensed, since even a new wife knew that a husband’s duty was to protect his wife from harm, even at the hands of his children.
“I dare anything I please,” Fen retorted, eyeing her with no love lost. This proud, vainglorious woman would never be a good mother.
“We don’t have to keep her, do we?” Merri whined. “I don’t like her. And she doesn’t like our name!”
“Father, we can’t have her for a stepmother. She’ll shame the Schortz name!” Nap exploded, his narrow features tightening as he glared at his new stepmother. “You could get an annulment.”
“She is pretty, but our mother was much prettier,” Shyla declared.
They already despised her, and she hadn’t even been in their home for an hour yet. Which just went to prove that Rae had been right, which she was now thinking. “An annulment is a fine idea. What a smart boy!”
Rae smiled winningly at Nap, who, noticing how the smile lit up her eyes, narrowed his own. With a calculated gaze he switched his attention back and forth from his new mother to his father. His father was still scowling, but Nap had to admit that Ms. Rae was a fetching thing, and his father liked a pretty face. They were all doomed, unless he could get rid of her. The sooner, the better, too. His brothers and sisters needed a real mother, like the one they had lost. And this cold woman on the sofa would not a good mother make.
Hearing his son’s words and Rae’s agreement set Fen’s teeth on edge and fired his temper. “There will be no annulment!” he bellowed.
Na
p and the twins glared at their father. Poppy stuck her thumb in her mouth, while Shyla primped her curls and looked bored. Merri bitterly grumbled about evil stepmothers.
Not to be outdone, and expressing his outrage at being ignored, Alden attached himself to his father’s strong right leg and began to bite. As Fen felt his son’s sharp little teeth, he leaned down and plucked him off his leg and lifted him up in the air. With a sarcastic flourish, he introduced the mite. “And last but not least is my youngest, Alden. He’s not quite four.”
Rae’s gasp was filled with undisguised horror. “Let me guess—an ankle-biter. Good grief. My youngest brother William was one, and I have a scar to prove it.” She had not only not married well, she had married into hell.
She fled to her bedroom.
Meanwhile, while Rae was dealing with her new stepchildren by hiding in her boudoir, Greta was handling her own issues. She used her aunt’s joyous celebrations to slip away unnoticed, and to confront the doctor who examined the old Choplin woman’s body upon death.
“The time has come to talk of many things,” Greta said as she stared at the doctor. “Of the woodcutter’s mother, her missing corpse and bite marks on the neck.”
The doctor just stared at her as if she were mad.
The man’s a disgrace to his profession, Greta thought disgustedly, for he stood there, his jacket askew, with reddened eyes, sagging jowls and a pasty coloring. He stared at her as if she were something strange. His house, which served also as his office, was filthy with discarded bottles of Schnapps littered here and there.
“Come, now,’ tis no time to be shy. I am asking about the corpse, and the fact that no body was in the grave.”
“You’re wrong. There was somebody. Frau Choplin.”
“I know the body was hers, but there was no body in there.” Impatiently, Greta stared at him, smelling the alcohol he’d clearly recently drunk.
“Of course nobody was there. Her corpse was stolen, which means that no body was there where it should have been. For that is where the bodies are buried—any old body—in the cemetery,” the grumpy old doctor exclaimed.
“I wonder, do you take lessons from my sister?” Greta asked, bemused. This was not going as smoothly as she had foreseen. “Never mind. Just tell me if Frau Choplin had bite marks on her neck or wrists.”
“My child,” the doctor began. “She was not bitten by wolves or bears. A cart of wood fell upon her as she was traveling home one night.”
Greta’s eyes filled with displeasure. “I know a cart fell upon her, but before it fell, mayhap she was bitten and drained of blood.”
“She lost blood due to the falling logs hitting her,” the doctor allowed.
Greta shook her head, exasperated, and glanced up at the clock over the mantel. Her aunt would soon be leaving the after-wedding-breakfast dinner that the Countess De-Luise was hosting. She would be back any time now, and this idiot was not helping by hedging. “Did you even check for bite marks?” she demanded.
“Why would I check for bite marks when she was attacked by logs?”
Slapping a hand to her face, Greta glowered at the man. “You are a doctor! It is your duty to see what causes the deaths of the persons entrusted to your care. How can you do that if you don’t thoroughly check over each corpse?”
The disheveled doctor glared back at Greta with distaste. “Do not presume to tell me how to do my duty. I’m the doctor here, not you!”
“Ha! I bet you don’t know a shin bone from a thigh bone. How could you, drowning in liquor as you are?”
The doctor drew himself up to his very impressive height and pointed to a diploma by the door. “I graduated from the University of Munich twenty-seven years ago. I’ve been tending to bodies both alive and dead since before you were even born.”
“That may be, but the facts are clear. Frau Choplin’s body is not in her grave. Therefore, it is possible to conclude that she rose from her grave after being bitten and drained by a vampire.”
“Oh no! You don’t happen to be one of those Fairy Tale Fundamentalists?”
“No, I am merely a concerned citizen who has extensively studied legends such as those of werewolves and vampires, and of other things that fly by night,” she stated proudly.
“Oh, good grief! Another one of those graveyard gatherers!” the doctor sneered. “Sticking your nose into cemetery business and other otherworldly concerns. I should have known. You’re putting the cart before the Nosferatu. There is no such thing as vampyrs. Now, go away like a good girl and leave me to my work.”
“You mean to your Schnapps.”
Pointing at the door to his office, he eyed her with distaste. It was ugly. “You have overstayed your welcome.”
Head held high, Greta left the room in a royal huff, muttering, “What in the bloody hell does he know, anyway? He was probably too stewed to make anything but a soup of the details.”
As she carefully made her way around an icy patch of snow, she wondered how her sister was faring. Rae was probably right now ensconced in her new home. Greta hoped that Rae was at least enjoying explorations of her new castle. She also hoped her vain little sister would soon come to acknowledge that she was married to a good man.
With her thoughts focused on Rae and her wedding night, Greta rounded the corner to the main street. Then she saw him across the cobbled street. Prince von Hanzen was escorting a lady inside—if “lady” she could be called. Her gown was an outlandish scarlet, and her cheeks were painted. Still, if the prince wanted to parade a hussy up and down Wolfach for all to see, who was Greta to care?
Glancing down the street, the prince espied her and gave her a mocking bow. Greta fumed. “He’s too arrogant by half, too assured and too stubborn,” she muttered.
The so-called lady said something to him, and he turned his attention to her. Greta responded by turning and ignoring him, feigning great interest in the shop window.
“Imagine, escorting a soiled dove in broad daylight,” she mumbled disgustedly.
However, she unhappily found herself angered by her concern that the pompous, promiscuous prince would be spending the afternoon kissing that hussy’s too-red lips instead of her own.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Bless the Beastly Little Children
In later years, Rae would always remember two things about her wedding. First: that the brood of seven little Schortzes, with their beady little eyes and grubby little fingers, were scamps one and all, pests pure and simple. The second thing she would remember was that she did not have a wedding night. Though, for the first few days of her marriage, this problem did not bother her a whit. It was only later, when she began to see her husband as virile and handsome, that his lack of interest in his husbandly duties bothered her.
No, on this night—her wedding night—she was praying for a reprieve from her wifely duties as she was seated at the dinner table by one of the footmen. Nodding briskly at her husband, she turned her attention to the room in general. She and Fen were dining by candlelight, as a newly married couple should, but without the intimacy or rapport. The atmosphere was very tense. The whole subject of children remained just out of sight, like a giant fire-breathing dragon watching from the shadows. The abysmal meeting between the children and Rae was not mentioned, but nonetheless the dragon eventually raised its ugly head, by way of a loud banging sound from above.
Rae glanced up and heard a shout of pure glee. Her husband remained silent, even though it sounded as if demented little goblins were breaching the castle walls. Enough was enough. She spoke. “I see your children have not heard of the golden rule.”
Fen lifted his head from his contemplation of his plate. “The golden rule?”
“Children should be seen and not heard.”
Fen didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “That’s not the golden rule!”
“It’s not?” she asked, genuinely surprised.
He shook his head. “Do unto your neighbor as you would have him do unto
you.”
“That’s a fine rule, too,” she agreed. “Shall I go make faces at the children as they did to me this afternoon, or make wooden signs, or perhaps a tapestry celebrating the dubious joys of being a stepmother?”
He actually cracked a smile. “It takes time, Rae. This situation is new to us all.”
There wasn’t much she could say to that, so she sourly took a bite of sauerkraut and began to study her surroundings. It was more than obvious her husband was wealthy. The dining area was a very spacious room with a high, vaulted ceiling. Watered silk covered the walls, with delicate tiny floral patterns. Placed about the room were several large paintings, and she noted a Rembrandt, which she knew to be very costly. A Venetian chandelier hung high overhead, with hundreds of etched glass pieces hanging from its center.
The silverware was gold, most probably real. All in all it was a perfectly divine dining room, Rae saw—with one exception. Fen had not ordered for her place to be set next to his own; hence they were separated by a vast expanse of polished cherrywood table, making conversation necessarily loud.
The bleak atmosphere seemed to affect everyone in the room, too. The butler’s countenance was stiff, and the liveried footmen went about performing their tasks in solemn silence. Her bridal supper reminded Rae of a wake, rather than a bride and groom’s first intimate meal.
As the silence drew on, Rae became aware that she needed to do something to lighten the atmosphere. She had never been seated with a gentleman who was not trying to win her affections—most especially not alone with one. The morose man was slowly sipping his wine, ignoring her presence.
He was certainly not the man she would have chosen to be her husband, yet he’d become exactly that. Regrettably. Nonetheless, she vowed that she would not let him ignore her. Her feminine vanity would not allow it.