Roses and Black Glass: a dark Cinderella tale
Page 1
Roses and Black Glass:
a dark Cinderella tale
by Lani Lenore
Text © Lani Lenore 2002-2013
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be produced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
Nevermor (Book 1 preview) by Lani Lenore
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
About the Author
Prologue
The sign by the road read: Madison’s Mortuary and Dealings with the Dead.
If an onlooker was brave enough to let their eyes trail up that curving path to the top of the hill, they would notice the grand house that sat there, looming three stories high. It was covered in wooden shingles, whitewashed as if to bleach out any question of impurity. The hill was the tallest within the limits of the town, letting the house look down on the rest like some god of judgment.
The house looked perfectly regular - except of course for the sign. If one looked closer, however, they might notice the depression behind the hill that was known as the drop-off, where carriages could be pulled around for the sole purpose of unloading corpses off into the basement where the mortuary rested.
Though nothing seemed amiss from the outside, while inside, all one could think about were the dealings going on below in the mortuary itself - the cutting of human flesh, bodies being drained of blood and fluids. For this reason, the house rarely received casual visitors. The townspeople would come to speak of how the dead were to be prepared, but none ever stayed long enough to enjoy a polite cup of tea. The atmosphere around them made them too uneasy.
Among some of the more unmentionable things in Virginia in the year 1852, Madison’s rested squarely at number one in its own part of the world. It was a known obscenity in the miniscule town it rested in, only leaving small room for the few hidden burlesque houses, wild taverns, and whatever lied waiting in the woods. The mortuary was out in the open for dark pondering.
The people of Greenhaven liked to pretend that it didn’t exist there on that hill. Mutilating a corpse was quite a scandalous affair. Then again, most had to admit that it was better than dealing with their own dead.
The owner of the house and business, Charles Madison, was a well-liked man – for those who cared to know him. He had managed to have friendships outside his home and he never spoke of his work when he was away from it. For good reason. Charles had come from money, and though he made little with what he now was, there was still plenty in savings for him so that he could carry out his work and not worry about finances. The truth was that he was simply fascinated by the dead.
What might be learned from the dead that could, in turn, help the living? After he was gone, these were words that only his daughter would remember.
Five years ago, Charles’s wife, Amelia, had been taken by tuberculosis. Left all alone with his daughter of ten, Cindy, Charles could do nothing but be sorrowful in the large family house, physically empty, but with rooms filled with old memories. Finally, he grew tired of being alone. He wanted his daughter to have a female influence in her life as she grew into a woman herself. With that in mind, he set out to find a new wife.
The woman he chose was pleasing to look upon. Her appearance and presentation were appealing, but not only that, she could carry on decent conversation. She was interesting. Independent. Proud… Charles failed to see that there could be a problem in her ego, blinded by he was by her outward appearance. He married the woman. Her name was Anna.
Anna had been married previously, to a husband who had fallen in a duel, and when she joined with Charles, she brought two daughters with her. The eldest was called Isabella; the younger called Charlotte. Both girls were very much like their mother, for they were also proud.
Charles had thought he had done a wonderful thing for his daughter Cindy. He had given her a mother and two sisters who were near her same age. Unknown to him was the fact that Cindy was not happy with these new additions to the household. He had never thought to ask her how she felt. Desperate to please him, she tried to smile when he would glance her way, but inside she was in turmoil with the idea that her mother had been replaced.
As she grew, the sweet smile from childhood fell from her lips and depression set into her heart. Anna treated her as a ghost - dismissing her as invisible - and she became the immediate target of humiliation and torture from her new siblings. Cindy longed for freedom with her father, who failed to recognize her trouble, but she didn’t believe she could ever have that thing she desired.
As time passed, the mortuary became an interest of Cindy’s. Within the house, it became her only realm of escape. Though her stepsisters and mother would never venture there, the dark-haired girl never had trouble carrying about her normal childish business in the atmosphere, sometimes even playing with dolls across the bloodless corpses. When she reached the age of thirteen, she asked her father to teach her his trade – the dead were much more interesting than the living.
Anna had protested to the thought in an extreme way at first. The idea was scandalous and shameful all at once. Charles was at risk of ridicule by doing it himself, but to let a girl child participate was preposterous! Charles had explained calmly that Cindy had plenty of time to grow into a proper lady. Perhaps it was simply a phase the young one was going through; she simply wanted to be with her father.
His new wife had still been uneasy with the thought, but finally seeing the opportunity to give her own daughters more growing room and the chance to step ahead, she consented to Cindy’s wishes.
Charles was happy to have his daughter beside him, though it still did nothing but repulse his wife. Cindy could not have cared less. She took advantage of the only time she had with her father when he was not being hogged by the family additions. Bloody as it was, she wouldn’t trade that time for anything else in the world.
Since her mother’s death, Cindy’s only happiness rested with her father. She prayed that he would never leave her.
Chapter One
1
Christian smirked with interest as the house came closer into view through the carriage window. Though seventeen and well on his way to manhood, he couldn’t help but feel much curiosity pouring to him at the sight of the large house, seeping through the cracks in the carriage like ghostly fingers. He’d been anxious to have a look inside the Madison house for quite a while, but he hadn’t been fortunate enough to have anyone close to him die.
For years, he had been waiting, and finally the day had come.
There was another wagon trailing along behind them that also belonged to Christian’s father. In the back of that wagon rested the body of his aunt, covered neatly in white sheets. She had died in the night – a woman only in her forties that had been growi
ng sicker over the past months. The deal with death done, her body was to be prepared for a funeral. Christian couldn’t help but wonder what they’d do to her corpse. What would they stuff her body full of for preservation? What would they do with all the fluids they drained? Would they gouge out the woman’s eyes or leave them within to settle as pools of mush?
“Are you alright, Christian?”
He tilted his head from the window, looking across at his father on the other side of the carriage, but did not completely withdraw from the light of the gray day that shown in on him. It looked like it might rain, but it was pleasant to Christian.
Anthony Charming was a thin, sickly-looking man, paler today than usual. He was meek, the sort that might jump at the slightest, unexpected sound. Christian observed him now, wondering how he could possibly have come from this man's seed.
We are not alike at all, he thought, not for the first time. Yet he couldn't quite choose a member of his immediate family that he resembled. Even his brothers were very different from him.
“Perfectly fine, father,” he assured the man flatly.
“I want to thank you for accompanying me today," he went on, overlooking his son's tone. "With the death of your aunt, I’m just not feeling like myself.”
“I realize it’s hard for you,” Christian forced himself to say. “You and Aunt Kate were very close.”
Christian wasn’t sure what to say to his father. The two of them had never been very warm in conversation and neither was Christian used to giving out any type of sympathy. The men of the family were taught to be silently strong, not showing their emotions. That had been their mother’s insistence, for their father was quite a passive fellow. Christian had personally never had a problem with those things – his emotions were few. He couldn’t say that he had ever known true happiness or love, but on the other hand, neither had he known true hate.
Mr. Charming took a deep breath then, unsettling the silence in the carriage that had been accompanied only by the clomping of horse feet up the path.
“I’ll do all the talking in there,” he said, a shudder rolling through him. “I don’t want to stay any longer than we have to. The place has a bad feeling about it.”
Christian held in a laugh through clenched teeth. Why were people so afraid of this place? It was a perfectly respectable business. It was better than having to simply dump the bodies into the ground before the smell set in like they used to do not too many years ago. At least now the bodies could have a proper sending as they were committed to the earth.
The carriage slowed and halted in front of the house. Christian waited for his father to get from the carriage before stepping out onto the hill himself.
The wind still feels the same here, he mused. No different than down there.
The horses pulled the second wagon onward toward the drop-off, where the body could be taken in by Madison. Christian watched it until it halted there, entranced. Wicked whispers of curiosity urged him, wanting him to go forward and explore. What was really back there? What horrific and entertaining things was he missing?
Somewhere up above, the loud caw of a crow jerked him out of his thoughts. He looked up to see the large black bird fly from an eave of the house, shedding a feather as it flew. He watched it flap off alone into the distance, and the sound of the thick silence on this hill settled back into his ears. He realized then how far it was from everything else.
He looked out over the town below, seeing that all the other grand houses looked like toys from here. He knew why the crow had chosen this place to roost. Every other spot paled in comparison. A gentle wind teased his hair beneath the dreary sky and in that moment, Christian felt he knew what it was like to be God. He smiled shortly, satisfied with that, and he moved toward the house.
2
From above, through one of the large windows, two sets of sharp green eyes watched their prey approach. They watched the young Charming as if they were vultures, anxiously awaiting the moment he would drop so that they could snatch out his eyes. If he had dropped, however, it wouldn’t have been his eyes that they would have gone snatching about.
After the boy had stopped looking off into the distance, the eyes watched him pass under the stoop to enter the house. The prey was in their den now. He would not evade them.
3
The house was clean and well-decorated on the inside, but it was not interesting enough for Christian. He’d wanted some dark elegance, like the decorum of a horror novel. Everything, colors and style, were the same as every other house in this town. He became bored quickly.
He amused himself by pretending to look at the drab paintings on the walls of the front parlor, while actually he was listening to his father work out the details with Charles Madison who had just come back from bringing the body inside. They were in the front hall, but he could hear them well.
“You will make her look normal, won’t you?” Anthony asked, seeming a bit unsure about the whole situation.
Charles chuckled politely at the thought. Christian pulled in his lips to stifle his own laugh.
“Of course!” replied the mortician. Then his tone changed to be more businesslike. “The body will not keep long for public view, even with preparation. The funeral should probably be arranged for tomorrow."
“Yes,” Mr. Charming said hurriedly, ready to be done with it. “Tomorrow will be fine. I'll talk with the reverend.”
Christian peered around the corner to look at him. Christian had met the man before, but never at work. To his dislike, not only was the house normal, but Mr. Madison was not nearly the spectacle he had hoped for. What fun it would have been to taunt everyone with how he had looked. He could have perhaps been dressed all in black with blood-covered hands or such, but Charles Madison looked as normal as usual. Not many of Christian’s age had seen the man in his home. He was a dark legend to them. If nothing else had come from it, Christian quite liked seeing his father shift uneasily through it all, refusing tea and a seat. It was quite amusing.
“Christian Charming! What a pleasant surprise!"
Turning his frosty eyes, Christian cast his gaze upon a girl near his own age. Her long blond hair was tied up carefully and a few loose strands hung in ringlets along her round face. Her dress was of the finest materials, though she seemed a bit overdressed to be walking about at home, but he said nothing of the sort. She had a majestic form and was pleasing to his eyes. He would humor her – for now.
“Isabella Van Burren,” he said with exaggerated tolerance. “I would never have expected to see you in a place like this. You live here? By God… I never would have guessed it!”
He hardly associated the girl with this place, for she and her sister were always about town with their mother, visiting the homes of others rather than being at their own, but the young man had known somewhere in his mind that she’d lived her. Her mother had married Madison years ago. Perhaps he’d forgotten – or it was not important enough to remember.
“It’s quite the prestigious household I assure you,” the girl pushed insistently, stepping across the room with measured movements. “I have nothing to do with what my step-father has interest in.”
“Yes,” he agreed, eyeing her displayed cleavage briefly. “You’re much too good for work, aren’t you?”
“Of course,” the girl said with a laugh. “I need someone who can take care of me.” She came closer. “Still, it would not be as though they were getting nothing in return.”
She looked at him sensuously, peering into his eyes from just a few inches beneath his height. She smelled wonderful, but he was not fooled by her. He held in his laugh and simply smiled back at her with counterfeit affection. He allowed her to be close, looking up to him and wanting his lips, but he took care to keep them just out of her reach.
“Yes, I suppose you wouldn’t be such an unwise investment for a man,” he mused.
The girl laughed genuinely, though Christian was sure she had practiced the tone and pitch of it.
“You flatter me, Christian! A fine investment! Perhaps, but I assure you, I’ll be no one’s prize pig!”
“Perhaps a prize mule then?” came a voice from behind Christian.
Leading them both to turn, another girl stood in the doorway, this one slightly younger. She had long, red hair, lightened by the sun. Powder covered her scattered freckles, making her skin appear pure. Her dress was of green velvet and covered a thin, boyish figure that somehow managed to be quite alluring. She was also overdressed, as her sister was, but not unattractive in her own right.
“If it isn’t the lovely Charlotte,” said Christian, pretending to forget about Isabella.
He turned to her and stooped to kiss her hand, knowing that it would leave Isabella boiling with anger. He found it all quite amusing. The two acted as no one could separate them, yet they writhed with jealousy for each other. Both girls were pretty enough, yet it was no mystery that Isabella was considered to be the most desirable young woman in the town. Most agreed. So, of course, in Isabella’s presence, Christian aimed to give Charlotte the greater deal of attention.
“I thought mother wanted to see you,” Isabella said coldly, eyeing her sister in anger.
“That was earlier. She wants to see you now.”
“Liar,” Isabella said boldly, her eyes harsh.
“So what are you girls planning for this evening?” Christian asked, barging into their bickering and making himself comfortable in a chair without being asked.
“I have no plans,” said Charlotte quickly.
“You know very well that we are going to the theatre in Ashton with mother!” Isabella scolded.
Charlotte shrugged and rolled her eyes.
“I’d give that up to be with you, Christian,” she cooed.
He smiled adoringly at her. “I could never ask you to do that, fair Charlotte. Your mother would be quite angry with me.”
Isabella stared with rage burning in her green eyes until she finally spoke.