by Lenore, Lani
This sent the van Burren women into a round of excited laughter, though Cindy felt she had lost her appetite. Not only were her sisters after young Mr. Charming for his radiant looks – and no doubt his superior seed – they were also groping for his wealth with sticky fingers. It made her sick. Surely he was aware of this. Cindy honestly wished to see him together with her sisters just once, only to know how he truly felt about them. She wanted to see that he was above them, but she wondered if she truly had hope for that.
But if I could, at least I would know that he's not worth my thoughts.
“What are you thinking about, Cinderella?” asked Isabella, when she noticed the girl was not touching her soup.
Cindy looked up to find six green eyes staring down the table at her in waiting. This sight truly did make her lose her appetite.
“Nothing,” she said quietly, moving the spoon around in her bowl for a bit before she gave up and set it aside. “Could I be excused? I’d like to get on with my chores.”
Anna sat for a moment in silence and then finally nodded in consent. “Of course,” she allowed, “but be sure to get straight to them.”
Cindy rose quickly from her chair as the eyes watched and she headed for the door. Her stepmother’s abrupt speech made her stop.
“You may return in twenty minutes to clear the dishes.”
"Yes, ma'am." She felt daggers in her chest each time she said it, but had become accustomed to being submissive by now. This was her life. There was no escape.
3
Cindy wandered down the hallway and out of sight. Isabella watched her leave with disapproval in her eyes, then stirred a bit of the steaming soup.
“That girl,” she muttered aloud. “She can’t do anything right! Now my soup is too hot!”
“Perhaps it is all she can do,” their mother said with a dismissive shrug. “You should not comment on the failings of others.”
She said this, but she was smiling with approval.
“Personally, I think she’s holding out on us,” said Isabella.
“Maybe she’s just stupid,” said Charlotte thoughtfully.
The three cackled together.
“Or perhaps she has something against us?” asked Charlotte.
“Well, I’ve been nothing but nice to her,” said Isabella with a sly smile.
Her mother and sister copied the smile with their identical lips and then went back to their soup. They were all completely aware of the way they treated the girl. Since her father had passed on, they had a maid to do their complete bidding for no pay. It was a pleasant set-up, the three of them agreed, and they went on living every passing day to Cindy’s disadvantage. They felt no guilt.
4
Spending the rest of the day alone with her chores was long, but finally the bed was reached and Cindy hoped to treasure every moment of peaceful sleep she would partake of. Sleep was not an easy thing to come by in this house, but now it was time.
She unwound her aching hands from their bandages, her knuckles swollen from use. She often wondered how many more years it would take to completely wear them away. If she stopped now, would they heal? Could they be soft and youthful again? Perhaps it was not worth thinking about. She slipped a few chunks of stale cheese into Augustus’s cage and climbed into the cold bed.
After her father’s death, she’d been taken from her old room and moved up into the attic – a former room for servants – to hide her away from the world. I am a dirty secret. She slept on a wire-framed bed that groaned beneath her, and the attic space was always either too cold or too hot, depending on the season. Cindy made the best of it, however, comforting herself with the thought that none of her other family members would ever dare to be in her room. She closed her eyes, but her lively mind would not let her sleep. Her thoughts were bursting with color and memory.
Since dinner, her thoughts had been swimming with the remembrance of Christian. She had met him one day in the basement of the house – in a world far from the one he belonged in – but he was still with her. She had given up on ever seeing him again long ago, yet the mention of him today had sparked a memory inside of her. It had been three years, but still there was little she didn’t know about him or his agenda, because her sisters took every opportunity to speak about him openly in front of her.
There was also something else that Cindy knew: the boy was about to turn twenty-one. Her sisters had been talking about nothing else for the past few weeks. Cindy had wondered how many girls in town were doing the same.
Isabella and Charlotte were talking about Christian’s big decision. He had to choose a wife by twenty-one. It was a rule of the family, and if he did not comply, he would not receive his inheritance. Cindy wondered if either Isabella or Charlotte really had the slightest chance of becoming his wife. Then again, if he chose either of them, perhaps Cindy herself would be free of him. It would prove without a doubt that he was just as terribly wretched as they both were.
Laying there in the dark, she wondered if he even remembered her at all. Surely not; what was she thinking? It had been three years and he was quite a well-known gentleman with other things on his mind. Of course he didn’t remember her. It was silly to even think about it.
Still, as her eyelids fluttered, she couldn’t help but wonder if he had changed. Perhaps he had stopped being so curious and had begun accepting responsibility. She supposed she could even say that she had changed as well. She still thought in the same way and had not changed her opinions, but she had learned to be more silent and reserved. She was quiet now, only speaking when she was spoken to; she no longer had her father there to give her life.
Before I was a dead girl, I was a force to be reckoned with. Christian liked that. He told me so.
She leaned her head over to look at the old photograph on her night stand. She and her father were there in old, faded brown. The photo was more than five years old. She smiled slightly, thinking of all the things they had talked of – of science and anatomy that no one else knew except them. Now he was dead. It was a pity – and a waste of good intelligence – just as it would be when Christian married one of her sisters.
It is wrong to think about this, she told herself.
Cindy prayed silently that the young man’s mind wouldn’t fall to uselessness, but she had little hope in it. As she slowly drifted into a well-deserved sleep, words from the past drifted to her mind.
“You're strangely beautiful… We don’t know each other, but we can pretend, can't we?”
She smirked as she remembered, though wondered if he could say those things about her now.
5
The dream had come to Cindy many nights since the death of her father and her push into servant-hood. In fact, the dream came almost every night it seemed, deviating only slightly from the night before. She tossed and turned in her bed, alone between the cold sheets. She was disturbed by her visions. Tonight, she saw this:
She was inside a long room, painted from floor to ceiling in white. She was ten years old and she was dressed in black from her shoes to her hat. Far in front of her was a long, white table, on which sat a coffin, the pale exterior transitioning almost seamlessly from the table. Cindy approached it slowly, listening to the organ music stinging her ears.
Reaching the table and looking down with clasped hands, Cindy saw her mother lying deep in the coffin. The woman had pale skin and dark curls the same as Cindy’s. She was dressed in a long gown of white. Cindy looked on in curiosity without tears as she stared at the only thing adding color to the room – a bouquet of dark red roses in her mother’s arms. The color was piercing to Cindy’s eyes, reflecting on the otherwise drab scenery.
Feeling a hand on her shoulder, she turned briefly to look on the face of her father, who had placed his hand there to comfort her, yet he could only look away and shield his face from her mother.
As she looked back at her father, he slowly began to float away from her. Strangely, she did not protest to his leaving and simp
ly watched as he floated up unto the sky and out of sight – still shielding his face. When Cindy turned back to her mother’s coffin, the woman’s body began to sink down into the white base as if into a pool of milk, until nothing was left but the roses that had been gracing her chest.
Cindy reached to scoop them up, but the thorns cut her hands, and looking down, she saw that she was covered in blood. The rose petals clung to her arms because of it. Behind the coffin, she could see a window that showed her a strange scene. Upon a broad floor, she could see Christian – dancing with a demon that had glowing eyes. The evil thing smiled up at her with pleasure.
Cindy was spirited onto the floor with them, watching them perform their dance. Anger and confusion filled her as she watched until finally the demon approached her, holding Christian’s hand. Taking Cindy’s hand in its own claw, the demon placed her hand atop Christian’s and began to speak in a voice that was neither male nor female in gender.
“It is alright,” the demon said. “The smell of the roses is enough for you both. The day will come when it will be yours. The sacrifice has been made.”
Cindy awoke then. She would always awaken at the same moment to find that it was again morning. There was another dreadful day ahead of her that would begin with the preparation of breakfast. Still though, she pondered the dream.
She felt that the dream was unfinished, and no matter how many times it occurred, she could never reach the end or gain any more of it. The demon always opened its mouth at the end, as if preparing to say something else that she never heard. Though those things stuck with her in the early hours of morning, as the day passed, Cindy would begin to forget about the images completely, going on with the suffering that came, only to remember her thoughts when the next dream recurred.
For now, it was time to forget.
Brushing off the dream once more, Cindy pulled herself from the sheets to prepare for the long day ahead. She could feel it in the air as the fog lifted outside – this would not be a good day.
6
“It’s arrived!” screamed Charlotte happily. “It’s here! It’s here!”
Cindy did not look up from her cleaning of the floor despite the happy cries from the next room. She did, however, hear Isabella come bounding down the stairs and to the front door.
“It’s here?” she asked excitedly, jerking the letter away from her sister.
“Hey!” shouted Charlotte in protest, but Isabella quickly broke the wax seal on the letter and began to read.
“Miss Isabella and Miss Charlotte van Burren, you are cordially invited by Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Charming to attend the twenty-first birthday celebration of their son, Mr. Christian Charming. The celebration will be held on the day of the 6th and will begin at 6 o’clock. The party is formal… blah blah blah! We finally got it!” said Isabella, jumping up happily.
The two girls forgot about their rivalry for a moment and jumped around merrily. Cindy slowed the pace in which she worked, watching the scene from the corner of her eye.
“Saving the best for last, I suppose,” said Charlotte.
“Yes,” said Isabella thoughtfully. “Two days before the party… Though I suppose Christian should have invited us himself. We are seeing him for lunch after all!”
Charlotte clapped her hands, overwhelmed with excitement. “After the picnic, we shop for dresses!”
The girl ran off to tell her mother of the good news, and Cindy diverted her attention back to the floor so that Isabella would not see her interest. It was too late. Isabella approached her, slapping the letter against her palm. Cindy did not look up.
“Well, Cinderella,” she addressed, stopping in front of her. “I didn’t see your name in this letter. Looks like this town has forgotten all about you completely. I know you’d love to go to the party, wouldn’t you?”
Cindy said nothing, but only glanced up with cold eyes. She didn’t care. All she wanted was to be left alone. The bristles of her brush scraped the floorboards.
“I’m dreadfully sorry you can’t go,” said Isabella with fake sweetness. “It’s not as though he would remember you anyway. I can’t imagine you’d have much to talk about.”
Cindy looked down to the tip of Isabella’s shoe. She would greatly love to spit on it, or perhaps reach into the fireplace and throw some soot at the girl. She knew those things were only begging for trouble that she didn’t want.
“Oh course, you will be given the job of dressing us and fixing our hair for the occasion. You had better do it right,” she threatened. “No tricks or you’ll have to start all over.”
“Why should I be forced to put make-up on you or fix your hair? It’s not like it would help at all. It wouldn’t improve you in the slightest,” Cindy said, looking up.
“If you don’t do it right,” said Isabella. “You’ll no longer have a pet.”
Cindy hesitated in her brushing even though she had tried not to. Cindy was used to having everything that was important to her threatened, but Augustus was the only thing remaining that was dear to her.
“You wouldn’t dare. You wouldn’t want to touch the disgusting creature!” said Cindy, calling her bluff.
“I’m sure I could find someone who is not afraid to touch it. Like Francis…”
Cindy breathed deeply and ran her brush across the floor again. Francis, Anna’s Persian cat. It wasn’t the first time her pet and only friend had been thrown onto the table. She also knew, however, that if they’d actually done away with the beloved rat, they would have nothing left to hold against her. Cindy said nothing, though knowing Isabella would interpret it as victory.
As expected, Isabella smirked triumphantly and threw the letter to the floor beside Cindy, knowing that the girl would want to pick it up to read it.
“Work faster, Cinderella,” she said, “and don’t miss any spots.”
Cindy listened as Isabella’s footsteps trailed out of the room and down the hall. After the girl left, Cindy’s eyes drifted down to the letter. She stared at it for only a short moment before a wave of rage hit her and she scooped it up and pushed the thin paper angrily beneath the dirty cleaning water in her pail.
Chapter Three
1
The carriage rolled onward with only the sounds of the two white horses pulling it along. Christian sighed as he peered out the small window. For the past two weeks, he had been making what was known widely through Greenhaven as ‘The Charming Round’. It made him sick to think that this course had a title, but it had come to be called this for the four brothers ahead of him who had made this same path. They, however, were good-natured enough to handle this ridiculous facade. He was not.
He was traveling to different houses throughout the town, dining with different ladies and families that he cared nothing about. His mother accompanied him along this trail of days and he could honestly say that he had never been at a table so many times with his mother in the whole of his life. Today was not the first dinner he would attend, but neither was it the last. This luncheon was certainly the most dreaded for Christian, yet strangely, it was also the one he looked forward to most.
Time had passed on the young man. He’d changed with more than just the hair he’d decided to grow on his face. No longer was he able to look for the laughter in ignorance to keep him going. He had grown quite tired of everything and everyone. The same faces, all smiling at him, no longer made him feel anything – not even a taste of victory over them. Sometimes, he still found Isabella and Charlotte amusing, but probably not today; he only wanted to be back at home, smoking away the afternoon.
He sat there now as the carriage bounced gently up the path, more emotionless than before, letting the gentle wind blow through his hair as his blue eyes searched the area.
From across the carriage, his mother eyed him from underneath her grand hat.
“Christian, darling, is something wrong?” she asked, fanning herself.
The young man raised his eyes slowly, the cold blue flashing in the sunl
ight.
“Why must I do this?” he asked.
The woman across from him shrugged, wondering why he would bring this up now after they’d already been at it for days. It was almost done, for Christ sakes!
“This is simply how your father and I would have you do it,” she explained.
That reply was much too simple for Christian. His mother would have liked daughters so that she could play matchmaker, but since she had been given five sons instead, she found that she had been given an even greater advantage in that. There was more fame in that than daughters somehow, and Christian was her last chance to shine.
“Does it make you feel important to parade me around like this?”
“Enough, Christian!” his mother scolded. “I will not have you act today as you did yesterday! You were quite rude to the Gerards!”
“I think you’re the only one who noticed, mother,” he said.
The lady shook her head. “Whether or not that is the case, I will not have you embarrassing me today. These young women we are going around to visit are very lovely, from upstanding families, and all would be fine choices for you to pick a wife.”
“Why don’t we make the rounds in the slums as well then? I’m sure that they could use the money I bring more than those spoilt van Burren harlots.”
“That is quite enough of this!” shouted his mother, ending his argument and leaving him to sit silently, staring back out at her.
“You know the conditions,” she continued calmly. “You will do what we say if you intend to see any of your inheritance.”
Threats. No love. Christian saw it now, just as he had been seeing it for years.
“Perhaps then I don’t want my inheritance,” he said, folding his hands.
His mother shook her head with an uncaring eye.
“What? So you can sit all day studying those disgusting books of yours?”
She spoke of his anatomy books. His mother was repulsed by them, but he couldn’t get enough.