After coaxing his fingers into remembering how to properly tie a cravat, Edward looked at himself in the tall mirror which stood in the corner of his chambers. Except for the scar across his cheek, he felt like the young man who had grown up in these halls, attending balls and his mother's Christmas parties, hoping to catch a lady’s eye for a dance.
It all seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Thank you for the clothes,” he said to the scarf that drifted next to him as he stared at his reflection. He fiddled with his cuffs, trying to calm his anxiety. The scarf stroked his cheek and then the corners moved to his shoulders, brushing over them as if dusting and straightening the jacket even though it was perfectly clean and in place.
The scarf gave one final flourish and gold threads wove their way around his collar and the cuffs of his sleeves creating small, delicate embroidery along the cloth.
“I knew you couldn’t resist,” he said with a little smile.
Edward felt like a different man.
When he finally went down to dinner, Alina was waiting for him in the dining room. He nervously entered and found himself pleased to hear her breath catch when she saw him. Then her expression gave way to a warm smile. She looked as if she barely recognized him.
“You look very ...different,” she said, smiling broadly at him.
The scarves and handkerchiefs settled on Alina's simple green dress and fluttered about, twisting and folding the cloth before falling away, transforming her simple working dress into a glittering gold evening gown. The flowing fabrics hugged her waist and fell off her hips before pooling around her feet.
He held out his hand to escort her to her chair, all the while feeling too self-conscious to return the compliment. It was overwhelming the way she looked in that gown with her pale hair half pinned up and the rest cascading down her back.
After Edward sat in his own chair, dinner was served, the napkins creating the food before their eyes just as they always did.
He made an effort to carry on the conversation tonight, forcing himself to look her in the eye and remember what sort of things people say to each other when they want to fill the silence. By the second course, he realized how easily Alina smiled, her lips parting at the smallest notion or comment. He was pleased to know that she was happy.
“I have not properly thanked you for the effort you have put into cleaning the rooms,” Edward said after a small sip of wine. “I am looking forward to playing my cello in the ballroom again.”
“I needed the work,” she said. “Rodderick always tells me that idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”
She suddenly blanched and it was obvious she regretted bringing up her husband.
“I, too, have been idle too long,” he said, hoping to distract her from her embarrassment. “I never should have let this house fall into such a state. I’ve been too self-absorbed all these years.”
“The mind can take us to very dark places if we let it,” Alina said.
“I feel as though I’ve been less than human,” he admitted, and it felt good to speak his mind. “Like a wild animal wandering these halls. I knew exactly what you meant that first evening when you talked about living in your cage. That’s what these walls are to me.”
He watched her place her fingers on his. She still wore the gloves over her hands and he desperately wished to feel her bare skin again. The more he thought about it, the more his hand ached beneath her touch. He longed to hold it and press her palm to his lips and feel her fingertips against his cheek.
When a moment had passed, she released his hand and returned her focus to her plate.
“I’ve been thinking about cleaning the library tomorrow,” she said between bites of food. “There are so many books that I was daunted by the prospect of dusting them all, but I think I’m up to it now. Would you like to join me.”
“I would,” he said. “I can’t let you clean this place all on your own.”
A gust of wind blew snow against the window panes outside and Alina turned to the window smiling.
“Do you like the storms?” he asked, curious about her expression.
“I disdain winter,” she said, shaking her head and taking her eyes from the window to look back at him. “But every inch of snow will make it harder for anyone to find me here. So I am grateful for it.”
When the meal was concluded, Edward escorted Alina to the ballroom for his promised performance. He had nothing in the world except this manor and a little music, but he felt a hint of pride that he had something to share with her. Especially when he knew that a safe place was the thing she needed most.
❄ ❄ ❄
Several inches of fresh snow had covered the ground by morning. Alina viewed it from her windows, gazing over the dark green pines dusted with white.
The scarves had left her another practical woolen gown, but this one was accented with delicate embroidery and a more flattering neckline. It was as if the scarves wanted her to look beautiful for Edward, and Alina admitted that she didn’t mind one bit.
He’d looked so composed last night, with his hair and beard trimmed and groomed. He too had been dressed in fresh clothes tailored to accentuate his features. If he had looked like that the first night they’d met, she doubted she would have been half as frightened of him.
After a quick breakfast, Alina met Edward in the library to begin their work. The room was dark with heavy, moth-eaten drapes closed over the windows. The first thing they did was pull them down, the scarves and handkerchiefs unfastening them from their rods and Edward tossing them into a corner to be disposed of later. Sunlight streamed in, revealing the dust motes dancing in the air and illuminating shelves and shelves of books.
There was order to the place. The volumes were categorized and each put in their place. It was the years of dust that was going to be a challenge. Edward began at one end, climbing a ladder and pulling the books off their shelf. He stacked them on top of the books below, wiped off the empty shelf, then dusted each book before putting it back in its proper place. It was tedious work, but left much time for conversation.
Alina swept the floor and scrubbed it with warm water and soap before moving to the tables where stray books had been stacked. She read their spines and then walked among the shelves, putting them back in line.
“Do you enjoy reading?” Alina asked, raising her voice a little so it carried through the shelves to where Edward was working.
“I do,” he said. “This mountain is isolated. Even as a child—back when I was able to leave its walls—I spent much of my time indoors with a book or my cello. My mother encouraged it.”
Alina slipped the last book in its proper place and then rinsed a cloth before wiping off the empty tables.
“My father was much the same,” she replied. “Four little girls can get into a lot of trouble and we were sometimes too much for him to handle. He’d bring us books hoping it would keep us from causing him too much anxiety.”
“What sort of trouble could you possibly get into?” he asked and she could hear the smile in his voice.
The tables were clean now and she tossed the cloth back in her bucket. Rounding the shelves, she moved a ladder next to Edward’s and climbed it to his level.
“The usual,” she said, one corner of her mouth pulling wryly. “Dressing up the pig and releasing it into the village square. Stealing apples from our neighbor’s orchards. Flirting with the boys in town, when we were a bit older of course.”
“Those things seem harmless enough to me,” he said.
She watched his gaze fall to her lips and linger there for a long moment before he looked back to the books in his hand.
Alina pulled her eyes away too and set to work pulling the volumes from the shelf next to his. She had nearly cleared the space when a particular book caught her eye and she paused to read its cover. It was in a different language than anything else on the shelf. Surprised to see it in his library, she flipped it open and skimmed the pages and found that i
t was a beautifully illustrated collection of folktales. They were the same stories she had heard in her childhood and, as her eyes moved over the words, she heard them in her grandmother’s voice. A warmth at the tender memories spread through her chest.
“Can you read that?” Edward asked. She looked up to see that he was watching her with wide eyes.
“Yes. I told you my father moved our family to this country when I was young, but I was old enough to have already learned to read and write in the language of my grandparents.”
Edward stepped down the ladder until he reached the floor.
“Will you come with me?” he asked, extending his hand upward to help her down.
They made their way out of the library and down the hallways to the study where the torn portrait had been. Edward opened the door and entered, moving to a large desk strewn with papers, books, and notes. As he walked, his boots crushed bits of broken glass and debris that Alina hadn’t finished sweeping up. He rummaged through the piles, discarding much of it onto the floor, until he found a small leather journal. Alina stayed by the door, not eager to enter the darkened room again.
When he returned to the doorway where she stood, he pressed the book into her hands.
“Can you tell me what this says?”
He looked at her expectantly and she let her eyes fall to the pages before her. Alina scanned the text. It was hand-written in a cramped scrawl, as if its author had needed to fill every inch of page. It took a moment to decipher each letter, but when she finally read some of the words, she looked back up at him in confusion.
“What is this?” she asked.
“It’s my father’s,” he said, his voice becoming a little breathless. “I think the curse he placed on me is in this book.”
“Your father cursed you?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, “but if we can find the spell or the words he used, perhaps there is some way of breaking it.”
“I don’t think this is a spellbook,” Alina said, flipping to more pages and skimming for words of sorcery or witchcraft. Toward the end, the words got even smaller and there were untidy little drawings and symbols.
“It is his journal,” he explained. “My father was a third son and never expected to inherit any title. He was a military man in his younger days and spent much of his life moving between cavalry camps across the continent. He always kept journals and wrote in multiple languages for practice as well as secrecy. Most of his accounts were stored on his study shelves, but this one he used to carry around with him, memorizing things that he’d written in its pages.”
“Do you want me to translate this for you? Is that what you are asking of me?”
Edward stared down at her with his dark eyes and she thought she saw a hint of desperation there. But when he spoke, there was hope in his voice.
“If I could leave these walls, if the world could remember who I am…”
He trailed off, not finding the words to speak. A strange look had come over him.
“Remember who you are? What do you mean? Edward, you are frightening me.”
He composed himself, then gently took her face in his hands, speaking softly as he looked into her eyes.
“Alina, I am Edward Damian Perseus Blackmore, the third Duke of Wildemount and all the lands beyond the forest.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. There was no duke that lived on the mountain. She’d lived in the village for six years now and had never heard of anyone by that name or title.
“I know you don’t,” he said. He let his hands fall from her cheeks. “It is my curse. No one remembers me. Were my father alive today, he could look me in the eyes and he would not know his own son.”
Alina saw the sadness fill his eyes again and she reached out to touch his arm. She hadn’t known him long, but Edward wasn’t mad. Besides, he lived in a grand house in the middle of the woods and no one in the village seemed to know it was there. Scarves and handkerchiefs stoked the fires and made them food and clothes. A curse was the best explanation she had. He’d collapsed in the forest and there was nothing else to account for it.
“I believe you,” she said, and she watched his shoulders relax a little. “And I will translate the book.”
❄ ❄ ❄
Edward went with Alina when she brought the journal back to the library. She settled herself at one of the clean tables and he found her a quill, inkpot, and several sheets of parchment to help her with the translations. As soon as she was settled with the open book in front of her, he went back to dusting the shelves, wanting to be near as she read the journal, but trying not to distract her from the work. He watched from his perch upon the ladder, contemplating what he had asked of her.
He couldn’t be certain what kind of things the book contained. Much of it was likely the particulars of his military service, but his father had a dark side too. If whatever spells or curses he’d spoken were written in the pages of this book, there was no telling what other horrors he might have contemplated, keeping the notes in secret where no one else could read them. Visions of blood rituals and animal sacrifices shuffled through his brain. He had no concept of what was required for dark magic.
As the afternoon passed into evening, Edward finished dusting the last bookshelf. He returned the books and glanced at where Alina still sat at the table. She hadn’t moved in hours and the only reminder that she was even in the room was the occasional scratch of quill on parchment.
He wondered if Alina believed that he was a Duke. He was forgotten to the world so she had nothing to go on but his word. Whatever she did believe, she stayed focused, her head bowed over the pages of the journal.
Edward considered what might happen if they found some way to break the curse. Would things go back to how they had been so many years before? So much had changed and he was a different man now. He worried that if the curse was broken, events would unfold that were out of his control and for one reason or another, Alina would leave him and this place. In a short time, she’d come to mean something to him. And it wasn’t just that he had grown comfortable with her company.
When he looked at her, he wondered if he might be content staying within these walls—his memory forgotten to the world—if it meant that she would stay with him.
Chapter Ten
Hoarfrost had come in the night and settled on the trees leaving glittering ice crystals all across the mountainside. After dressing for the morning, Alina visited Gladstone in the stables, bringing him carrots and apples which she had requested from the fabrics.
After a small breakfast, Alina was back in the library, pouring over the pages of the journal, trying to remember certain words of the language she hadn’t spoken since childhood. It was difficult work and slow, and she knew Edward was anxious for what she might find.
Today he didn’t seem as desperate for answers as he had the day before. It was possible that he didn’t want to pressure her, trusting her to work as fast as she was able. He spent most of the morning away from her, using his time to clean up the study
The journal wasn’t written like instructions, with clear pages separating each topic. Instead it was mostly chronological, the writings describing Edward’s father’s daily thoughts and routines. Once or twice he mentioned meeting with a local woman beyond the boundaries of the military encampment, but he gave no details except that she had memories of some power that had been forgotten. Alina was sure this was what she was looking for, but every time she kept reading, hoping to find some answer, the journal cut off and he went back to discussing training or other mundane daily tasks. She tried to flip ahead and skim for words that might help her find what she was looking for, but the writing was cramped and it was difficult to find any single word.
From what Alina could remember of her grandmother’s stories, the land of her childhood was rich with superstition and folklore and there were those who still believed in the old traditions. Traditions that certainly included dark magic and curses.
By
midday her vision felt strained and she closed her eyelids, rubbing them with her palms. Edward hadn’t come with her to the library this morning and she missed his company. She wasn’t sure when she started to feel that way, but she felt most content knowing that he was near.
Standing to stretch her tired joints, Alina moved to one of the tall windows, peering out into the front courtyard below. Fingers of fog still crept over the mountaintop, but the sun had already begun to chase them away. Looking down, she saw Edward. He was standing in the snow near the gates, crouching low to the ground with something in his hand. His fingers were outstretched and when she followed where they pointed, she saw a little red fox sitting just outside the iron bars. The small animal crept forward and ate something off the ground before retreating behind the gate again. Alina watched the scene for several minutes until the little fox stepped all the way up to Edward’s hand and sniffed his fingertips before taking whatever scrap he held there and retreating back into the woods. Thinking back to the evening in his chambers, she could recall seeing foxes among the wildlife sketches and wondered if this was a regular occurrence.
Leaving the journal on the table, Alina made her way from the library to join him in the snow. When she pushed through the entryway door, Edward saw her and gave a small gesture of greeting. The scarves and handkerchiefs, which had hovered in the air near him, drifted to her side and settled on her shoulders, making a thick, warm cape appear around her dress. She found gloves on her hands and felt her feet shift a little as warm boots replaced her slippers.
The snow crunched beneath her feet and she clutched the cape tighter around herself as she walked.
“You look well today,” he said, giving her his arm which she wrapped both of her small hands around. Her cheeks were already rosy from the cold, but she could feel them grow a little more red at his compliment.
“Thank you,” she said. “I must give credit to the fabrics. The scarves seem to know what will look best on me.”
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