Page 37 of Little Doll

Without thinking, and desperate to feel my Wilhelmina’s touch, I encircled the woman’s waist with my arms and heaved her against me.

She returned the embrace and rubbed my back soothingly as I sobbed.

It seemed like the entire night had gone by while I came apart and the small, pretty woman tried to comfort me all the while. When my tears were spent, I straightened up a bit and released her. “I’m sorry, Miss…”

“Arcane,” she said. “My name is Arcane.”

1900

Chapter 16

Nova

No one hadever told me that my father was supposed to marry someone else before he met my mother. Anddefinitelyno one ever told me it was widely believed among London society that he’d changed his mind about marrying the woman and killed her to avoid the wedding. It was a different side of Costel Westminster that I had never imagined could exist. I couldn’t believe these were the types of things my mother had heard about him, and that she’d married him all the same.

When I discovered the bones and began to scream, it brought my mother and father running. It was almost as terrifying as the night that I first tasted blood. But this time, instead of turning away and leaving angrily, Father peered down into the trunk and then dropped to his kneesbefore it. He threw his head back and gave a pitiful, anguished cry.

With a gasp, I stumbled backwards. I gaped at him, crying on the floor with tears streaming down his cheeks. I’d never seen my father like this. Not even close.

I stole a glance at my mother. I could barely make her out where she stood cloaked in shadow. But it seemed like she had a dark expression of pure fury on her pretty face.

“Wilhelmina!” Father cried. “Oh no no no, my darling Wilhelmina!” He reached into the trunk and floundered the lacy dress and the brittle bones into his arms. He bunched the macabre bundle against his chest and sunk his face into the tattered folds of the wedding dress.

So shocked and taken in by the scene, I barely noticed Mother spinning on her heel and running from the attic.

There was a quick and quiet burial of the bones during the very next afternoon. I was sequestered to my stone room at the time, but Fane told me about it afterward. He said that it was pouring down rain and Mother didn’t attend. Only Costel, Cleo, himself and Draven stoodalongside the open grave with the wooden box containing the bones lowered into the earth. And a gravedigger stood by at the ready.

Fane said Costel had explained to him and Draven that he’d once loved this woman, Wilhelmina Payne, but that on their wedding day, she had disappeared. He confessed that after the dust had settled, locals had gossiped that Costel himself had done something to dispose of her. As though she were an unwanted bride. There had been ugly speculations that she had been pregnant and that was the only reason he was marrying her. And that in the end, he hadn’t cared to go through with it and had ended her instead.

Fane reclined in my bed, chatting away as I dressed. “It was quite extraordinary, if I’m being honest,” Fane remarked with a short laugh.

“What was?” I asked.

“The fact that he just admits that everyone thinks he’s a murderer!”

“Do you think he is?” I asked, turning to look at him.

“Of course not, Little Doll,” Fane said, sitting up and sweeping his feet to the floor. He jumped up and hurried to envelop me in a hug. “Costel Westminster may be many things, but a murderer isn’t one of them. He hasn’t got it in him.”

I shrugged. “I guess,” I agreed. “It’s neither here nor there at this point.”

“At any rate, he told us that the only good thing that did come of it was that was how he met our mother. And at her insistence, they laid the bones to rest and now she expects the whole sordid thing to just be forgotten.”

“I guess that’s for the best. Shouldn’t be that difficult.”

Fane smirked. “Not for us, maybe. Father, on the other hand, seems utterly destroyed. I suspect that somewhere deep down, he always thought she’d come back one day.”

I smiled darkly. “Well, now she has, hasn’t she?”

“Little Doll! Rather a wicked thing to say, isn’t it?”

I shrugged again. “How is Draven? Has he asked about me?”

Fane rolled his eyes. Our brother Draven was the sweetest, gentlest, kindest man the gods had ever made. For the life of me, I could never understand Fane’s disdain for him. “Of course, he has asked about you almost incessantly. We’re going to have to arrange a visit with you two so that we can shut him up.”

I slapped Fane’s arm playfully. “Fane, be nice.”

By the nighttime, the rain had cleared. Fane didn’t seem to be about, so Astrid and I meandered out to the garden by ourselves. Everything was luscious and green, still glistening with dew from the gloomy day.

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