Cold, gray ash was heaped high in the grate at the bottom of the kitchen’s smoke-stained hearth. Little puffs of white outlined each breath I took. Bowls and cups and spoons crusted with yellow littered the big wooden table, the scent of last night’s dinner clinging to them.
I stepped into the pantry off the kitchen. The temperature dropped and gooseflesh beaded over my skin. The joint of ham still hung from a peg in the wall and a barrel of apples took up much of the floor space, their scent sweetening the air. Madame Écrue must have hired a village man to pick them from the withering orchard. I bent down to breathe in the sweet smell oozing from the overripe fruit.
The empty wall was only an arm’s length to the other side. The floorboard creaked when I took a step away from the barrel of fruit, and I shot a look toward the light of the kitchen, but I was still alone.
I put my foot down carefully and edged it along where the floor met the wall. Solid, solid, solid . . . not solid. There was a space between the floorboards and the back wall of the pantry. I knew there was something weird about this shelf-less wall and the loose board. I ran my fingers along the back of the plaster and felt a smooth break. With the full weight of my body, I pushed against the wall until it gave with a great moan and swung back like a door.
It was the workroom I’d been looking for. Excitement shot through me. Madame Écrue had been lying when she’d said there was no such place, and Sebastian likely just didn’t know about it. Glass bottles and clay jars crowded a long, rough table. Flat knives and empty mortars and broken pestles stared up at me with a sense of betrayal. Let us be useful, they seemed to say.
I put my hand on the table and the buzz of energy hummed up my arm, rippling my skin into gooseflesh. She must have been happy here, Sebastian’s mother.
Bundles of dried flowers hung from the ceiling and I trailed my fingers through them, rustling the stiff leaves. A thick stem with shriveled blooms caught my eye—foxglove. A few drops of foxglove nectar would render the drinker sick and slow the beats of their heart.
Some women learned a little plant lore at their mothers’ knees, but I barely remembered my mother.
I did remember the void, though, the chasm left behind when Papa sent my sister away. I’d wandered the hours without her, lost in the relentlessness of the sunrise. Always another day, another endless stretch of light. My body needed to be fed, but I had no taste for food. The sweet spring air would whisper against my skin, but I didn’t tilt my face to the warming rays of the sun. I would turn from them and dig into the mud with my fingernails, ripping and tearing until my blood mingled with the dirt and I felt something.
Roots burrowed deep into the soil and I was envious of their cold isolation. I had yanked them from the ground and gathered up the green stalks and white tips still humming with life. I slit my knife into their cores and squeezed until their lifeblood dripped white and sticky from my fingers.
I’d collect the sap in little bottles. When the sun finally retreated beyond the mountains and the stars fell across the sky like broken glass, I would lie back in the grass outside our cabin and tip the neck of the bottles to my lips. I tasted each drop of nectar with numb curiosity. What would this one do to me?
One morning, I woke and wanted more than that. I had collected my plants with purpose and arranged them on our table and hid them when my father came home and leaned his scythe near the door. Day after day, I catalogued the plants, wrote their names, and tested the combinations.
The work consumed me. It was what I thought of when the cold sting of each morning made me open my eyes. It helped me find the strength to swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand on the cool floorboards.
By the time Ama had come back, I’d known more about herbs than about her.
Back in the pantry, the wall clicked into place behind me as I brought the dried stalk of foxglove out into the kitchen. It was a good idea to have something like this on hand.
The house woke with creaks and shivers. The whispers of feet over plush carpets, the scrape of boots against flagstone. The master and his servants meeting the day.
I slipped into the melody, padding out of the kitchen with the foxglove tucked in my pocket. A candelabra guttered as I hurried past on the servants’ stairs. I didn’t want to be discovered here, so I took the first door out into the foyer and tiptoed toward the dining room.
Fresh snow leaned up against the large picture window, crowding the view, and white-blue veins of frost crackled over the glass. It was the kind of cold you could see, touch. Sebastian leaned with one hand against the stone facing of the hearth, his trousers glowing orange with the light from the low fire.
“Good morning,” I said. “I checked the lavender water. It’s ready now. You just need to squeeze it through the muslin into a bottle.”
He turned quickly and the naked expression of surprise on his face told me he hadn’t heard me come in.
“Oh, I thought you were going to do it with me?”
I splayed my hands. “You don’t need me; you’re a master perfumer now.”
Sebastian chuckled and an awkward little silence settled around us.
“It snowed, finally,” he said unnecessarily, gesturing toward the window.
“Yes.”
“I thought we’d have a little celebration tonight. A party, of sorts, for Madame Écrue’s birthday. I’ll give her the perfume we made.”
“That would be lovely, I’m sure.” I sounded like Ama when she tried on her best manners and tight, expensive accent. Even Sebastian didn’t sound like her approximation of an aristocrat. I had to stop doing that immediately. “What can I do for the party?”
“You’ve already helped me make Madame’s present, that’s enough.”
I shrugged. “It was easy.”
He raised an eyebrow. “For you. Not everyone can make perfumes that smell so lovely. It’s a skill, a talent.”
There was no honey in his voice—no added sweetness. It didn’t seem like he was saying it just to be nice. His words landed with the warmth of truth and fueled the heat that rose in my cheeks.
“Thank you,” I said, trying to surreptitiously grip the tall back of the chair in front of me. My legs weren’t quite up to the challenge of holding my weight.
Sebastian put his hand over mine for only a moment. The warmth of his skin there and then gone.
“You’re welcome.”
We stared at each other, tangled in a moment I didn’t quite understand but didn’t want to end.
“Marie!”
Lucien burst into the dining room with all the energy of a healthy young child. Sebastian and I broke off and both welcomed Lucien with a smile.
These kinds of mornings were my favorite—where Lucien was happy and well. It didn’t always last, from what I’d seen anyway, but I liked to indulge those good moods.
“Good morning, Master Lucien. And what are we going to do today?”
He rolled his brown eyes. “Don’t call me ‘Master.’”
“Would you prefer ‘My Small Lord’?”
Lucien giggled, the sparkling laugh starting in his belly and flowing free. Sebastian rubbed Lucien’s curls, tighter than his own.
“You two stay out of the kitchen today, all right?” Sebastian said.
“Who’s cooking the supper for the party if not Madame Écrue?” I asked. It didn’t seem very fair that she would have to cook for us as part of her birthday celebration.
“I’ve hired a couple women in from the village to cook,” Sebastian said. “So, steer clear and let them get to it, all right, Lucien?”
He wasn’t stern, but Sebastian was firm with his brother. As if he took his role of head of the family almost a little too seriously to convince himself it was indeed true. I knew being the responsible one wasn’t easy. Ama only listened to me half the time, but she paid attention when it was important, like when we’d decided on how to select her victims and keep her secret.
“Come on then, Lucien,” I said. “Show me something new in this house, somewhere I haven’t been yet.”
He grinned, his cheeks plumping up like apples. “Like a secret?”
Sebastian put his hands on his brother’s shoulders and pulled him in to rest against the front of his legs. Lucien pushed his head back into Sebastian’s stomach—a backward hug.
“Don’t make Marie a promise you can’t keep, Lucien. We don’t have any secrets here.”
Everyone had secrets, every family, every house. This one was no exception, and people who claimed there was nothing to find were often hiding the most. I already knew there was something here, but did Sebastian know it too? Or was he simply brushing off Lucien’s comment because he didn’t want a near-stranger poking around?
“Let’s see what we can find, secret or not,” I said, and took Lucien’s hand. His small fingers wrapped around mine without hesitation. I couldn’t remember what it was like to trust people like that. Perhaps I never had.
He took me to all the places I’d seen before. The library and the hall where we’d played hide-and-seek. This was his home and by showing it to me, Lucien was revealing little bits of himself. He spent a lot of time in the library. I could tell by the way he knew the locations of all his favorite books on the shelves, including the one we’d read together the other day.
“Look at how they drew this cat. He’s wearing boots,” Lucien said, finger on the illustration on the title page of another one of the stories in Perrault’s book.
He didn’t lead me to the kitchen, even though I was curious to see which village women were working in there. Lucien skirted it just as Sebastian had asked him to. Another peek into who he was. Lucien loved his brother, and that was normal for a small child. Obeying was usually less so. Siblings are connected to one another just as parents should be to their children—by this thick cord woven of love and obligation. I suspected it would be terrifying for Lucien to have Sebastian angry with him, the little boy wondering if the rope tying them together could fray.
There were few opportunities this time to get away and search the house on my own. After last time, there was no chance I could convince Lucien to play hide-and-seek again. Instead, I followed my small charge around and let him talk to me and tell me all about his world until the light fell away from the windows and the candles were lit around the big staircase.
“Do you think we should go in and see if the party is ready?” I asked him.
Lucien hung off my arm, pulling at me. “Do you think there will be cake?”
I laughed. “I hope so.”
I wondered briefly if I was dressed well enough for such an occasion. My dark green dress was the best one I had, but there was no adornment. It was made of wool and wrapped around my body in such a way to give me more of a woman’s shape than I’d otherwise have, and I liked how the skirt and petticoat poured out from my nipped-in waist.
“Come on, Marie!” Lucien let go of my arm and darted ahead toward the dining room.
It shouldn’t have mattered to me what I was wearing. Who was there to see, anyway? I wiped my clammy hands on the skirt and didn’t even look down to see if they left wet marks on the wool.
The food served here was always more than I’d ever had before—meat pies or soup for dinner and roasted meat and salad for supper. Really nice, fluffy bread for breakfast with thick yellow butter and blackberry jam. Sebastian insisted I join him and Lucien for meals, and usually Madame Écrue served the supper and then sat down to eat with us. I hoped Sebastian had asked whoever cooked the supper tonight to also bring it to the table, but the party would be the same people I saw every day. No need to be nervous.
Sebastian stood in front of the long, deep fireplace with a glass of red wine in his hand. Lucien squealed at the sight of a caramel-colored cake topped with nuts in the middle of the table.
“An apple cake!” he said.
There was also a fish laid out on a serving platter, silver scales catching the firelight and slices of lemons on its eyes. Lemons would be very expensive this time of year. Sebastian had spent money I wasn’t really sure he had on this party for his housekeeper. That fact lit a little flame of warmth in my chest that I didn’t immediately try to extinguish.
“Come, sit. Madame will be down in a moment,” he said with a smile.
As I pulled out one of the chairs and sank into it, I wondered which of the village women had been in the kitchen all day preparing the meal. Was one of them Maurice’s mother? I tried not to think often of his cold, still face, but sometimes I couldn’t help it.
“Have you had chicken pie before?” Lucien asked me. He pointed to a golden-brown pastry. “Or carrots cooked in honey?”
“Of course she’s had carrots before, Lucien. We had them two nights ago.”
“But not with honey!” he said with a little pout.
“No, not with honey,” I agreed. “I can’t wait to taste them.”
Lucien’s smile lit up his eyes. He was happy to share this meal too. Just like his house.
Madame Écrue came into the room then and Sebastian went to her, passing her the glass of wine. She had made an effort, with a clean dress of light blue cotton and a crisp starched cap. No apron tonight. She was the center of the party, not a housekeeper.
“Happy birthday, Madame,” Sebastian said, and kissed her on her papery cheek.
“Happy birthday,” Lucien and I echoed.
Once Madame Écrue took the wine from Sebastian’s hand, he pulled the vial of perfume from his pocket and presented it to her.
“Lavender water, for you. I thought you might like to have something nice.”
Madame Écrue’s eyes shone, even the white one, but I couldn’t tell in the low light if it was from tears or happiness. Likely both.
A shimmer of excitement went through me. My sister would have loved this. The elegant table. The warm, fragrant pastry and the decadence of the fish. She would have taken a glass of the ruby-red wine without hesitation and sipped slowly, to savor it.
But she wasn’t here. I didn’t even know how she was doing since she hadn’t written me back yet. She might be cold if she hadn’t chopped enough wood. Or hungry if she hadn’t been careful with our stores. And here I was, enjoying myself. Warm, fed, and taking way too long to find the spell book. How could I have done this? Lost my sense of time? Forget even for a moment about what I was really here to do?
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Suddenly I don’t feel well.”
My chair screeched against the wood floor when I pushed it back, but I didn’t stay long enough to see if there were looks of disappointment on Sebastian’s and Lucien’s faces.