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| Celeste & Mary’s confrontation in the village |
On a crisp cool morning two days before Sebastian Lord, the heir to a wealthy and powerful publishing dynasty in New England, was to marry the young and beautiful British Evie Jordan; her lady-in-waiting, Celeste DeViana, was in the village at a small flower shop collecting a the lady of a large bundle of white lilies and white roses for the wedding that was to take place in the main chapel inside the family’s mansion.
The scent of the flowers swirled around Celeste’s nose like sweet smoke, invisible to the eye but impossible not to notice. The sweetness of the aroma kept Celeste’s mind on the beautiful day and the beautiful coming wedding to come. She was overjoyed for her new friend Evie and her old friend Sebastian.
As Celeste packed the Lord’s car with the packages of flowers with the driver’s help, a familiar voice came from behind her in the area of the pavement where the clean white cement met the black tar of the Welshport Village street.
“If you’d smile any bigger I’d say it was your wedding day coming and not that poor unfortunate Evie.” The woman’s voice said to Celeste.
Celeste turned to see Mary Goode, a beautiful blonde woman with eyes that sparked with a wicked glimmer and wit, not to mention the village’s most ardent Lord family antagonist who would bad mouth them to anyone who’d listen at the bar where she worked.
“You keep yourself away from this wedding, and Evie. You said enough on the dock when she first arrived.” Celeste warned remembering Mary had and Evie has already met.
Mary smirked and flipped her curly blonde hair over her shoulder and stepped into the street closer to Celeste.
“Why are you letting this happen? You know there is nothing good to come of this marriage. If anything they’ll find her body in two months out in Tirymôr Woods or sinking in the sand on the beach like they did his mother. Nothing good, Celeste, nothing good.” Mary replied.
“And if anyone would know about nothing good, it’s you, isn’t that right Mary?” Celeste said with a sting.
Mary’s reputation in town wasn’t just as a tough talking townie, she was ostensibly known for being a woman of a “friendly” nature, the kind of woman the married fishermen who’d dock on the island would spend their first $30 pay for one night with the local girl who worked in the pubs. True or not, this lie stuck with the beautiful but a threatening young Mary and every wife in the village.
“If I still had my connection in that family I’d have you sacked at first sight. You’re nothing but an enabler Celeste. You keep all their secrets and lie for them and for what? Because they pay you well? Money isn’t everything. What good is money if it’s blood money?” Mary replied.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about and it’s your own fault you lost your so called connection to the Lords. A connection that never even existed as far as I’m concerned. You and your menacing mother should be put away for life. Everyone knows you’re both unwell.” Celeste replied back as she turned to finish packing the car with flowers.
“They’ll do to Evie what they did to Sabrina and me. They’ll all tear her down Celeste. Mark my words!” Mary shouted.
Celeste turned back and looked at Mary dead in the eye and lifted a brow. The sun splashed a bright light on Celeste’s mocha skin and pale pink dress with lace trim and bustle giving her the look of a life size cake decoration. She pulled down the petticoat that squeezed in the bodice of her dress and made one more step toward Mary.
“I’m going to say it one more time, Mary Goode… stay away from Tirymôr House and Evie Jordan and Sebastian Lorde. Add them to the list of members of that family you are never to see again.” Celeste said.
“Miss, we should get back.” The driver said to Celeste, cutting the tense conversation.
Celeste turned and lifted her nose at Mary Goode who squinted her eyes at the departing lady in waiting.
Celeste wasn’t wrong. Mary’s clandestine relationship with a member of the family was rumored all around the island for years. Rumors of affairs and money and blackmail. All part of the shrouded lives of the Lords.
The beautiful blond Mary had grown up on a small satellite island just off the southern coast of Welshport Island. The total inhabitants were two, Mary and her mother Eliza. Eliza was an eccentric woman of a mysterious background. She had given birth to Mary in their little cabin on the small nameless island that the locals of Welshport called Goode Island, after the strange women who call it home.
Mary’s mother Eliza never told her who her father was and when Mary came to town for school the children ostracized her, called her names, treated her horribly just for being the daughter of the strange hermit woman from the little island, all the children except Sebastian Lord.
Although there were never friends, Mary noticed how he tried to take attention off of her from the meanest children and often smiled at her from across the class. His kindness always shining in his eyes but never spoken. But as they grew up, along came a spider.
It was another Lord family member who found interest in her at the age of 20. This man was obsessed with her but forced her to keep their relationship secret until one day, she told him she would have to tell them all. Because she was pregnant. The baby’s father, was Jacob Lord.
Jacob tried everything he could to end her pregnancy. Threw her down stairs. Locked her away and did not feed her. He was discovered and the baby girl was born and the family did everything they could to cover for Jacob and tarnish Mary’s image in town more than it already was for being the daughter of the strange woman from Goode Island. The Lords were the ones who spread the false rumor of Mary’s so called scandalous profession when she was nothing more than a barmaid.
Mary’s baby girl Charlotte, only saw her three times and now memories of Mary are fading and Mary knows it. The Lords refuse to allow Mary to see Charlotte and Mary’s hate for them grew and grew with each passing of Charlotte now 10 birthdays.
Mary stood on the street watching as Celeste’s car drove off in the distance as a man whistled at her in her blue dress with its slinky tassels and hem of silk torn at the bottom. Mary rolled her eyes at the man and shooed him away. All she had on her mind now was how she was going to get into the mansion and stop Evie from making the biggest mistake of her life: becoming a Lord.
****
That late afternoon a large tin pot boiled over a roaring fire over the hearth of an iron stove in a small cottage in the village. The small cottage had a cabin like feel and smelled of rosemary, thyme and lemon; the herbal and citrus ingredients of a bubbling chicken soup with potatoes and carrots on the fire.
Celeste’s live in partner Filipe Braga was busily slicing a Portuguese style corn bread freshly baked for the meal he had made for Celeste who burst into the cottage in a fluster. She had just been dropped off by the Lord family driver as he returned to the estate with the flowers for the wedding.
“Hope you’re hungry.” Filipe said as he peeked around the corner of a half wall from the kitchen. His caramel skin seeming to glow in the after noon sun that snuck in through a kitchen window.
“I’ve lost my appetite.” Celeste said as she collapsed in a soft arm chair near a small oil lantern who’s light glistened on her mocha skin.
“What happened?” Filipe asked stepping into the front room.
“Mary Goode. That’s what happened.” Celeste replied.
“Goode? That hermit Eliza’s daughter?” Filipe asked.
“I ran into her in town and she wasn’t exactly happy about the whole wedding thing. I don’t know, something tells me she’s not going to let this go off tomorrow without getting herself into trouble.” Celeste said.
“What exactly did she say?” A voice said from the other side of the kitchen’s half wall.
It was Filipe’ best friend and boss the village Constable: the blue eyed Christian Evans, who had come over to share dinner with Celeste and Filipe. The friendly dinner date had slipped Celeste’s mind.
“Oh! I totally forgot you were coming for dinner! Christian forget what I said.” An embarrassed Celeste said feeling like she was gossiping in presence of a town official. One like Christian who had law flowing in his veins.
“She hasn’t exactly been the most law abiding citizen, Celeste, so if Mary is throwing out threats to anyone in the Lord family again I think I should know about it.” Christian said.
Celeste and her family had worked for the Lords family for generations. Filipe at one point did too. They had given him his first job when he arrived in America from the same Portuguese colony as Celeste as an orphan. In his teenage years, Filipe was a page for Jacob.
Tirymôr is where Filipe and Celeste met and fell in love.
Although these days Filipe no longer worked on the estate, he was now the town’s acting deputy and a horse breeder. His relationship with the Lord family was left strained when one day while working as Jacob’s page, the job quite literally took Filipe’s right hand, mangling it in a horrible automobile when a drunk Jacob took to driving while Filipe was his passenger.
Christian however had been in town from Philadelphia, although originally from Welshport. He was very familiar with the Lord family, and most especially Sebastian. They had been friends through their teen years.
Being the only law informant in with proper training in the north east with knowledge of Welshport, Christian was reassigned to his rural Maine island home after the scandal with Sebastian’s parents: The murder of Sabrina and David’s sudden disappearance. Christian’s return to the island was met with constant shadowy double talk by locals who never dared speak ill of the richest most powerful family in New England and were the employers to half the village, as acting deputy Filipe acted as a buffer between the returned Constable and the mistrusting townspeople.
Christian still wanted to keep the law in everyone’s peripheral. Even the town’s most reckless woman: Mary Goode.
“It’s all just become so odd. It’s not just Mary.” Celeste added.
“What do you mean?” Filipe asked filling her bowl with his soup.
“Did something else happen?” Christina wondered.
Celeste took a breathe before replying because of the strange happenings at Tirymôr—but let it all out. “Charlotte bit the new Mrs. Lord, Evie. Bit her so hard she drew blood! I’ve never seen such a such a thing. It was as if she was trying to, I don’t know, take something from her. A piece of Evie. Just in the way she did it and wouldn’t let go. It was horrifying. ”
“God!” Filipe exclaimed as he stirred the soup. “That must of been fantastic for old Jacob. His daughter the blood thirsty 10 year old.”
“She could be just acting out. But I’d like to get back to this Mary Goode conversation. Celeste if you think her threats are viable I should really know.” Christian explained.
“She’s just an angry woman. Nothing more. Why are you so intrigued by her” Celeste replied.
“Mary has a knack for telling the drunk sailors that come into her bar stories about the Lords. Some have got back to me and it worries me. I know that when we were kids and she’d come in to the village for school Sebastian would be the only one who’d defend her. Now all she can do is talk about them in the most negative of ways. I don’t feel shes in her right mind. I just want to keep my eye on her.” Christian said as he sipped from his soup.
“Hmm…” Filipe said with a grin. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
“Oh!” Celeste scoffed.
“Mary is not just any woman we all know she’s had something in her mind spinning away against that family for a while now. For my own peace of mind and maybe yours Celeste I’ll be at the wedding. The more eyes on the look out for the unstable Goode girl the better.” Christian said.
Celeste smiled. It was a good idea. Both she and Filipe knew that the only way to keep anyone safe around a gathering of Lord family members was to have as many witnesses as humanly possible. They were a secretive family that did things in ways that no one really understood. Christian was ready for them.
****
Two nights before the wedding, Evie tossed and turned in her bed. The rustling of the down-comforter overstuffed with Canadian goose feathers seemed meld with the quiet cracking of the dimming fire in the fireplace.
Electricity had come to Welshport only a few years earlier and Evie’s room had been fitted with a fancy dimmer switch to keep her room slightly lit while she continued to toss and turn under the canopy bed of rosewood and oak.
In her sleeping state Evie fell into a dark cloud like dream the engulfed her whole body in a laid out state. She was dreaming, a nightmare really, choked by the black cloud in her mind.
As she laid there in her dream she reached up but her hands were blocked. She reached to her side, blackness surrounding her and again her hands blocked by an invisible wall. She was completely surrounded by this invisible barricade. Locked somewhere in the dark. She screamed out loud but she could tell the sound was going no where.
As she continued to struggled in her dream, her room in real life had suddenly gotten colder. A breeze of ocean air had invaded her bedroom and blew out even the hottest embers. Her bedroom door creaked open and someone in what looked like a light nightgown crept in the room and watched as Evie was tormented her in sleep.
While in that sleep Evie could hear a muffling sound above her. It was strange and sounded as if someone was walking over her in a second story house. But she was not in a house. The darkness of her surroundings made her feel like she was trapped somewhere. Then a woman’s voice came to her ears, just as muffled and hard to understand as the foot steps.
Evie screamed for help but again the sound of her voice only went as far as whatever was containing her. She kicked and punched but the wall, invisible to her eye stood strong locking her in.
Then, finally she heard the words that chilled her to her bones. They were clear and perfectly articulated.
“May she Rest In Peace.” The voice said.
Evie repeated what she heard “rest in peace?” Then it dawned on her — she was buried...alive. The containing force around her suddenly went from invisible to visible and took the shape of a coffin from the inside. Evie screamed and screamed but still her voice stayed in her coffin.
She began to scratch at the silk lining of her coffin lid. Pulling down every stitch of fabric she could while crying hysterically, screaming at the top of her lungs until the wood of the lid could be seen from the ripped off fabric lining. She scratched and clawed so violently at the lid's underside just inches from her pale terrified screaming face that the ends of her fingers were bleeding causing bloody smear marks to splatter across the area right over her face.
She kicked her legs. She punched at the side of the coffin as hard as she could. But she was trapped.
The air was now getting thinner. She was losing oxygen quickly inside the dark coffin that seemed to have a sinister red glow coming from an unknown source. As the final gulps of oxygen began to vanish, Evie screamed one more time, to the people above her grave: “I AM ALIVE!!!!!”
The scream from with her dream was so loud, that it woke her up in a sweaty breathless mess to a shocking guest in her bedroom staring right at her.
It was Charlotte.
“Charlotte? What are you doing?” Evie asked trying to compose herself after waking from her nightmare.
“I needed to say I was sorry. I hurt you.” The girl said carefully placing herself on the edge of Evie’s large bed.
Evie felt a coolness of air kiss the back back of her moist neck, wet from sweat from the nightmare.
“It’s ok.” Evie replied pulling the covers closer to her chest to warm her from the cold air. “You should go back to your room. It’s very late and we have a big day tomorrow.” She added.
“Are you happy to marry Sebastian?” Charlotte asked out of nowhere.
Evie smirked at the surprise question and replied “very much so.”
“Do you love him?” Charlotte asked again.
Evie looked at her soon-to-be in law, her hand aching, a reminder of the bite she gave her earlier that day.
“Of course I do. I love him very much and I am so happy to become part of your family. Now go on, go back to your room and rest. We’ll chat in the morning.” Evie said.
“I just want him to be happy. And for you to be happy.” Charlotte added.
Evie looked at the young Lord girl and could see a sort of sadness ooze from her eyes. She could literally feel the Sadness coming from Charlotte as if it were her own. The emotion gripped Evie’s heart like a hand squeezing an orange to the point Evie began to unexpectedly tear up.
“You love your cousin very much don’t you Charlotte.” She asked.
“He’s the kindest person I have ever met. I wouldn’t hurt him ever.” Charlotte replied.
“That’s very good. It’s good to keep those you love and protect them and not hurt them. But your hurt me. Why did you bite me?” Evie asked seeing a moment to connect and bond with the odd girl.
Charlotte didn’t answer at first she only stared at Evie’s bandaged hand that she then went over and caressed.
“Sometimes I feel strange and I feel like I’m someone else. I don’t know, it’s like a warm feeling but also very scary. I just felt like I needed to do something it was an urge. Something strong and I feel awful about it. I hurt you, I know I did.. I didn’t mean to.” Charlotte explained.
And in that moment Evie knew that she wasn’t the only one feeling out of place. For Charlotte, Evie believed, being the only young lady in a world such as the one the Lord family traveled in, probably felt unbearably stressful and it seemed to reason the bite was Charlotte reacting with stress at the changing dynamic. Biting someone was perhaps a bizarre extreme way to do it, but Evie felt it better to just move on and heal. Literally.
“I understand. When I was your age I sometimes did things to get a rise out of my father too. But I want us to be friends. Good friends. Is that ok with you?” Evie asked.
Charlotte smiled.
“It’s Ok with me.” The girl said as she slid off the bed. But before she left she came up to Evie who felt her whole body freeze with apprehension. She felt somewhat silly that she was a bit frightened of the 10 year old but their history had already hit a rough patch.
Charlotte leaned over the soft bed covering and kissed Evie sweetly on the cheek surprising the new Lord family member.
Then Charlotte looked at Evie dead in her eyes. Her tone and honey language suddenly changed and she almost looked stoic and mature then she said in a whisper of a voice “You’ll watch over him, won’t you? Take care of him? For as long as you live?”
“Sebastian? Of course. Of course.” Evie replied in the same low whispered voice.
“Because you must. He is …” the girl paused.
“What? What it is Charlotte?” Evie asked, picking up Charlotte’s strange feeling of uncertainty of what to say next.
“He’s important. Very important to all of us. But I will trust in you.” Charlotte replied, sounding older than her 10 years.
Evie felt the conversation was strange but smiled politely and nodded yes, then watched the young girl take her leave from the room satisfied with Evie’s agreement to take care of Sebastian, her beloved cousin.
As Charlotte left Evie’s room, she passed a large gold framed oval floor mirror that stood next to the door of the bedroom, but when she passed, the reflection was a full grown woman in a similar colored dressed with dark hair, pale skin, thin frame and beautiful.
The shocking visual sent chills up Evie’s spine and she shouted “CHARLOTTE!”
The little girl turned and stepped back passing the mirror again.
“What is it?” The startled little girl asked.
But this time the reflection was of Charlotte, her 10 year old tiny body perfectly framed in the mirror she stood beside.
Evie exhaled thankful for seeing the right person in the reflection. But her heart still pounded like a freight train in her chest.
“Nothing. Nothing. Uh…Good night.” She replied stammering in her speech.
Charlotte smiled and left the room leaving Evie alone again in a room where the temperature slowly began to warm again. The embers in the fire place glowing hotter all on their own.
Evie wasn’t sure what she saw. She wasn’t sure what she dreamed but she knew that this house, Tirymôr House, was a place where her heart and mind were going to be tested at every turn.
She rolled over in her bed and stared out of the window unable to sleep.
As Charlotte walked back to her room, all the glass and picture coverings reflected the older woman’s body just as it had in the mirror in Evie’s room: it was the spirit of Sabrina Lord inhabiting the body of her little niece Charlotte, living a new life and she was there to stay.
In the other room that shared a wall with Evie that had a large painting of a woman hanging in it, the eyes once again changed. Someone had decided to watch Evie sleep just after Charlotte left —it was Jacob.
His diabolical mind was quickly at play. He could tell the young woman from England, his nephew’s bride to be, was in a way finding it hard to be away from home. And perhaps in over her head.
He could see the vulnerability in her, it was alluring. There was something about her. He knew he could use her innocence to his own advantage.
Evie and her wedding to Sebastian stood in the way of Jacob and his family’s vast publishing fortune.
With a wicked plot floating in his mind to correct this, Jacob had unlisted Gaspar with a hefty paycheck to deceive Rebecca with fake psychic powers and get rid of each of the other family rivals one one by one to make Jacob the sole Lord family heir.
All he had to do now was put the plan in motion, one piece of the puzzle at a time, and like dominos they would all fall and he would be the last Lord standings.
As Evie fell back asleep Jacob slid the cover of the painted eyes back returning the woman’s painted face back to its frozen state of eternal worry.
