Hello readers! A quick message from me before you begin. Malison Bleue is a "work in progress" and as such, a bit raw in places. I wanted to share this work to not only motivate myself to edit, but to also show you what I've been working on during my downtime. I hope it's every bit as wonderful for you as I believe it to be.
That being said, enjoy!
PROLOGUE
Remi’s fingers shook.
The man in the black tails across from her squeezed them. She looked into his gentle brown eyes; they seemed to smile. Her own joy had been hard to find since the start of the ceremony. A carriage drawn by two gray mares had ushered her toward the final steps that would take her down a path she had not intended—to a groom she had not expected.
“I, Edgar Leone, take thee, Remi Cuvilyé, to be my wife...”
The sound of the waves rushed up behind them—a storm was brewing.
As above, Remi thought, gazing up at the darkening sky, so below.
Her groom’s voice drifted in again: “To have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health...”
Her mother’s face flashed in her mind. The pearls at her throat felt heavy suddenly, and her stomach lurched. The knot in her chest tightened and pained her all the more as the ceremony went on. She would have to repeat the same vows, impart her intentions to the guests watching them. It would be known, by the end of the evening, that Remi had married. It wouldn’t matter that he was the wrong man, the one she hadn’t ever loved.
No, she told herself meekly, that must go. Do away with it.
Remi chanced a glance at the guests: her aunt and uncle, her cousins, her closest friend and people from town that she had never spoken to before. In contrast, there was no one else from her groom’s side save the staff inside the manor.
“To love and to cherish”—Edgar Leone’s tone was proud—“and I promise to be faithful to you until death parts us.”
Remi found his face again, the wrinkles beside his eyes crinkling as a small smile graced his lips. He had a beard, a shock of silver and black hair, and the kindest eyes she had ever seen. It never occurred to her in her days as a youth that she would marry into the one family on all of the isle bound by a curse. And if she had imagined it, the marriage would have been to Edgar Leone’s only living son—the only one Remi had ever truly loved. In a dusty attic, buried at the back of her mind, she remembered the whisper of his vow.
Had he been there still, it might have been him instead of his father.
But the past is the past, she told herself as the cold ring slid onto her still-shaking finger. The older Leone patted it gently, waiting with his patient gaze, as Remi took her turn and spoke her vows.
“....until death parts us.”
Remi braced herself as Edgar leaned in.
The final words shared between them seemed to echo into eternity, and they stayed there until the veil had lifted and well-after they shared their first kiss as husband and wife.
CHAPTER ONE
Grey Mourning
For the hundredth time that morning, Remi fidgeted with the locket around her neck—a wedding gift from her husband, Edgar Leone. It was the first time she had ever taken it from its box and worn it. The morning had been unkind—cold and eerily quiet—as she woke without having garnered any rest the night before. The embers of the fire in the hearth had died, and she had let them. Her maid and her cousin would have called her mad for it, but it was the only way she could make her heart hurt for its loss.
After all, Edgar Leone was dead.
Her husband of just one month, gone as quickly as the stormy season approached.
Remi sat at the window, one foot dangling loosely from her thin nightgown. The waves below the cliffside rushed up in a violent chase. One wave overpowered another, the undercurrent rippling with more power than what was on the surface. In another time, when she had been just a child playing in its halls, a Leone had fallen into the waves below.
Thrown herself, the people had said.
The curse is what took her, God rest her soul, they whispered.
The rumors had been wild, but not untrue. The last daughter of a living Leone had thrown herself from the moors and into the waves below. There was even a song about it—a silly little chanty about the curse that gripped the family; the very family that Remi had married into.
“Are you awake, Madame Leone?” a voice called out from beyond the bedroom door.
Remi did not look away from the water. “I am.”
“May I come in?” it asked weakly. “A letter’s just arrived for you.”
Her heart leapt, but she did not answer.
“Madame?”
“Yes, come in.” Remi turned as the door opened.
Sylvie, her maid, ogled with a frantic look in her eye. “My word! What are you doing up there? You’ll catch a nasty chill—and your fire! Madame—”
“Sylvie.” Remi held up a hand to stop her. “The letter?”
The maid fumbled, pressing her lips together as she pulled a pale envelope from the pocket of her apron. She hurried over to the window and placed it in Remi’s waiting hands. Sylvie was younger, but not by many years. Remi would welcome her twenty-seventh year come August, and Sylvie had just celebrated her eighteenth three months before Remi’s wedding. The only thing that truly separated them from being true friends was the title and Remi’s standing. In truth, she felt much older than she looked, and perhaps that had to do with her husband.
“Thank you.”
“I’m going to light your fire, Madame.” Sylvie gave her no room to argue, as she was poking at the fire the moment the envelope had left her care. “Your cousin has arrived. She bullied me out of bringing your breakfast—says she wants to do it herself.”
“That does indeed sound like something Elise would do.” Remi spoke absently, too focused on the paper and peeling away the seal. She knew it by heart: an ‘L’ surrounded by a plumage of wisteria and curling vines. It was their family seal—the Leones’.
It could only be from one other Leone.
It’s him, she thought, her body becoming heavy. It must be.
The last she had held anything from him had been four years after he’d left the Bleue. Then, she had been a young girl still, confused by the ‘return to sender.’ But now Remi pulled the letter free without a moment’s hesitation. She unfolded it gently, as if it would expire into nothing if she was too rough, too eager. One look at the signee, and she knew she’d been right. He had received her own letter and sent one back in record time. Paris was not as far off as it seemed when she sometimes looked at the map in her husband’s study.
“Madame?” Sylvie’s voice drowned inside the ringing happening in Remi’s ears.
Though there were few, his words consumed her.
Madame Leone,
Thank you for your letter.
I will be returning to the family home, post-haste. Please have the servants prepare for my arrival.
Regards,
Benjamin E. Leone
Remi read it three more times, and would have read it more had Elise not barged into her room shouting her name.
“What on earth are you doing by that window, ma cherie?”
The horror in her voice reflected itself in her too-wide hazel eyes. Her cousin, Elise, lived in the same house as her mother, father, and brother. It was the house Remi had grown up in, and had left once Edgar had taken her hand in marriage. Sometimes, she missed it; especially now that her home was haunted by silence and more death. The creaking and groaning seemed louder than ever, and without another warm body somewhere in the manor, she felt terribly alone.
Elise, despite her abject disapproval, was a welcome sight.
“Cousin.” Remi regarded her with a small smile, tucking the letter back into its envelope. “You look well this morning.”
“And you look…” Elise struggled to find the right words. “...pale.”
“It is quite cold in here,” Remi remarked, pointing a finger out the window. “And we are in the heart of the stormy season.”
“Sylvie—” Her name left Elise’s mouth as a growl.
“I’ve already started the fire.” The maid was quick to reply, and hurried to her feet. Behind her, the hearth was alive with a crackling fire. Remi could already feel it stretching itself across the cool floor, wrapping its heat around the chill and choking it with its purpose.
“What about her dress?” Elise went to the bed, picking up a tray that had been left there. Remi had not seen it at first, but as Elise brought it closer, she spied some of her favorites—one halved concorde, a boiled egg, a croissant with soft brie, and a cup of tea. She picked up the tea first and sipped at it while Sylvie sweated over Elise’s instructions. Remi heard snippets, tuning in when Sylvie would procure a gown and Elise would judge it harshly.
“To think,” she said at one point, observing the fine silk of a black skirt, “that you have money and you kept mine and maman’s tired castoffs.”
“I don’t think—” Sylvie tried to defend the dress, but her attempts were always in vain.
Remi was slighter than both women she’d lived with, and wearing their old gowns had become a terrible habit - but far more efficient. As a girl, she’d learned to mend and stitch and hem them all on her own. It had shocked Sylvie to discover Remi’s altered mourning gown, an out of fashion dress once worn by her Tante Beline in years past. It had left a certain impression on her young maid at the time, but then Remi had been hardened from the mockery in her youth and was left unbothered by Sylvie’s reaction.
“Sylvie, would you prepare a bath for me?” Remi asked the young maid. She nodded and left them both alone, Elise still scoffing at the choice of clothing and lack of fashion. She would be, of course, disgusted by the aged pieces. Her world had been built on luxury - Remi’s had not.
“He’s coming home,” the latter spoke.
Elise’s eyes widened, all traces of her earlier irritation gone. “He is? How do you know?”
Remi produced the letter and entrusted it to her cousin. A quick glance at the paper, and Elise was convinced. Remi swallowed a bite of the pear on her plate; it was deliciously sweet and perfectly crisp. It was the only thing she coveted in the entire manor—the cook’s immaculate eye for perfectly grown fruit.
“When will he arrive?”
“Look at the date.” The letter had been sent four days ago—the same day that Edgar had been found dead. “Tomorrow, perhaps.”
“The weather?”
“He’s ambitious,” Remi said. “He’s a doctor now, you know. Well practiced in medicine from what I’ve gathered..”
There had been some gossip about his acceptance into the Parisian medical institute. Remi had heard it once or twice years before, and had always assumed he’d been successful.
Elise brought a hand to her lips. “Was he really so serious then?”
Remi thought back to the boy from the letter, a boy who was now a grown man. She recalled his integrity, his stubbornness when the maids implored him to behave, and his love of the books shelved in his father’s study. It came to her as no surprise that he would be so accomplished, but when she learned he had not been married yet? Her heart had begun to wonder, though she never let it cross her mind that it was because of her that he hadn’t. After all, she was his stepmother and the widow to his late father.
It didn’t matter that she hadn’t wanted any of it with Edgar, only that it had happened regardless.
“Does it matter?” Remi asked. Elise eyed her curiously, seating herself beside the young widow in mourning.
“I know you didn’t love him.”
Remi knew who she meant and nodded. “He was kind to me.”
“Kindness isn’t the same as love,” Elise chided gently, placing the note on the tray.
“Would you tell that to Uncle, then?” Remi asked. “About Hugo? I know you don’t love him either. You never have.”
“That doesn’t mean I never will.” But there was an immovable reluctance to her tone. Remi knew Elise would never feel anything but friendly towards Hugo Marchand. Their marriage would be the same as Remi’s—a matter of convenience.
“So, then...” Remi quickly changed the subject. “You terrorized my maid over a dress. I hope you found something perfect then.”
“Black is black.” Elise scoffed. “And the style will do.”
“This was all so sudden, Elise.”
Edgar had died quickly and quietly. The physician had procured the cause, and announced the failure in his body had been because of his heart. It had been a shocking bit of news, especially when Edgar had been healthy and brimming with energy the day before. His body was stiff and cold come morning, found by his footman in his beloved study. Remi had only seen him once since he died and had not wished to see any more until the funeral. She’d written to her husband’s cousins on the same day, hoping to reach his son before the older Leone could be buried.
Between arrangements and meetings with his lawyer, Remi had hardly been able to process any of her own feelings. Was she meant to grieve a man she hardly knew? A man whose face only surfaced in the same instances as the memories she coveted of his son. Edgar had been kind, but all that had been healing now felt hollow.
She might not have loved him, but he’d still been her husband.
“Thank you for coming.” Remi reached for her cousin’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze.
“Of course.” Elise smiled. She’d been the only sister Remi had ever really had, despite being the oldest of six back home in Paris. “I’ve packed plenty. I’m here as long as you need me.”
Remi nodded.
“Madame?” Sylvie poked her head around the corner again. “I’ve drawn your bath.”
“Coming.” Remi lifted the tray from her lap and passed it off to Elise. Her cousin immediately picked and nibbled at the unfinished bits as Remi stood. Behind them, rain pattered suddenly against the window. The first storm of the season had arrived, and with it, a funeral would follow.
***
Ben had never felt more angry and stricken by grief than the day his father had sent him away, and that had been sixteen years ago. At ten, he never really knew why and the answers had never been clear, but he assumed it had to do with his sister. Soleil had lived up to her namesake, and the day she threw herself from the moors had been one of the saddest in their family.
But it had been a part of their curse. An inevitability.
“Gypsies,” his cousins had told him, but they never elaborated further on the ‘why,’ as if speaking of it would invoke the blight.
As he got older, and every year his father left him in the dark, his understanding never cleared. It was his resentment that grew, overpowering the love he’d ever had for his father; a love that had been snubbed the moment he’d taken another wife. It had burned him to learn that not only was the letter not an invitation to come home, but rather an announcement for a wedding between Edgar Leone and Remi Cuvilyé. His father, it seemed, cared more about a new wife than he did his only living son.
So when his cousins gave him the letter that spelled out his future, he had at first meant to ignore it. But then he saw her name, and it had pulled at a once-dead cord inside of him.
Dearest Benjamin,
I am writing to express to you my deepest sorrow: your father has passed.
I can only imagine what you must be feeling, for I am beside myself with grief as well.
Funeral arrangements are already underway. It would please me greatly to have you counted among the attending family.
With love,
Remi A. Leone
It had not helped that the letter came by a young courier to the brothel where he was spending his weekly wages. Drinking and gambling and prostitutes had not been the ideal setting for such heavy news. Even his two favorite girls could not soothe the ache in him or fill the emptiness that had taken up space in his heart.
He’d left the brothel before anyone could see his tears.
Remi had been the only thing his mind could find to focus on in the days that followed her letter. He kept the memories of his childhood—his father—at bay the entire journey, and though his friend Jacques had accompanied him, he could not find the words to express any kind of conversation. It was, without a doubt, the worst trip he’d ever taken in a small boat on an angry sea.
The moment they arrived at the docks of his once favorite place, Ben vacated his stomach just as quickly as Jacques unloaded their things.
“There’s a carriage for us,” Jacques had said, and then helped him to stand.
It was nearing evening already when the boat had docked, and he’d wondered if his return letter had reached the manor yet. With the carriage waiting and their belongings secured, he was sure that they were expecting him. In everything he had prepared, packed, and suppressed in his mind, the only thing he couldn’t seem to find among the demons was the level-headedness he needed to be around the woman made widow.
“Master Ben.” Jacques shook his shoulder, gesturing with his other hand toward the little window on the carriage door. “We’re nearly there.”
Ben peered out.
The manor came into view, rising like a dark angel above trees along a bleak dirt road. The snap of reality twisted his insides as the anger inside him awoke. Like a phoenix, his resentment rose from the ashes like a new being made from the fires he had burned and burned for sixteen years.
His family’s legacy. His father’s death.
“Remi,” he whispered.
“Is that the young widow’s name?” Jacques asked. He knew nothing beyond the superficial. To him, Remi was simply the woman who had lost her new husband.
“It is.”
“Have you met her yet?”
Ben’s memories would not let him force away their infuriating assault on his psyche as a flurry of images rushed behind his eyes. Sixteen years ago, Remi had been one of four companions he’d had on the isle, but she’d been his favorite. She was the only one he ever shared his sweets with, the only one he had ever dared to hold hands with. And she’d been the only one he’d said goodbye to when his father had given the final order. Her eyes, as green as they were blue, had accompanied him to Paris but they’d been buried under his nightmares—pushed down further by the faces of other women, other eyes that had been just as worth remembering.
“Unfortunately.”
“Ah.” Jacques leaned back in his seat. “I won’t press any further. I can tell this is a matter of complexity.”
“It isn’t complex at all.” Ben waved his hand dismissively, shooing the shadows of his childhood back to where they belonged—dusty and uncovered. “I knew her as a girl, and as a woman? Well, she married my father. That isn’t so complex.”
Jacques simply whistled. It was his own way of avoiding conversation, much like the way Ben avoided conversations with a visit to Lily or Hanna, but less physically demanding.
“I hope there’s a meal waiting,” Jacques said absently.
The manor was right there, and as the carriage came to a stop outside of its doors, Ben’s stomach plummeted. A crack of thunder sounded overhead at the same time a young woman with a head full of cornflower hair appeared at the entrance.
As blue as they are green, he thought to himself.
One foot followed the other, and Ben was out of the carriage. Master Leone’s widow watched him with hooded eyes and an unreadable mask. Beside her, a young woman with brown curls assessed him. He knew at once it was Elise. The way she held her nose up in the air like a proud bird had never really left her, only grown more pretentious in the time they had all been apart.
Ben sighed. A chasm of doom lay wide open between them, and in it was sixteen years worth of darkness.
Seeing Remi’s eyes though had brought a little light—the girl, not the woman. He could not bring himself to see her for who she was right then and there. But then she spoke and her voice was different, leeched of laughter and replaced by something else.
“Welcome home,” she said—the woman, not the girl.
And then he saw her, saw her. The black mourning gown, the rigid posture, the impeccable placement of every hair on her head; the fire in him grew larger, more dangerous. Madame Leone, his father’s widow - the mistress of the manor where they’d once played as children. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, though he’d done well to keep it from his mind while they’d traveled. Fantasy was not the same as reality, and imagining Remi in any other way would have conjured sympathy; and he didn’t want to feel anything. Without another word, or a feeble exchange of niceties, he breezed past her. If his fire had manifested like a physical wrath, it would licked her shoulder with a scorching touch.
A stumble, a gasp—a small rupture in her perfectly placed mask.
Welcome home, indeed.