Author's Note: A little story for Flaming Trails, who requested it. :)
The Portrait Gallery
Victor had just set aside his newspaper when Victoria walked into the morning room. He half-rose to greet her and she kissed his cheek before settling into the armchair beside his.
"What a pleasant place to spend the morning. Catherine's done lovely work in this room, hasn't she?" Victoria said, glancing around. Everything was soft and pastel, painted white woodwork and comfortable furniture. Quite the contrast to the rest of the castle.
Victor and Victoria were visiting their daughter Catherine and her family for the weekend at the Van Lynden castle. They hadn't been here since Catherine had married Theodore, Count Van Lynden. Neither Catherine nor Teddy liked this place much, preferring the country manor nearby. But they still visited from time to time, just to make their presence known. And Lavinia, their thirteen-year-old daughter, liked the castle more than her parents did, especially the grounds.
"I've just finished reading Lavinia's latest story," Victor said after a moment. Vinnie fancied herself a writer and was very serious about it. Her latest story had been a dramatized account of what had happened, decades ago, when Victor had accidentally married Emily. He was still mulling it over, his little trip down memory lane not quite finished yet. Victor was surprised by how vivid his memories still were of that time in his life. Though perhaps he shouldn't be. After all, it had been an extraordinary experience.
"Quite interesting, wasn't it?" Victoria said with a smile. "Very creative."
"Very," agreed Victor. "Your aunt Lavinia really had a telephone put into the family crypt? In case she was buried alive?"
"She did, indeed. It's likely still there. It was there when we buried Mother."
There was a moment of silence. Victor sat back comfortably in his chair, looking up at the impossibly high ceiling. He spotted a cobweb in the corner, swaying a bit in a draft.
"Lavinia feels quite a connection to that story," Victoria remarked at length. "Our story. The corpse bride."
"I've noticed," Victor said.
Indeed, it seemed that every time he saw his granddaughter she had a new question about his strange wedding. About the land of the dead. Lavinia showed much more interest than his daughters ever had, and more than his other grandchildren, too. He wasn't quite sure how he felt about indulging her. Sometimes her questions were morbid, sometimes far too personal. Often they were ones he truly could not answer.
Young girls should be more interested in life than death. If Vinnie wasn't so sweet and outgoing otherwise, he'd be worried about her.
"At least this new story wasn't as gruesome as her last," said Victoria in an undertone. He knew she felt the same about Vinnie's darker leanings. "Do you remember that one? At Christmas? The scene with the maggots?"
Victor swallowed. "I'd nearly been able to forget," he told her.
Just then Lavinia came back into the room. She'd exchanged her writing outfit of slacks and sweater for a green dress which her mother had likely picked out for her. Her hair was still loose. There was always something distracted and flyaway about Vinnie, in a charming sort of way. Such a contrast to her extremely poised and always put-together mother.
"Shall I show you the portrait gallery?" she asked immediately, not bothering to sit down. "I never got a chance to show you the last time we were all here. And I don't think you've seen the new one of Mum!"
Victor and Victoria exchanged amused glances before they eased themselves out of their chairs and let Vinnie lead the way to the gallery.
0–0
"Isn't Mum gorgeous?" Vinnie asked when they all stood before the portrait. "I mean, for an older lady."
"Now, now," said Victoria, putting a hand on Vinnie's shoulder. "Your mother isn't even fifty. That's hardly old. But yes, she's always been beautiful."
Vinnie was right though, Victor thought. Catherine was still very nice looking, and had kept a youthful face. Victor didn't think she'd changed much at all since her thirties. In this new, informal portrait she'd posed on the windowseat in the morning room they'd just left, bathed in golden sunshine and wearing a loose, shimmery dress.
"Your father doesn't look too bad himself," remarked Victor, pointing out the portrait of Teddy which hung on the wall opposite. His official portrait had been done quite a few years ago, but he still looked the same. Victor had to wonder what sort of magic his second-eldest and her husband possessed, and why it had skipped his generation.
"You certainly take after your father, dear," Victoria told Vinnie, who smiled proudly. It was true. The two of them had the same face, the same features, the same willowy build.
"Except for my hair," Vinnie said. She ran a hand through her loose blonde waves. "That's all Mum. All Everglot."
The three continued down the gallery, toward the older portraits. One side of the wall was dominated by huge portraits of past Counts, all dressed in the finest clothes of centuries past and wearing serious expressions. The other side held family portraits. Victor glanced over them as they walked, until one caught his eye.
He stopped dead before a portrait of a young woman and three young men. It was the woman's face that had caught his attention. It was her.
Emily.
True, it had been decades since he'd seen her, and it wasn't as though he'd had a portrait or a photograph to look at over and over. Besides, of course, she had been dead. But still. He was sure. The face. The eyes. She was fresh in his memory after reading Vinnie's story. And Vinnie...Victor couldn't believe he'd never noticed it before, but not only did Lavinia look like her father, she looked how he imagined Emily might have in life.
"Which one are you looking at?" Vinnie asked at his elbow. She and Victoria had come back to see why he'd fallen behind. Over Vinnie's head he locked eyes with his wife.
"Look at this one," he said, pointing out the portrait of Emily and the young men. Her brothers, he assumed. The painting showed Emily with rich auburn hair and pale skin. Her dress was full-skirted and a somber shade of blue. Yes, it had to have been her. The resemblance was striking.
"What of it?" Victoria asked. But her words were lost as Vinnie jumped in, all tour guide expertise and practiced delivery.
"That's my great-grandfather!" she told them. She pointed to the stuffiest-looking young man. "His name was Theodore, too. This one, that cross-looking one, was his older brother, and that short one was his younger brother, Maximillian. The girl is their sister, Cecily."
"That's Great Aunt Cecily?" Victoria said wonderingly. They'd only ever known her as a grumpy, ancient woman in a wheelchair. She gazed at the portrait. "How beautiful she was."
Indeed. So not Emily after all. But the resemblance was uncanny. He stood there, studying the portrait and thinking, as Vinnie kept talking. She was in full storyteller mode now. She reached up to point out a portrait which showed a couple and a young girl.
"That is my great-great uncle Maximillian again," she said. "And his wife, Gwendolyn. Her parents weren't nobility-they were brewers from the cathedral town. That's where they lived after they got married. My great-great-grandparents weren't very happy about it. Their marriage, that is."
Victor studied the portrait as he listened to Vinnie's story. Maximillian, unlike his stately siblings, had a rumpled and tired sort of look about him. As if he didn't quite fit inside of himself correctly. Gwendolyn had been a plain woman, on the sturdy side. But her eyes were large and kind, and what hair was visible beneath her bonnet was curly and dark brown. The girl had that Van Lynden face again, just like Cecily and Teddy and Vinnie, and dark hair like her mother.
"They got married anyway. Even though the count and countess didn't approve, Max was the youngest and still their favorite. They couldn't ever tell him no, not about anything," Vinnie went on. Her eyes were bright and fixed on the painting, completely lost in her tale. Victoria and Victor both moved closer to her, pulled in by her spell.
"The countess even gave Max the family jewelry to give to his wife," she told them. "The Van Lynden wedding jewelry, since he was the first to get married. And they were very happy together, so far as everyone could tell. They lived in Gwendolyn's town, and never really visited all that often. But they did write. After a few years they had a daughter. Her name was Emily."
Lavinia pointed to the girl in the portrait, the one with the Van Lynden face. Victor couldn't help a little gasp. Victoria, hearing, caught his eye. Before he could say anything, Vinnie went on with her story. He didn't want to interrupt.
"The three of them were a very happy little family," said Vinnie. "But then, there was a tragedy."
Here she paused for effect, looking with sorrowful eyes at her grandparents. In a heavy tone she continued, "Gwendolyn became ill. Within days she was so weak she couldn't get out of bed. She kept on wasting away until finally she died. Emily was only thirteen. And Max was devastated. So devastated he couldn't bear to live in their house anymore. He couldn't even bear to be in the same town where his beloved wife had died. After the funeral he just packed up and left, taking his daughter with him, and not telling anyone where they were going."
"How dreadful," murmured Victoria. Victor nodded his agreement.
"What happened then?" asked Victor. He was eager to hear the rest of the story, even the parts he thought he already knew.
Vinnie shrugged. "Nobody really knows. Dad told me that as far as he knew Max more or less disappeared during that bad time. My grandfather did a little searching for him, trying to figure out where they'd gone, but nothing ever turned up. Not for a long time, anyway. The next time they heard from Max it was out of the blue, years and years later, from Canada."
"What did he have to say?" Victoria asked. In addition to being genuinely interested, she was always a good, dutiful audience.
"That he couldn't bear his old life anymore, after he'd lost everything," said Vinnie, her voice taking on a dramatic tone. "You see, his daughter had disappeared."
Victor glanced down at her, looked from her face to the uncannily similar one in the frame. "Disappeared?" he asked.
Vinnie nodded. "Max said she ran away from home. Eloped, he thought. She'd met someone, wherever they'd gone, and Max didn't like him. She was horribly upset when Max said she couldn't get married. So she stole her mother's wedding dress, all the wedding jewelry, and lots of money from the safe. And ran away in the middle of the night one night, never to return."
Victoria had a hand to her mouth as she looked at the girl in the portrait. Victor wondered if she had come to the same conclusion he had. It was impossible not to connect the dots. Frankly, he was surprised Vinnie hadn't noticed the similarities, with all of her interest in Emily's story, all the questions she'd asked. Perhaps she'd been too focused on the Land of the Dead part of the story to pay attention to the living that went beforehand.
"That was that," Vinnie concluded. "Nobody ever heard from her again. Everyone just assumed she didn't want to be found, wherever she was and whoever she'd married. Max died not too long after his last letter. Dad said he hit the bottle pretty hard and drowned in the bottom of it."
"Lavinia," Victoria scolded gently.
"Sorry," said Vinnie breezily. She looked up at her grandparents, eyes still dancing. "Great story, isn't it?"
"Quite," Victor and Victoria replied at the same time.
"You tell it very well, dear," added Victoria, her eyes still on the painting. "You're quite the keeper of family lore."
"But I think great-great-uncle James would make an even better story," Vinnie said, talking faster as she warmed to her new subject. "Did you know he had five wives, and Mum was almost the sixth? What a story that could make! A real adventure, a romantic one. Or no. No, a scary one. You see-"
She kept going, but Victor was only half-listening. Victoria took his hand. Her eyes were troubled. Victor squeezed her fingers. Vinnie was happily oblivious.
"And I was thinking something dark, like a Bluebeard story, you know? But James wasn't that bad in real life. Not evil. Dad said he was just old and cranky and cheated at cards all the time. And he never actually killed his wives. They all divorced him because he was such a grouch. But that would be a boring story. Say, do you want to see where the family portrait of Mum and Dad and I will go when it's done?"
It took a second for Victor and Victoria to realize their granddaughter had asked them a question. Victoria snapped to first, replying, "Of course, dear. Do show us."
Vinnie took off, and they let her get a few strides ahead of them. Once she was out of earshot, Victoria leaned in and asked in a low voice, "Should we tell her?"
Victor scratched at the back of his neck. "I don't know," he replied honestly.
"How very strange this is," Victoria murmured. Victor nodded. There didn't seem to be much else to say.
Emily Van Lynden. After all this time, to know what she looked like when she'd been alive. To know her last name. To see her with her parents. Victor was struck by the tragedy of her death in a way he'd never been before this moment.
Emily had existed. She'd been as vital as the grandchild waiting for them at the end of the corridor right now. In her portrait she couldn't have been more than ten or eleven, just a little younger than Vinnie. She herself might have run about on this very same lawn, walked these halls and grounds, ate at the dining table, at least once or twice, even if her father was estranged from his family.
Somehow, it seemed, a little bit of Emily was destined to be with them always. More than just her memory, more than just their promise to remember her, to have a home and family and happiness for her. In a roundabout way, her blood had mixed with both of theirs, and she was truly their family. As if meant to be.
That, or it was just a big coincidence in a very small world. Victor couldn't decide which.
The End