Chapter Two
This Must Be A Dream
She wanted to kiss him.
She was so close!
She could feel the soft skin of his neck against her cheek; feel his warm body pressed against her own. Their fingers were intertwined in the most delicate way. Fingers! So unlike the cold, thin bones he'd held earlier that night! She stared into his eyes. Both were filled with longing. She could tell he felt the same when she noticed that he too had stopped breathing for several moments.
He looked away. Their breathing resumed. The moment was lost.
Victoria moaned softly in her sleep, cursing her femininity even in unconsciousness. She would have tossed and turned now, but Hildegarde had been awakened by her quiet cries and the maid shook her gently into awareness. "Oh, Hildegarde!" Victoria whispered. "Why must the most beautiful things be called improper?" The old woman hushed her and smoothed back Victoria's hair wordlessly. All she could offer was an empathetic, nostalgic smile. Victoria would have no answers now.
She slipped back into her dream.
They'd stood in awkward silence for a moment, then separated. Victor walked almost purposefully to the spot where Emily had been transformed and turned his gaze towards heaven. She moved to join him, took his pale hand into hers, but she felt no warmth. She felt nothing. Was she even holding it at all? A pale, blue butterfly fluttered past her ear. It had been his pale hand. Another floated at her side. His heart. The butterflies filled the sky, obscured the stars, disappeared. All but two gone. A pair of butterflies rested briefly on her cheek.
They must have been his lips.
"Get up!" came the harsh, throaty voice of Maudeleine Everglot. She pounded on the wooden door with her fist, awakening the bedroom's inhabitants.
Hildegarde rubbed her eyes, glanced towards the bed in which Victoria was sleeping, and gasped. The colors of the dawn were creeping across the floors in bands. The boards across the windows had thrown the maid off. Had they not been there, the room would have been bathed in a pastel light by this time.
"If you are not out of there in ten minutes time, Victoria, I swear!"
Hildegarde shook the young woman, whose eyelids fluttered up to reveal large, doe's eyes. "Get up, get up!" The maid whispered urgently. "You'll be late for mass!"
Victoria turned her head in the direction of the window. Indeed, the hour was late. Damn those bars! She leapt from the bed, her unbound brown tresses falling untidily down her back. A moment later she was emerging from the bedroom's attached bathroom, three pins in her teeth and a powder puff in hand. Hildegarde had already withdrawn a suitable dress from the wardrobe.
"Victoria!"
"Just a moment!"
"Victoria!"
"I'm almost ready, mother!"
"I say, child! Hurry up!"
Hildegarde was powdering Victoria's hair when Maudeliene entered. Victoria buttoned the last of the buttons on her bodice and adjusted her bustle uncomfortably under her mother's stare. "Were you not awake?" she demanded, but did not wait for the obvious answer. "It's not enough for you to go traipsing off in the middle of the night for the second time? You have to be late to church now too? Heaven knows you need God in your life right now!"
"But mother," She'd meant to tell her mother that she was not the only person who had been 'traipsing' around the night before. There had been at least a handful of other living people present at the midnight wedding ceremony, including Hildegarde! She was interrupted.
"What are you wearing!" Maudeleine screeched. "Pink stripes! Lord, no! Child, you are in mourning!"
"Mourning?"
"Yes! Surely you must have seen if you were at the church! That despicable Van Dort boy murdered Lord Barkis!"
Hildegarde and Victoria gasped as one.
"Is that what they're saying?" Victoria asked disbelievingly.
"It's true!"
"No it's not! Victor's not capable of murder! He wouldn't harm a fly!"
Maudeleine glowered. "How can you defend your husband's killer?"
"Victor didn't kill him!" her daughter squeaked. She turned to Hildegarde for help. "Please, Hildegarde! Say something! Tell her it's all lies!"
But Hildegarde was silent. She would be dismissed from her position if she contradicted any word from her mistress' lips. And nobody wanted to hire an elderly maid nowadays.
"Hildegarde!" Victoria nearly screamed in desperation.
"Victoria! Stop that this instant! Such emotional displays are improper for a lady of your stature!"
"I don't care," she whispered inaudibly, but wiped the tears that were threatening to fall from her eyes.
"We're going to church. You will confess your sins."
Hildegarde took Victoria's arm and started to lead her from the room.
"After," Maudeleine stepped into the empty doorway. "You change out of that dress!"
The door slammed shut.
Victoria burst into sobs.