Little Doll (Blackmoth House #1)

Chapter 15

Costel

My mother adored Wilhelmina and accepted her into our home. She didn’t ask questions. Blackmoth House wasn’t the sort of place where it was appropriate to ask questions. But it was the perfect place to hide someone who didn’t wish to be found.

By all appearances, Wilhelmina seemed happy to be at Blackmoth House. In the backmost part of the grounds, Mother gave her a little cottage - an unused servant’s cottage. She never asked to leave. She never asked after her family or mentioned Grimm Fair. Mother outfitted her in gorgeous, fashionable dresses and comfortable, lacy night clothes and provided her a happy life without hesitation.

It was Wilhelmina who first asked about the possibility of a wedding, and I, of course, was happy to oblige. Of course, I would marry my beloved Wilhelmina. I was beyond overjoyed to think she would have me. We spent our days hand in hand, strolling the grounds and our nights making love in her little cottage. Soon there was talk of filling the long corridors and lofty rooms of Blackmoth House with a host of children to run and laugh and live happily forever. And so, the wedding was planned. Grimm Fair packed up and left the area and the wedding was to take place one week later.

The day dawned beautifully. Though it was supposedly bad luck, and Mother had strictly forbidden it, I couldn’t be stopped from sneaking first thing to Wilhelmina’s cottage and waking her with a kiss. The sun had only just begun its shine, and she smiled before she even opened her eyes.

“Costel!” she cried, playfully pushing me away. “What are you doing here? You know you can’t be here!”

I pulled up her cover enough to climb beneath it with her. The earliest hint of fall had arrived and there was a nip of cold in the cottage’s air. I grinned and lowered myself onto her. Her legs parted and allowed me to settle between.

“I don’t believe in luck,” I growled. “Especially not bad luck. Not when it comes to you, my darling.” I bent and nuzzled her neck, and she slipped her arms around my shoulders.

“Yes, but your mother said… ”

“Let’s be fast,” I purred against her ear. “Fast and quiet like little church mice, and then I’ll scamper back to Blackmoth House and make sure your wedding is arranged perfectly.”

She giggled, but then her breath caught halfway through as I pulled up her nightgown and found her flesh bare and waiting for me.

“You knew I’d come, you little minx,” I said, kissing her nose.

“Let’s come together,” she replied, her eyes cloudy with her desire.

Making love to Wilhelmina Payne on the morning of our wedding day was the last time I ever spoke to her.

We parted company after the early morning rendezvous when I snuck out of her cottage and went back to Blackmoth House to spring into action in preparing our wedding. Throughout the day, I caught glimpses of her from afar as she made her own preparations and spent time with Mother. Every time I did spot her, she was laughing, and her cheeks were flushed with excitement. Then some servant or another would catch me peeking and shoo me away.

By late afternoon, all the guests had gathered in the eastern garden in anticipation of the ceremony. My groomsmen assisted me with dressing and my last tasks in a room that overlooked the garden. It seemed like an eternity waiting for the moment to arrive that the music began, and I took my place at the flower draped altar before the priest.

Then my groomsmen lined up at my side, one by one, after escorting the bride’s maids down the aisle to gather and wait for her. Wilhelmina didn’t have any friends yet, having remained hidden away at Blackmoth House waiting for Grimm Fair to leave town. So, my friends had invited their ladies to be in the wedding and stand up for Wilhelmina. All the ladies had consented to take part in the lovely day.

Finally, the string quartet began playing a sweet tune, the cue for Wilhelmina to emerge from Blackmoth House and walk down the aisle to join with me as my wife.

But she never did.

Seconds and then moments ticked by, and she did not come out of the house. The song ended and after a brief but deafening few seconds of awkward silence; the players struck up the song again.

Maybe she’d grown nervous. Maybe she’d thought of what I’d done to her father, who, in another life, might have been escorting her down that aisle.

Maybe she’d decided she didn’t love me after all.

It was impossible to even fathom.

The song played through a second time before the guests began to squirm in their seats and look around anxiously. My eyes were still trained on the back door of Blackmoth House, positive that she would emerge. When the silence of the song ending crashed over us again, a nervous whisper bled through the crowd.

Mother stood up and walked to me. She stretched up to speak privately to me. “Costel, perhaps you should go and check on Wilhelmina,” she suggested, her face marred with worry.

I looked all around at the perplexed guests and at my wedding party, all of whom weren’t meeting my eye at the moment. “Yes, that sounds right. I’ll do it,” I agreed, my voice thin and fast.

I strode back down the aisle and into Blackmoth House, fully expecting to see her there. Perhaps sitting down, overcome with a moment of dizziness brought on by a corset laced too tight.

But she was not there.

She was nowhere.

A panic ensued. Most of the guests dispersed. My closest friends and family remained, along with the servants, and all of us frantically searched the grounds. Fear gripped my heart that something had happened to her. Perhaps she was somewhere ill or injured.

At first, I refused to consider that someone from her ghastly family had returned to take her back.

Or even worse, that perhaps she’d gone back on her own accord.

All of her things remained neatly put away in her cottage. If she left, she had taken nothing, which seemed unlikely. In the back of my mind, the thought nagged, however, that she came here with nothing, so it wasn’t a stretch of the imagination that she might leave with the same.

Mother and I questioned every servant. None had known her to give any indication of changing her mind, or a desire to leave. No one had seen her leave. At least, no one would admit to it. It seemed like we searched every corner of Blackmoth House. And the parts of the place that had to be accessed by magic were searched by my mother. Mother and I even stole away to question Astrid and try to gauge whether my little vampire kin had any knowledge or anything to do with the disappearance of Wilhelmina Payne.

No one knew anything. She had vanished into thin air.

By the wee small hours of the night, I was a broken man. All the others had left me, and I sat in the library gazing out the window into the ghostly moonlight that showered over the garden. I wasn’t expecting a single soul, but when the door to the room creaked open, I leaped to my feet, flooded with relief that Wilhelmina had returned. Who else would seek me out at four in the morning except for my love, returning to explain what happened.

But alas, it was a stranger. A pretty young woman with cascades of perfectly wavy blonde hair down past her waist. She wore a white nightgown. She gasped when she saw me.

“Who are you?” I demanded, amber liquid sloshing over the edge of my rock glass.

The lady looked as though she might cry. “I’m sorry, sir, please forgive me. I am a new maid here. I… I love to read. I sneak books at night. I’m so terribly sorry!”

I sank back onto my chair, what little life remaining in my soul draining out of me then. I waved lackadaisically with one hand and swilled the rest of my burning drink down my throat.

The young woman’s tense posture loosened, and she took a hesitant step forward. “I… I’m so terribly sorry for today,” she said softly.

I don’t know what came over me. Fatigue, drink, heartache. I burst into chaotic hysterical weeping.

My glass toppled and the ice inside clinked out over the floor. With my elbows on my knees, I dipped my face into my hands and wept. I raked my hands through my unruly, disheveled hair.

The maid crept forward and placed her tiny hand on my shoulder.

Without thinking, and desperate to feel my Wilhelmina’s touch, I encircled the woman’s waist with my arms and heaved her against me.

She returned the embrace and rubbed my back soothingly as I sobbed.

It seemed like the entire night had gone by while I came apart and the small, pretty woman tried to comfort me all the while. When my tears were spent, I straightened up a bit and released her. “I’m sorry, Miss…”

“Arcane,” she said. “My name is Arcane.”