The Dollhouse Society Volume IV: Lucky (Includes Lady Luck, House of Dolls, The Reluctant Bride, A Woman on Top, plus a bonus story!) (15 page)

“
I think I do,” he said emotionlessly. Then he turned on his heels and left the room.

***

Over the next week, Charlotte visited me multiple times in an attempt to dissuade me from marrying Stuart, and Rupert was, of course, upset about Gavin leaving our household. Multiple times I thought about telling them my reasons behind what I was doing, but I couldn’t be certain they wouldn’t blurt the truth to Tiberius, so I kept my own council. To her credit, Nanny Nellie didn’t reprimand me for my decision, despite her seemingly endless infatuation with Tiberius. I wanted to believe that she knew in some small way that what I was doing was for the best. She even did her best to help me with my preparations for my wedding that upcoming Sunday.

It was going to be a small, dismal affair. Only my immediate household would be there, some council members, and Charlotte, grudgingly. The vicar would marry us at seven o’ clock in the morning, and then we would take a carriage ride down to the city for our honeymoon. I did not expect to reach the city, but I had made provisions for that. I had a small, one-round, Revolutionary war pistol that had belonged to my grandfather, and a holster I had resewn to fit my garter. I didn’t think it would be enough to save me if our carriage was overturned or we were set upon by Mr. Van Tassel’s Chinese slaves, but I hoped it would give me a chance. All I wanted was a chance.

Because of the sudden nature of the wedding, I had no chance to order a gown from the dressmaker’s, so I spent an afternoon in the attic of my father’s house, searching through trunks for my mother’s wedding dress. It was dreadfully out of fashion, and a bit squalid, but I felt it matched my mood perfectly. I slipped it on and looked in an old, dusty, full-length mirror we had stored away amidst some old furniture.

I looked terrible. My hair looked lifeless and drab, and there were dark rings under my eyes from too many sleepless nights. I was the ugliest bride in the world. As I searched for a tiara for my mothy veil, I found a large, heavy oaken chest in a dark corner of the attic. It had little dust on it, which I found odd.

I knelt over the open chest and started rifling through the contents. It quickly became apparent to me that the trunk belonged to Tiberius. He must have stored it up here when he first moved into my father’s house all those months ago, and since he was still making arrangements to return to the Peninsula, he hadn’t yet had a chance to move it.

I found the most curious things inside, most of them mine. There was an old dress I’d worn when I was in my late teens, soiled kid gloves I thought I had discarded (still smelling of my perfume) the fan I had used during the Sinterklaas celebration (which I thought I had misplaced), and a wooden jewelry box at the very bottom. When I opened it, it revealed my mother’s locket, which I had sold months ago to try and repay my father’s debt. I lifted the locket out and check inside just to make certain it was indeed mine. I found my mother and father’s little cameo paintings, and I knew then that my eyes were not, in fact, deceiving me. Tiberius had found and bought back my locket from the town jewelers, and then he had kept it, the way he had kept all these other discards of mine. I also found stacks and stacks of aging, yellowed letters bound together lovingly with ribbon.

Now ravenously curious, I untied the first stack of letters and started reading them. All of them were letters that my father had sent to Tiberius while he fought the French on the Peninsula. Most of them contained detailed accounts of my antics. My father, it turned out, loved to write about his miscreant of a daughter to his former partner. He detailed all my accidents and pratfalls, the trees climbed, the dresses shorn, all the ridiculous and forward things I had said as a young woman.

It was obvious the letters had been read almost to pieces. There were passages about me circled in ink or underlined, as if Tiberius had marked them so he could find them more readily. I spent most of the day going through the letters he had kept, then the stacks of poetry he had written. It was quickly obvious that he was not a very skilled poet, but his emotion was honest and raw, and his dedication to the art form humbling. He did not seem like the type of man to dedicate himself to such a petty effort—not Tiberius Sloan, with his aloof nature and ramrod straight military posture. Outwardly, he seemed obsessed with only business and money.

But then I remembered him at the Dollhouse that last time, his almost frenzied need to be inside me, licking and kissing every part of me. I read all his awful, heartfelt poems, dedicated them to memory, then put his chest of personal treasures back together exactly as I had found it. Afterward, I sat down on the floor in my dusty wedding dress, put my head in my hands, and for the first and last time, I wept.

***

The day of the wedding dawned appallingly bright and cheery. It was full of puffy snowflakes of the kind that would normally have encouraged me to ride out into the woods in the early morning just to taste them and feel them melt on my face. It was still cold, this being January, but not bone-chillingly so. Snow in the night had made everything as pristine white as a fairy tale as the carriage carried me to the small church in our town center. I sat beside Nellie in the jostling carriage and took her gnarled old hand in mine.

“
Thank you for not questioning my decision to marry Stuart,” I told her.

Nellie lifted her other hand and placed it over mine. “You’ve always known your own mind, Miss Lucky. I know better than to question your judgment.”

Her words made my heart swell. “You’ve always been like a mother to me, Nellie,” I told her because I wanted her to know, in the event something happened later today and I did have an opportunity to tell her how I felt.

She rubbed my hands reassuringly. “You are my baby, Miss. Whatever else you might be, whether it’s a wife or a courtesan, you always will be my baby.”

I looked at her in shock. “Courtesan?” I said, because I feared I hadn’t heard right. “I’m hardly a doxy, Nellie.”

“
That’s not what I mean and you well know it,” she said.

“
You know about the Dollhouse, don’t you?” I said, because I knew it to be true.

Nellie smiled wisely and said, “I, too, was a young girl once, Miss, don’t you know?”

We arrived right on time, at fifteen minutes to seven, when I would be married. The footman handed me down from the carriage and Nellie dutifully gathered my train and helped me inside the church full of candles and winter flowers.  

It was warm inside, and my cheeks immediately began to burn. The church was half-full. For all his power and influence, Mr. Van Tassel’s had very few friends and no family aside from Stuart, not that that surprised me very much. To compensate, he had invited a few of his Chinese slaves, and the big tattooed one stood right beside him as he stood down near the pulpit beside Stuart. The few other people occupying the pews were the town officials, including the Governor and his wife, and a number of businessmen who had known my father.

I looked down the long aisle to where the vicar waited to marry me. Stuart glanced over his shoulder, but he looked just as unhappy as I felt.

Rupert, Charlotte and Darcy came up beside me. Charlotte placed a hand on my shoulder. “Lucky, are you certain about this?” she asked.

I touched her hand, patted it. I was doing this for Tiberius, for Nanny, for every member of the Society who existed. “It’s for the best, Charlotte, I assure you,” I told her, watching the sickeningly satisfied expression of victory on Mr. Van Tassel’s face.

I felt like my feet were glued to the floor. I could not move for some moments, until the organ started up. I thought of all the personal reasons I did not want to do this, but the one reason I must—my love for Tiberius—galvanized me. None of it seemed so bad when I imagined him free and possibly even happy away from all this.

I said a silent prayer to a God I wasn’t sure I even believed in anymore that Tiberius would find his one true love in the end, someone who truly deserved him. Then I clutched the winter lilies in my arms, took a deep breath to calm my rampaging heartbeat, and started down the aisle. I was halfway there when I heard the doors of the church fly open behind me and a gust of cold snow blew into the warmth of the church, snuffing out some of the votive candles.

I stopped and turned even as the organ screeched to a halt.

Rupert and Darcy stood to either side of the tall church doors, holding them wide open while a fury of snow drifted inward. And within that white holocaust I saw the distinct, kingly shape of Tiberius Sloan on horseback, riding up the steps of the church. They had planned this! I made a gasping noise as he trotted Gunmetal right through the doors and down the aisle past me. He gave me a fierce look of both pride and concern, then clip-clopped down the cobblestones to where the vicar stood looking on in horror at how his church was being abused.

Tiberius ignored him. He turned his attention on Mr. Van Tassel, who had begun sputtering demands for an explanation for all this, but Tiberius cut him off with a barking command. Turning to the people in the pews, he narrowed his keen eyes and said, “This man, Mr. Emmett Van Tassel, is forcing Miss Lucille Van der Meer to marry his half brother Stuart as part of his scheme to take control of the Van der Meer Mill and destroy his competition. If he is allowed to see his plans to fruition, he will destroy this town and its economy…”

“
That accusation is preposterous!” Mr. Van Tassel interrupted.

But Tiberius went on by saying, “After they are married, his half brother and his new bride will have a most unfortunate accident. Of that, you can be assured. Then all the assets of the mill will automatically belong to Mr. Van Tassel. He is a cur, a moneylender, and now, a murderer…”

His accusation was drowned out by the people in the pews who had begun muttering amongst themselves. I could tell they were confused, that they were having a hard time believing Tiberius’s story. I was wondering how I might convince them of the truth when Stuart spoke up suddenly, surprising me. “Mr. Sloan is right. This arrangement is a sham,” he said, stepping into the aisle. He looked at me and I saw genuine concern. “My brother asked me to specifically court Miss Van der Meer. I had nothing to do with any of this. And I
don’t
want anything more to do with it…!”

“
Stuart, shut up and stay where you are!” Mr. Van Tassel said, and pulled a flintlock pistol from the inside of his coat pocket. Stuart, suddenly panicked at the sight of his brother’s gun, turned to race down the aisle instead. Mr. Van Tassel, his face boiling with rage, tracked Stuart’s retreat. “You ungrateful little cur!” he spat.

Tiberius lunged forward, intending to get Gunmetal between the gun and Stuart, but before he could, the giant tattooed Chinese saw what he was doing and grabbed at Tiberius’s leg, dragging him down off the horse. The gun spat smoke and fire and Stuart dropped to the floor of the church inches away from me, clawing at my hem. I gave a cry and fell too, sliding in the snow billowing in and the sudden spurt of blood from Stuart’s chest.

Everyone in the church began to panic, then. The women, and some of the men, began to race for the door. Charlotte, Darcy, Rupert and Nellie leaped forward to help me with Stuart, who was gasping and shuddering in the blood and snow on the floor. What Stuart had done was wrong, but he hardly deserved this! I helped them drag Stuart out of the aisle and away from the fleeing people, though the stain on the front of his shirt was growing exponentially larger as I watched it. I dropped down to my knees, ripped the hem from my gown, bundled in some snow, and pressed the cold compress to the wound near his clavicle to staunch the bleeding. “Oh Stuart,” I said. It wasn’t his heart, and I knew he would survive it if we were able to stop the bleeding.

I was peripherally aware of Tiberius engaging in fisticuffs with the giant Chinese. He punched the Chinese square in the jaw with such force I heard a distinct crack. The Chinese howled in pain and grabbed the front of Tiberius’s jacket and threw him into the votive table, knocking over dozens of candles. The Chinese, despite his great size, was on Tiberius in seconds, punching and jabbing at his belly, but Tiberius was a cavalryman and he knew how to fight. The two quickly became a blur of fists and grunts.

Meanwhile, Mr. Van Tassel looked at Stuart bleeding all over the floor of the church, then broke out in a panic for the door. “Rupert!” I said, and my cousin locked eyes with me and nodded once before turning and tripping up Mr. Van Tassel.

The man stumbled over him and crashed to the floor on his knees. Rupert attempted to hold him down, but he swung the butt of the empty pistol at my cousin, colliding with his jaw and knocking him to the floor—Rupert who was neither a fighter nor a very large man.

A surge of rage dragged me to my feet as I watched my cousin shudder from the blow that Mr. Van Tassel had delivered him. “Charlotte, take care of Stuart,” I said, and bolted down the aisle to where Gunmetal was clopping around excitedly and trying to eat my scattering of fallen lilies. I stopped when I saw the Chinese on his back, holding a pistol on Tiberius, who half crouch over the man.  

“
Is this the man you want to serve?” I yelled at the Chinese. “A man who shot his own brother?” The Chinese looked up at my words. His face showed indecision. My voice boomed with insult. “A man who has enslaved your own people?”

It was all the opportunity that Tiberius needed. He snatched the pistol away from the Chinese and struck him with it so he fell back like a huge bag of flour. Then Tiberius turned to me. “Thank you, Lucky.”

I grabbed Gunmetal’s reins. “How did you know?” I asked. “How did you know to come here?”

Tiberius stood tall and looked at me with those wise, keen eyes of his. “I’ve lain with you for months, Lucky Van der Meer. You’re my courtesan. My woman,” he said, using the words on me that I had used on him the night of the Sinterklaas celebration. “I know every part of your body. Don’t you think I know when you’re lying?” He smiled then, a little. “Beside, you agreed to marry me. You never would have gone back on that promise. You’re too stubborn.”