Severine felt the flash of guilt and hoped that there would be better days ahead for them both. Severine let her gaze move to the other end of the table where Clive and Erik’s father sat next to Mr. Brand. Given the expression of Mr. Brand’s face, someone else was declaring Clive’s destitute case or his own.
What if she intervened? Mr. Brand held firm to the line presented by her father and didn’t provide leniency in the payment dates. If she intervened would that encourage Clive or get him to go away?
If she were quite honest with herself, she might need him. Mr. Brand wouldn’t move through the upper echelons of the Southern society like her cousins would, and it was in those areas that Severine would find the person who killed her parents.
“What about you, Sevie? What will you do now that you’re home? Marry and have your own slew of brats?”
Severine lifted a brow and then told her brother honestly, “I have no dreams of children and family. Do you? After our childhoods?”
“Your childhood? The poor little rich girl passed from school to nanny to nunnery? You didn’t go hungry, did you? Tell me your tale of woe, girl.”
“My mother and father fought almost daily,” Severine told him before taking a deep swallow of wine. She felt a bit fuzzy when she added, “That isn’t a future that sells me on the joys of marriage and family.”
He grunted in reply, but it was a mocking sound.
“Your parents must have fought as well,” she said to him and eyed him fiercely until she saw his nod. Why else divorce?
“They did. Cats and dogs. Mother shouldn’t have married anyone from what I could see, but still—I’d have her back, if I could.”
Severine nodded. “What do you remember of that night?”
He laughed darkly. “Too many drinks, too many people, screaming. The blood.”
Severine flashed back to the blood again and then sighed deeply. The blood. There was something about being so close to the scene, she wasn’t quite sure if she would be able to face it after all.
“Better let it go, Sevie. Being drawn into the dark again isn’t good for anyone.”
“It is though,” she told him. “It’s good for who killed them.”
He laughed at her, and it was a mean sound. “Don’t tell me you have a half-sketched dream of finding whoever did it after all this time? You?” His laugh rang out and heads turned their way.
“My dear brother,” Severine told him easily, “it is natural to revisit what has gone before after so long. Don’t be silly.”
She didn’t quite sigh in relief at the end of dinner, but she was happy enough to rise with the ladies and disappear into the parlor with the other women. She didn’t bother with her cousin, grandmother, or aunt when the painting of her parents was looming.
The parlor, if something so large could have such a prosaic name, had been off limits when Severine had been a child in the school room. She crossed to the painting and gazed up at it. It was telling, she thought, that she wasn’t in the painting as well.
Her father had the same artist paint her, but she’d been alone, standing near a globe with a book in her hand. Where was it, she wondered. She hadn’t seen it since it had been completed.
“Severine darling,” Florette called, “look at the jewelry your mother had. Whatever happened to it?”
Severine glanced back quickly at her cousin and shrugged silently. Her head was starting to pound. Too much family, too much interaction. What would she give for a quiet fire with the Mother Superior and a book?
Lisette stepped up next to Severine and said low, “My father left my mother alone and with child and I think your family has greater scoundrels.”
Severine shocked herself again with a laugh. “At least he only left and didn’t rid himself of her and you far more permanently.”
Mr. Brand approached after the men joined them and handed Severine a small envelope. She looked up at him in surprise. “I locked your father’s office after the police were finished.”
She shivered at the sudden chill, feeling as though arctic wind blew across her neck. It had been growing the evening over—that feeling of her parents looming. She rubbed her aching head, wishing for brilliant insight.
“Those are the keys.”
Severine took the envelope with shaking fingers and then sighed as Anubis pressed against her side. She let the presence of Mr. Brand shelter her from the guests as her exhaustion with them grew. Clive and Erik both eyed her like a lion who had found a gazelle. Grandmère wasn’t bothering to hide her dislike while Florette seemed to be entirely encompassed only with the British guests.
Her Uncle Alphonse smoked his cigar and scowled at everyone else. He hadn’t received an inheritance, and he hadn’t been part of her father’s company. Was it possible that Alphonse had thought he would inherit from his brother and that the murder had been the result of his hands?
The sight of Alphonse—who seemed to be a wrong version of Severine’s father—made her eyes hurt. They were dry even. As though she didn’t have tears for what should have been. She moved to the two strangers instead. They were easier on the eyes because there was no emotion there.
Only Florette leaned in and let her hand trail down Mr. Thorne’s arm. When Severine and Florette had been children, Florette was the favored—blonde, beautiful, bright-eyed. She was the pet of Severine’s mother. And here she was even lovelier than when they were children. With her blonde curls and big eyes and her perfectly applied cosmetics, Florette was the perfect bright young thing.
Florette caught Severine’s staring and grinned easily, crossing to her and bringing the British fellows along. “Severine! How lovely to see you
