Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
It appeared to be a comedic circular, one of those distributed in London’s daily papers. This one was dated a couple weeks prior and featured a line of aristocratic gentlemen with the Grim Reaper hovering over them, scythe in hand. These cartoonish men all stared at a diminutive, black-clad witch in the foreground with dark ringlets, a pointed cap, and a mischievous grin. Beneath the drawing was a poem in four stanzas.
The first she made to choke
upon an errant fish’s bone
The second suffered an apoplexy
to the sound of his mistress’s moan
The third might blame a horse
for stealing his last breath
The next depends on God to save him
from the curse of E————.
Her fingers began to tingle halfway through the simple rhyme, and by the end, her face flamed hot with horror, because she came to understand the poem was about her. The witch in the pointed hat with the dark ringlets was supposed to be her. What a horrible realization. She did not even have ringlets.
“Lisbet, well met. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
She spun at her father’s light greeting. “Papa! Am I interrupting your work?”
“Of course not. In fact, I’d just gone down to the kitchen to stretch my legs and get a handful of biscuits to eat while I look over papers. I would have brought you some if I’d known you’d be here.”
“I’ll wait until teatime,” she said, thinking of the biscuits from her piano lessons. Would the sweet treats always remind her of those illicit afternoons, and their inappropriate activities? She looked down at the poem with its insulting picture, then back at her papa. His expression darkened as he noticed what she held.
“I did not mean you to see that, dearest.”
“What is it?” She still held to it, as if in her embarrassment, she could not let it go. “Where did you get it?”
“Someone sent it to me. A concerned friend. It’s rubbish of the lowest sort, and I’ve informed the publisher that any further ‘artwork’ along these lines will result in a visit from our family’s attorney-at-law.”
She looked back at the line of gentlemen, meant to be her previous fiancés. She realized now the telling touches…the first had Lord Cole’s heavy build, the second, gripping his heart, looked like Lord Sylvanbrook. The third had Lord Greyfield’s distinctive moustache, and then there was Lord Fortenbury, clearly, gripping his holy book and cross.
Elizabeth understood it was outrageous that so many of her prospective husbands had met an untimely end, but none of it had been her fault. She was not a witch or a spiritualist or any of the things gossips continued to insinuate.
“Honestly, it is infuriating,” she murmured, tears blurring the offending picture.
He crossed to her and took it up, depositing it back beneath the pile of correspondence. “You mustn’t take these things to heart.” He touched her cheek, then cupped her face. “Some villains think it’s fun to mock others, though I daresay they would not enjoy being mocked themselves.”
Her teary eyes came near to welling over, though she didn’t want to be silly about it. She didn’t want to admit how much it affected her, how much it had shocked her to see herself depicted thus. Her papa opened his arms and she went into them, and some tears did fall against his dark coat.
“There now,” he said, stroking her hair. “I wish you’d never noticed it, sweeting. I was careless to leave it out on the desk.”
“But others have seen it. What must they think of me?”
“It matters not. You’re loved by your parents, your brothers and sisters, all your family and friends. It matters not what anyone else thinks.”
“They whisper to one another that I carry a curse,” she said, looking up at him. “Sometimes I think…the way those men all died in such unfortunate circumstances… Oh, what if I am cursed?”
“I can’t imagine anything more fanciful.” He wiped her tears with a handkerchief produced from within his pocket. “You’re a charming, bright, intelligent young lady. If anyone is at fault in this matter of your fiancés, it is myself for not seeking a higher standard of candidates. Cole met his end because he was a glutton who ate too quickly. Sylvanbrook was…well…he would have made a poor husband.” It was the most her papa would say about the indelicacy of him dying in his mistress’s company. “And Greyfield was too reckless by far. He’d had accidents before, carriage accidents and a hunting accident, before his horse threw him. I should have ruled all of them out before you became engaged to marry them. I’m sorry now that I did not.”
“I suppose it’s tricky, finding proper men to marry,” she said with a sniffle. Of course, her older sisters had easily found excellent husbands. This was all her fault for being “mystical” and odd. How humiliating, to be depicted as some silly witch in a public circular… She held her papa’s hand. “Do you think—” Tears threatened again at a terrible thought. “Do you think Lord Fortenbury saw that poem?”