The Witch of Painted Sorrows by Rose M J Read Free Book Online Page A

retravel time and change our decisions. I knewthen and know still that no matter what the price, I never wanted to stop peering into those clear evergreen eyes and inhaling that heady scent. It did not occur to me to turn and leave. I wanted to be right where I was, to go inside and revisit the house I had never stopped dreaming of for the last ten years.
    “Is my grandmother here?” I asked. It was the one question I knew would allow me entry.
    “Who is your grandmother?”
    There was everything ordinary about this meeting and everything extraordinary about it at the same time. I felt as if I were in one of Jane Austen’s novels, which my father had always made a little bit of fun of me for reading over and over.
    The stranger was waiting for an answer. I needed to act normal if I wanted him to let me inside.
    “My grandmother is Eva Verlaine.”
    “You just missed her.”
    “She said to meet her here.” My first lie of the day. I often counted them. A good day had one lie or less. A bad day had four or five.
    “But she just left.”
    I lifted the chatelaine I wore on my neck that included a gold watch. A gift from my father. Glancing at it, I said, “She said to arrive at eleven.”
    He was leaning on the door with an attitude of insouciance that I didn’t like but at the same time was drawn to. “She didn’t mention it to me.”
    “Perhaps she’s coming back to meet me.”
    “When she left, she didn’t mention it.”
    “Should she have? Wouldn’t it have been strange for her to have told you her plans?” I challenged.
    “Do you want to come in?” He smiled despite my tone. And then he bowed and performed a bit of a flourish with his hands as if offering entry. “I shouldn’t be asking that—after all, it is your house, isn’t it?”
    How to describe his voice? What words to use to explain a sound?I felt his voice. Fingers rubbing moss. Smoke curling. Wood worn and smoothed over time. His voice had darkness in it that hovered close to the ground, like a mist hanging over a lake deep in a forest at dusk. A bolt of sea-green velvet. A sensation as much as a series of sounds. It reverberated inside me.
    When I look back on that meeting now, I think I fell in love in that moment.
    He was waiting for me to answer, peering at me intently as if trying to understand my hesitation.
    “Yes, I’ll come in. I’m certain she’s coming back to meet me here.”
    As I stepped over the threshold, I wondered who he was to her. A lover here for an assignation? No, he was too young. My grandmother was still an attractive woman, but too seasoned for a young man. He had something of the poet in his eyes and sensitive lips. Had he taken her for his muse? Several famous courtesans had written books about their lives. I’d read one: Mémoires de Cora Pearl . Had my grandmother decided to tell her story? Was this man her biographer? Or maybe he was a painter. I remembered there were portraits of women in our family hanging on the wall going up the staircase. I used to love looking at those strange paintings, all done, it appeared, by the same artist. Except that would have been impossible. They covered centuries, from the first painting of La Lune herself, from 1609, to Grand-mère’s aunt painted in 1832.
    What if she’d sold the house to this man? Maybe that’s why he was hesitant about letting me in. I wasn’t sure about my grandmother’s finances. Perhaps she was no longer the mistress of the count who filled her coffers and gave her enough jewels to open a shop. Every time she’d visited us in New York, she had more treasures to show us. Maybe she had decided to sell the mansion and lead a simpler lifestyle and had not yet wanted to tell me.
    I walked up the steps as if it was totally natural for me to act the mistress of the manse. And without my grandmother in residence, I might as well be.
    As I stepped into the foyer, I felt an overwhelming sense of finally being where I belonged. I hadn’t been inside