Winterspell by Claire Legrand Read Free Book Online Page A

Dr. Victor said, the softest yet. “This ‘Godfather’ business has gone on far too long. You aren’t her family. You’d be on the streets were it not for the gracious Mrs. Stole.” He smiled; such handsome, practiced piety. “God rest her soul.”
    â€œHow dare you speak of Hope!” Godfather shouted, surging forward, his cane raised.
    Clara caught him by the arm. “No, Godfather!”
    â€œClara, I will not stand by and let him treat you this way.”
    â€œIt’s all right.” She smiled at him. One word from Dr. Victor and he could ruin them—turn Godfather out onto the streets, or even have him killed, and unleash the Concordia dogs upon her father at last.
    It was better, then, to smile. Better to lie and relent. And Godfather knew it as well as she did. She could see the resignation and fury warring on his face.
    â€œReally. Don’t worry.” She almost embraced him—to reassure him, to reassure herself—but his arms around her might have destroyed her resolve. Instead she went to Dr. Victor’s side and took his offered arm, letting the rough metal fingers of his glove—the mark of a Concordia gentleman—tuck her into place beside him. When he smirked at her, she granted him a demure smile; when he peered down her bodice, she ignored him.
    â€œClara,” Godfather said, his voice rough. The earlier darkness shadowed his face, the darkness that had accompanied talk of her mother. “It will not always be like this. I swear to you, it won’t.”
    â€œI don’t know what you mean.” She tried to sound careless, butshe was sweating and trembling. Surely Dr. Victor could feel it.
    Surely he was enjoying it.
    He led her outside, his grip on her possessive. His perpetual perfume of medicine and chemicals and rot poisoned her breath. What horrors has he committed at Harrod House today? The thought filled Clara’s mind with terrible images. She had heard rumors of the poor sick girls kept at Harrod House for Wayward Girls, and of Dr. Victor’s highly experimental “cures.”
    As they stepped out into the dimming light, fresh snow crunching under their boots, Clara heard glass smash and birds screech, and Godfather roaring in fury.
    * * *
    â€œThat will never do,” Dr. Victor said later that evening, in the second-floor salon of the mayor’s mansion. “Next.”
    The grand, twenty-room house at Fifth Avenue and Sixty-Sixth Street had not felt like home to Clara since her mother’s murder, especially for the past few months. Dr. Victor had grown too comfortable, coming and going more frequently to keep an eye on her father, and also, Clara suspected, to keep an eye on her.
    She was free of Dr. Victor almost nowhere and never now. After making her debut this past season, which John Stole had permitted to occur earlier than he would have liked because of Clara’s frequent pleas, she had hoped to find more time away from Dr. Victor, if she were out dancing and being courted most nights of the week. But, no. He often insisted upon chaperoning her about town himself, whenever he could bear to leave the girls at Harrod House. Who, after all, would ever think anything of it? Dr. Victor was such a dear family friend. How nice, Clara supposed people thought—or pretended to think—for Dr. Victor to spend so much time with John Stole’s motherless debutante daughter. How lovely, how perfectly convenient for her to snag such a man—established, handsome, wealthy enough to provide for her and her beleaguered family.
    Clara Stole , they must have thought, is truly a lucky girl.
    As Mrs. Hancock ushered her into the other room and stripped her once again, Clara stood, blank-eyed and still, refusing to look at her reflection in the mirror. She avoided it whenever possible, in fact. Such a hunched, twitchy, pathetic-looking figure. Who wanted to look upon that image and realize it