Chapter Text
“This is the third time you’ve gone to the le Brey’s this week!” my sister huffs. I catch the reflection of her leaning against the doorframe of my bedroom while I’m fixing my hair.
“Only the third?” I glance back at her through the mirror, flashing a grin that I know will earn me a scoff and an eye roll. “Could’ve sworn it was more.”
“It’s not funny, Monty.” Felicity pushes her specs up her nose, scrunching her face up so she looks more like a chipmunk than a person. “I’m trying to look out for you.”
“Who said I was laughing?”
“Monty.” I can hear her rolling her eyes. Lord only knows why I wound up with a sister who only cares about my well-being at the most inconvenient of times. I turn around to face her.
“Look,” I say, ignoring the clearly annoyed face she’s making. “We have an arrangement, alright? You don’t keep a lady like Jeanne wanting.”
“I still don’t understand what she’s getting out of this whole,” she pauses to wrinkle her nose, “arrangement. What does she need from you that she can’t get from anyone else?”
I stop, dropping my gaze. Felicity has never found any need to sugarcoat her words, especially around me, and after years of growing up in the same house you’d think that I’d have gotten used to it by now. But ever so often she’ll say something, and I swear to all things holy I would have preferred it if she’d slapped me across the face.
“Well, sister dear,” I don’t even bother to conceal the ice in my voice. “Not all of us are so keen to die alone and know how to take an opportunity when they arise.”
Her nostrils flare and for a second, I think she’s actually going to slap me across the face but while she learned cruelty from our father, we share our mother’s cowardice. Instead, she turns sharply on her heels and leaves the room without another word, slamming the door so hard I flinch.
Some things never change.
--
Jeanne le Brey’s family estate isn’t far from my father’s house, at the high end of the Quarter in the Garden District. M. le Brey himself is so loaded he could buy out all of New Orleans and everyone in it if he wanted. He’s not the nicest man and definitely not the nicest looking by miles. He remains one of the only people that I don’t have to crane my neck to speak to. In fact, I can even lower my eyes a bit and I’d still be making eye contact. His hair is always greased back but it still looks like it’s about to fly away from his scalp and his eyes bug out like bloodshot robin’s eggs.
Jeanne, on the other hand, was crafted by the Lord himself. We were formally introduced a few years ago, before my father completely gave up on me, and we’ve kept up contact ever since. Hers is a household name and I can’t say that I don’t enjoy feeling like I’m in on a secret every time I hear someone talk about her. I have the key to a whole world they can’t even imagine.
I think the reason I love Jeanne so much is the fact that she’s got the whole world fooled, staring out of her balcony with a sweet smile and blowing kisses to boys who bring her flowers, but she’s really shameless. It’s incredible the things she says sometimes.
“I don’t think I would mind a bit of infidelity, Monty,” she whispered to me once out of the blue, in between cigarette puffs. “If it is respectfully done.”
“How can you be respectfully unfaithful?” I answered to which she simply shrugged and smiled as if to say, isn’t it obvious?
And maybe it is. Jeanne is the type to politely turn a blind eye to any escapades I might have in the future—she’d probably have a few of her own—no matter who they’re with. I don’t understand why Felicity is so suspicious of this agreement, it’s perfect. She’s perfect.
Our whole arrangement is that as soon as her father gives his blessing the two of us will be wed and I avoid disinheritance and the dreadful fate of having to provide for myself. I had to promise my father that this was going to happen and at least to the rest of the world I will be what he wanted me to be. I don’t know why he believed me so easily, it’s not like I’ve never made him an empty promise, but it doesn’t matter.
I find myself clambering onto the wall near the window I usually enter her room from since her letting me in the front gates repeatedly was raising a few eyebrows. I knock three times on the glass before hearing the tell-tale click and the whirring of the blinds.
And there she is, poking her head out the window, short blond waves held back with a pink cap and rouge on her cheeks. She sees me and rolls her eyes—fondly, not like how Felicity does it—before smiling a perfect, red-lipped smile and yanking me inside.
“Someone’s happy to see me,” I laugh, spinning her around.
“Oh, if you only knew.” And she’s batting her impossibly blue eyes at me and squeezing my hand, sending little jets of warmth to my stomach, before pulling me into a quick kiss. I startle even though I expected it because Jeanne is never hasty but I don’t pay much attention to it and instead settle next to her and let her lips trace a path from my forehead to my shoulders as I shut my eyes and block everything else out.
__
Soon enough, we’re sitting side by side in armchairs that match the rest of the room, passing a cigarette between us. Jeanne peers up at me over her rose rimmed specs, raising an eyebrow and crossing one cream-colored gam over the other so her salmon pink dress rides a little too high to be considered acceptable. All it takes is a glance at the smug smile she’s wearing to know that it was completely intentional. I fail to suppress my own smirk, I never can around Jeanne, her smile’s infectious even on the worst of days.
I lean back in my seat, closing my eyes to feel her own on me. Something I learned early on in our arrangement—Jeanne loves looking at me and I love being looked at.
“Oh, Monty.” She rolls her eyes, twirling the cigarette between her fingers before blowing a puff of smoke in my face. That easy smile I’ve come to associate with her is back, the one that dances on her lips and pulls at the corners of her cheeks. She sighs, leaning her head against my shoulder. “I really am going to miss you.”
I practically choke on an inhale, smoke spurting from my mouth in stuttering gasps. My lips tighten in an attempt to salvage my faltering grin. “Darling, I’m not going anywhere?” I don’t know why it came out as a question. Any fantasies of leaving this place have long since dissipated, only to be entertained when I’m particularly smoked and even then I’m usually otherwise occupied.
Jeanne’s blissful expression fades into something unnervingly fake, her lips pressing into a thin line and my stomach drops.
“Jeanne?” my voice trembles in a way I’ve only heard it do around my father and I’m reaching for her hand, the satin covering it which used to be a comforting constant now feels cold and frigid—something alien and no longer mine. “What happened?”
She purses her lips but doesn’t look up, all I hear is a foreign giggle—something less like a laugh and more like a cry for help—and says. “I’m getting married, Monty.”
For a moment I don’t think I hear her. And once I’ve heard her, I’m tempted to respond, ‘yes, to me.’ But it’s like my mouth is frozen in its shape—jaw falling pathetically to the floor before I let out a very dignified “what?”.
She’s still not looking up. “You heard me.”
I think I’m standing up now, but I can’t be sure. Everything is blurring together in swaths of pink and red. There are so many things I want to say—or rather, scream.
“What happened to our deal?” I settle, hating the way my throat closes up. “You promised me.”
Her eyes darken. “I didn’t promise you anything, how much choice do you think I have?”
“Enough that you made me think I had a chance!”
“Monty, do you hear yourself?” She dashes the cigarette on the side of the armchair before tossing it into the ashtray next to us and continuing to snap at me. Dammit, I could have used a drag. “I didn’t make you think anything, you deluded yourself.”
“At least tell me who he is.”
“Why, what’ll that do you?”
“What do you care?”
Jeanne crosses her arms, leveling me with a glare to rival Felicity’s before letting out a deep sigh. “I’m marrying Louis Bourbon.”
I nearly choke on my spit. “You’re razzing me.” Louis Bourbon is one of my father’s closest pals and beyond that he’s old enough to be Jeanne’s uncle. “You better be razzing me.”
She doesn’t say anything for a while before finally turning to the window and opening the blinds. “I think you should go.”
“But—”
“Monty.” She hisses at me, her eyes going very wide, and I’m about to hiss back before I hear it.
Someone’s coming up the steps.
“You need to leave!”
“I know!” I look down out the window, there’s no way I could climb down before someone caught me but the only soft landing in sight is a pile of horseshit on the side of the road near the grass. I’m about to turn around to voice this to Jeanne but before I can I realize I am no longer on solid ground.
Wow. Two betrayals in one day by the same person. Who knew she had it in her?
Half of me hopes I’ll hit the pavement and my head will crack open. Maybe I’ll forget everything and become so incredibly brain damaged that marriage won’t be an option and my father will finally lay off me. Or better yet, I’ll die and never have to face him at all. I wonder how they would determine the cause of death if I did die and if Jeanne would be tried for murder. Serves her right.
Unfortunately, the sound that greets me when I eventually hit the ground is not a sweet crack but rather a sickening squelch and boom—
I’ve landed in the horseshit.
“You alright down there?” a low, earthy rumble comes from somewhere above me. The voice itself sends shivers down my spine.
“Just fine, thank you.” I mumble before looking up and suddenly wishing I hadn’t responded at all. Forget Jeanne, the person standing before me is the single most beautiful person in the world. He’s tall and dark with satiny brown skin and his hair is tucked under a sharp green cap. His eyes glitter like something sinister and he surveys me with a level gaze, unsmiling. He’s leaning against a polished black cane too, but the most mesmerizing thing about him is how his shadow seems to dance and morph behind him. It scares me, but what scares me more is that I don’t mind at all.
He raises an eyebrow and I swear there are whole worlds swirling in his dark eyes. “You’re a mess.” He observes flatly, drumming his fingers against the top of his cane and studying me before stepping out into the light.
I roll my eyes. “Thank you for the astute observation.” dusting my sleeves off and standing up. If I lean a little more forward on my toes, that’s no one’s business but my own. It’s criminal for someone to be this tall anyway, it makes him look a great deal more intimidating even now that he isn’t cloaked in shadow.
If he got the sarcasm, he made little effort to show it, instead gesturing vaguely with his cane at my legs. “You’ve still got—”
My face flushes red as I clench my fists. “Yes, I know. I have literal shit on my pants and it’s not getting off anytime soon so unless you’d like me to strip like some cheap pro skirt and scrape it off in front of you, I’d much appreciate it if you’d just ignore it. My eyes are up here anyway.”
What could be the first smile-like expression I’ve seen from him all evening tugs at the corner of his cheek. “You do realize that your eyes are much closer to your shitty pants than they are to my face, right?”
I usually pointedly ignore the often poorly executed jabs at my height—you’ve heard one short joke; you’ve heard them all. But there’s something about the way he says it that hits a nerve like no one but my sister can and suddenly I’m fifteen and desperate to prove him wrong, so I rock even further onto the balls of my feet and tilt my chin up to say something. I only realize this is a mistake after I’ve overshot and now, I’m hurtling forward, shutting my eyes tight to brace for impact against the cracked pavement.
But instead I’m hovering over the ground, floating in the air like a hummingbird. I whip around and see that it’s his shadow that’s holding me up and pulling me along as he keeps walking forward. All of a sudden I get the feeling that this is a very bad idea.
“Ah, pardon me, but who are you and what do you want with me?”
He tilts his head to face me and says, “You can call me Doctor Newton. I want to get you cleaned up and then,” he smirks. “let’s see if I can help with this Miss le Brey problem.”