ONE
Her final cotillion was in full swing and Phaedra St. Margaret was vex.
Oh, not because of the event itself; no, that was lovely. The location was stunning: a grand ballroom on the top floor of one of New Charleston’s mansions, windows thrown wide, overlooking the harbor. The Brockingtons had spared no expense this night, going so far as to hire a smattering of dark-cloaked conjurers. While Phee was not usually partial to magic, finding the excessive ceremony expended to craft such moments exhausting to observe, it did not rankle her here.
The conjurers nestled in one corner of the room, blending in with the shadows as they whispered and gestured dramatically, creating the hovering spheres of light that illuminated and enhanced the varying shades of brown of the revelers in attendance. A lion-footed table stood at the far end of the ballroom, laden with food and glittering crystal bowls, the punch inside seeping a cooling fog that drew the overheated dancers from the polished hardwood floor to sip the fruity, boozy nectar like silk-draped hummingbirds. It was a sight to behold.
No. Phaedra’s feathers were ruffled because she was here at all. Her mother’s doing, of course. She was of age and unmarried, so this was her duty as a daughter of the Reconstruction. Find a suitable husband, have children, and raise them to carry on the family name and its legacy of enriching the city with wealth and knowledge. The war had ended and she was looking forward to the Juneteenth celebrations again this year to commemorate the end of enslavement for her brethren and sistren. But this dolling up in dresses she would never wear again, and torturing her hair into a dressed showpiece more suitable as a topping for a cake than a hairstyle, was for the birds.
With the edge of her closed fan, Phee flicked aside one of the hovering spheres of light and proceeded deeper into the ballroom. Thankfully, this was the final year she would have to bother with this excessive ceremony. The arrangement she’d made with her mother was that she would attend each cotillion—making an effort to smile and dance and chatter amiably—until she turned twenty-one. By then, she would either be married or resigned to consider suitors below her station, as she would no longer be in the ingénue category. Or, to her mother’s unending horror … find work.
That was just fine with Phee. She would rather work at her father’s distillery than pander to the tender sensibilities of the men who frequented these balls, while succinctly yet modestly enumerating the qualities she possessed that would make her an appropriate lifemate. She had done so every year since she was of age—aside from the few years the war had prevented such events—and she was tired to her very marrow of it.
Just inside the ballroom, Phee nodded at an acquaintance she recognized from an earlier dance and complimented the girl on her dress, receiving one in turn. While she gracefully accepted the kind words, Phee knew the peach-hued silk favored her dark skin and the lace detailing sat perfectly on her shoulders. For all her division with her overbearing mother, she had to admit the woman had good taste and was always aware of the current style. It was her own mother who had taken notice there was no need for the women in their family to wear the cumbersome bustles beneath their gowns to add fullness when their own natural anatomy provided the same silhouette without the padded undergarment. The weather was too hot for all of that extra. Soon other women with nature’s endowment followed suit.
Phee swept deeper into the room, her fan clutched in one hand while she made a beeline for the refreshments table. She’d feel better with a drink in the other. As was usual, the refreshment table was surrounded. While she waited her turn, absently fanning her face and neck, Phee caught a snip of stage-whispered conversation between two older women as they left the table with their drinks.
“How long has it been?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Five and some-odd years?”
“Can you imagine? And she was from such a good family.”
“Her niece is supposed to be here tonight. She’s twenty-one already! And still can’t secure herself a husband. What grown woman can’t manage to hold on to a man? I can’t understand it.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
Their voices faded as they sauntered off to half-heartedly perform their chaperone duties. Phee’s heart burned in her chest and heat climbed the column of her neck. They were talking about her, of course, a footnote in the gossip about Auntie Cleo. Somehow, it was still a topic after all these years. Several more people left the table with their potables and the line crept forward. Phee advanced as well, the flicks of her fan doing little to cool her rising irritation. Did they have nothing better to do at a party? Maybe perform their assigned duties? She could see couples getting closer than was seemly and even pairing off to steal away into the darkened balconies overlooking the floating gardens, heady with the perfume of full-moon-blooming brugmansia.
Maybe Papa should accept that invitation to join the Freedman’s Bureau; having a position like that in addition to his own business would elevate his standing in the community more and lessen the sniping about her aunt. She let out a weary sigh. No, in truth, it wouldn’t. Even her own family sniped about Auntie Cleo, why wouldn’t the rest of New Charleston?
When Phee glanced over at the chaperone table, the women were still in conversation. They tittered, heads together like lock-horned rams. She was desperate to know the rest of the vitriol they spat. This was her final season and Phee wouldn’t have to endure these parties any longer, so she could say her piece to the nosy Nellies before she and her skirts went scrooping out the doors for the final time.
Her fan hid the scoff that erupted from her lips. If she did tell those women about themselves, the news of her actions would spread like wildfire. Speaking so boldly could easily garner a visit from a doctor to see what was wrong with her mind that would cause her to take leave of it. Especially a gently bred society woman like herself who should know better. Someone would send a winged messenger the instant she turned on her heel to leave and, not having to travel on the constantly flooded roads, the creature would reach the asylum long before her carriage could return to Rosemount. Having her sanity brought into question was enough to put her off the idea. If she managed to avoid the institutions, she’d have to write a plethora of apology notes to the Brockingtons and their guests in order to show her face in town again. No one wanted that.
She blew out a breath as she flexed her feet in the shoes that were just snug enough to keep a body alert with discomfort. The music changed from a jaunty, quick-tempo song to a more languorous one as Phee reached the refreshments and plucked up one of the punch cups. The mist on its surface chilled her as she sipped, thinking of how to approach the matter with the scandal-mongers, when a voice spoke to her.
“Why, Phaedra … you’ve come. I told Mother you would.”
Suppressing her irritation, she smiled at the speaker. “Desmond. Yes, I have.”
“I trust you are well.”
“Thank you, I am. I hope you are.”
To no one’s surprise, Desmond Sweet fell into step with Phee as she walked away from the refreshments table. He had asked around about her, she knew, but so far she had managed to avoid dancing with him at these soirées. While outwardly mannered, he was said to be a cruel tyrant if one challenged his whims. Only a few long-suffering individuals remained in his employ, and despite his attempts, he had not managed to secure a suitable marriage with a woman of his choosing. Of the two engagements he’d attempted, one young woman had quickly thereafter married another man, and the other young woman’s father spirited her away in the middle of the night to parts unknown and had never returned to the city. Phee had been distracted with her thoughts and had allowed him to catch her unaware.
“I think it’s high time we’ve had a dance, don’t you?”
Timing could not have been more against her. “No, I don’t think—”
She tried to move around him, but he was having none of it. He seized her wrist in an iron grip, and in her shock, Phee released the crystal cup, watching horrified as it fell to the floor and shattered into a million rice-sized grains.
While the revelers on the dance floor and those near the musicians did not hear, the group gathered around the refreshments table paused in their own conversations to look at what had caused the faux pas.
“You are ruining my glove,” Phee hissed at Desmond’s face as she tried to tug her wrist free, bewildered now that eyes were on them.
The threat of her property ruined had no effect on him. “Soon I will join my father’s medical practice. I can buy you more.”
“No, thank you. I have more than enough pairs.” When her words did not garner her freedom or the intervention of any so-called chaperones, she gritted her teeth. “Fine, then—we will dance.”
“I think,” he said, as Phee marched them toward the dance floor, “that I am supposed to lead.”
“Lead me over there, then.” Phee indicated the chaperones with a nod of her head.
Smug satisfaction crept over his face as he took her fan hand in his. The other he pressed to her waist. Instead of the acceptable light touch, his hand lay heavily on her person and Phee shifted her hip to inform him. He acknowledged her discomfort with an unrepentant grin. The desire to miss a step just to stomp on his foot welled up inside her, threatening to spill over.
As they moved through the dance, Phee caught portions of the women’s conversation and her suspicions were confirmed. Her aunt didn’t deserve to be the brunt of such gossip after what Phee knew was closer to ten years. Ten years … Mercy, when was the last time she’d heard from Auntie Cleo?
They corresponded via letter fairly often, especially now that she was of age and her mother no longer intercepted her post. But for the life of her, she couldn’t recall the most recent letter. How long had it been?
Phee needed to visit her aunt. As a girl, she’d promised herself she would take time to call in person as soon as she was out from under her mother’s purview, but now she was one and twenty, and she still hadn’t kept that promise. What had prevented her? Too much of her time spent dodging her mother’s wishes and extricating herself from the detailed plans her mother had for her only child’s life. While simultaneously making her own plans to push against the unflagging tide of her mother’s will, subtly enough to where her actions wouldn’t bring down harsh consequences.
And where had all that effort gotten her? She looked into Desmond’s reptilian face. He held her too tightly still, and inside her gloves, her hands felt trapped, slick with perspiration. The song ended and she stepped back, applauding the excellent music. When Desmond reached for her again, Phee rapped him smartly on his knuckles with the edge of her closed fan. Before he could recover, she marched away to speak to the Brockingtons and thank them for their generous hospitality.
Tomorrow, she promised herself, nothing would prevent her from making arrangements to visit her aunt. No matter what her mother thought of the black sheep of their family.
TWO
When the tyefrin messenger delivered the notice of Aunt Cleo’s death to the house the next morning, Phee’s mother praised the Eternal Magician. Then she laughed.
Phee was aghast. “Mother, Auntie Cleo is dead. Some respect, please?”
“Since when did your aunt have respect for me?” her mother sniffed, affronted. She patted her halo of coils, her lip curling. “Always wanting what I have.”
For a moment, Phee was stunned into silence. How could her aunt be gone? Only last night she’d promised to visit and now … Her blood slowed inside her body, thickening to honey, then crystallizing—immobilizing her. She stared at her mother while warm sunlight filtered through the open door and onto the high ceiling of the foyer, glancing off the chandelier to make a pattern of elongated dewdrops on the cream coffee–colored walls surrounding her.
According to family stories, Aunt Cleo was once babysitting Phee and decided to take her out in the stroller to the park. A few people had gathered around baby Phee to say how adorable she was, and Aunt Cleo had supposedly cuddled the child and said, “I could steal her, she’s so sweet.” A lady in Mama’s social group, out getting some fresh air, had overheard and told Mama, who confronted her sister. Counting on her fingers, Mama had enumerated what her sister had tried to take from her, including Phee’s father. At no time did it matter that he had courted Aunt Cleo first. Once Phenton met Madelyn, his choice was made.
Slowly, Phee turned back to the messenger. The tyefrin’s face was impassive, but she noticed its eyes—a startling citrine with inky vertical pupils—darted between her and her mother. Best to ignore her for now. Mama, like Aunt Cleo—and like herself, too, she supposed—could be stubborn. Phee turned back to the well-dressed tyefrin.
“Please, continue.”
The messenger on the front porch lifted its curved beak in acknowledgment. Its scales, green tipped with gold, glistened in early morning sunrays. Sheer, membranous wings folded along the creature’s squat, ridged back, reaching almost to the thick tail it had curled around its small, clawed feet. They were beautiful, intelligent creatures, well suited for carrying messages and avoiding the dangerously slick cobblestoned streets of New Charleston.
“Who will pomp this newly dead?”
Clearly, the messenger expected a swift response. It seemed surprised when Phee’s mother shook her head, lifted the hem of her skirt above her bare feet, and stepped backward. She tried to pull her daughter with her, but Phee shook off her hold, rearranged her dress sleeve. The fabric crumpled easily, a hallmark of wealth her mother loved.
“Mother!” she scolded. “She was your sister. Why won’t you be responsible?”
“If she were still welcome in this house, I would. There is no reason we— Phaedra!”
But Phee had already held her hand out to the messenger to receive the duty of planning for the dead. She swallowed hard before saying, “I will pomp for her.”
“What are you doing?” Her mother slapped her hand away but Phee had spoken the words, opened her palm; the deed was done.
“You have no idea what’s involved in planning a homegoing service. The work involved. All those funerary directors descending on you at once, strutting for your attention. It’s like being courted by swathes of suitors—only more elaborate and more competent.” Her mother cut her eyes at Phee. “Not that you’d know anything about that.”
Phee ignored the jick; she was used to her mother’s comments about her lack of life partner. “I’m happy to learn, Mother. I’ve always wanted to work and learn to do things, but you’ve never wanted me to.”
“Where is the sense you were born with? This is not the time to learn, child. You’ve legally accepted the pomp. If you don’t complete it, they will throw you under that jail. And not even money or favors could get you out of serving your time.”
“I would not abandon a duty, Mother. That’s not like me at all.” Piqued at the implication she would toss away the homegoing planning when it became difficult, Phee raised her chin. “I am a St. Margaret.”
“You won’t be so uppity after six months of watery grits and no sunshine, I’ll bet.” Her mother sighed as she dramatically shook out a wrinkle in her dress. “I should have had more children.”
Phee pressed her lips together before speaking. “Perhaps you should have.”
When her mother touched Phee’s shoulder, her tone softened. “I’ve done these services before, and you’re just not up to all of that, dear heart. It’s draining and you get little recognition.”
There was the lie. Even as sheltered as Phee was, she knew a well-planned homegoing service gained the planner plenty of recognition, praise from the town government and its people, and in some instances, even brought job offers that could lead to financial independence. Mama’s comment had her believing for a moment she was worried her daughter had taken on an impossible task for someone unused to celebrating the life of the dead. A part of Phee had hoped Mama would relent and go with her to Aunt Cleo’s anyway. Wasn’t that what death was supposed to do? Bring people together? But the lie had fallen so easily from her lips.
And Phee knew the reason. Mama wouldn’t want her to successfully complete a pomp because she wouldn’t want her only child to thrive elsewhere on her own. She had to control the family. Cousins, aunts, uncles … all of their visits for holidays, funerals, weddings, and other special events had to go through Mama. Gift giving was under her purview as well: who pleased her during the year would be treated with lush extravagance on their day of birth and those who hadn’t … well, they could try again for the following year.
Phee shook her head and motioned for the messenger to carry on.
The tyefrin cleared its throat, beginning the missive again in an elegantly croaky voice, giving her aunt’s name, title, location, and date of death. It handed Phee a scroll, rolled tight and tied with a long blade of saltgrass. The fragrance of fine, handcrafted paper and kettle-brewed ink lulled her, and she had to suppress the desire to hold the scroll under her nose and take a deep sniff.
The tyefrin shifted from scaled foot to scaled foot, uncomfortable. “Shall I send a carriage for you?”
“Tomorrow after first meal will be fine.” Phee ignored her mother’s gasp, and smiled at the messenger. “Is there anything else I must do?”
The messenger looked happy to be released. It recorded her name in a small book that it tucked into an elaborately trimmed jacket pocket. “A carriage will arrive after first meal and take you to the decedent’s home.”
“My thanks. A moment, if you will.” Phee moved to take a few coins from the dish on the foyer table, kept there for exactly this purpose. Messengers had such difficult jobs. People tended to blame them for the bad news they carried. Phee didn’t have work, except what she forced her father to allow her to do for his distillery, which was a little bookkeeping, and she taught a class on traditional paper-making on the rare occasion anyone was interested.
Domestic tasks that would position Phee to eventually become the partner of some well-bred professional were all her mother allowed under her roof. The only ones Phee could stand were gardening (it got her out of the house), reading (she loved learning new things, especially things her mother didn’t approve of), and cooking (she’d be able to feed herself if she ever got the opportunity to leave Rosemount Manor).
The messenger demurred. “Bereaved need not pay for my service, gentle one. My sympathies to you.” With that wish, it retreated down the stairs, claws clicking, taking to the air as soon as it was clear of the overhanging porch.
Once the front door closed, Phee’s mother lit into her.
“Who do you think you are? You don’t make decisions in this house.” Her mother sucked her teeth, her stormy gaze flicking over her daughter as if she were wondering where she’d gone wrong. “What will you look like—traipsing over to that ridiculous city she owned?”
Through sheer force of will, Phee avoided rolling her eyes. “She didn’t own it, Mama. She founded it. And she’s your sister!” Phee quieted her voice, so as not to anger her mother further, though she suspected that was impossible. “I don’t even know what it’s like to have a sibling—but I couldn’t leave her there alone for the city to do who knows what with.”
“Why not? She didn’t take you when she left.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t have let her if she wanted to.”
“Watch yourself, Phaedra.” Mama peered closely into Phee’s face—similar to the way she had when Phee was a little girl and needed to learn a life lesson. “You don’t know a thing about that place where she lived. The businesses there—florists, cemeteries, undertakers … especially the undertakers.”
She stood eye-to-eye with her daughter. “You have no idea if they’ll do decent work. What are you going to say when people ask who did the body?” She scoffed. “That is, if anyone decides to pay their respects.”
“How could you not attend your own sister’s funeral? That’s just cruel.”
“Think that’s cruel after what Cleo did to me? To this family?” Madelyn Simons-St. Margaret’s back stiffened. “I will not help you at all, not financially or otherwise. Not one coin.”
Big words from her mother, who was usually willing to throw coins at any problem to make it go away. Phee kept her voice calm, even though she was shaking inside. She’d never gone against her mother’s wishes before. Not to this life-altering extent. But someone in this family—the one that shaped her aunt, then forced her to leave—had to care.
“I understand that, Mother. And I’ll use the money I’ve saved.”
“You’d better.” Her eyes narrowed while she paced in a tight circle in front of her daughter. “Well, this is the most foolish thing I’ve ever seen you do. Why can’t you see the best thing for you is to marry Desmond? I guess since you’re grown now, you don’t care about my opinion anymore.”
Marry Desmond? Phee suppressed a shudder. She’d rather pull her own teeth. “I do care, but—”
Her mother stopped pacing and clapped her hands in front of Phee’s face to punctuate her words. “You. Can’t. Pomp. For. Anyone.”
While the words stung, Phee put starch in her own back, held her head up high. “I’m doing this, Mama.”
Hands now on her hips, her mother glared at her. “So I see. And I’m going to let you fail at it so you can bring your uppity rass back here ready to listen for once.”
For once? More like for a hundred thousand times Phee did as she was told without questioning, without talking back, without speaking her heart. A hundred thousand rough-edged pills she’d swallowed in order to keep peace, to show respect for her parents and their sacrifices to raise a daughter worthy of the St. Margaret name. The ghosts of her mother’s past words visited her now. She had the opportunity to make something of herself in this age. Why was she fighting against it? Didn’t she know her ancestors had lived enslaved for centuries? She knew, she knew. Phee’s throat was rubbed raw from the times she’d swallowed her opinions; her face ached from holding her tongue. A vision-shrinking throb lived behind her right eye, accompanied by a crushing pressure in her cheek and jaw.
Phee’s mother stomped away as best she could in her bare feet, likely to find her father and complain about how their only daughter had gone rogue. As she stood alone in the foyer, listening to her mother’s footsteps retreat, Phee fretted. Maybe Mama was right—she had attended homegoings, but only the wake on the night before and the service on burial day. She had no idea of what went into planning the entire ceremony.
However, she couldn’t think about that now. She had to pack. Phee lifted the hem of her skirt and dashed upstairs to her bedroom. Tomorrow, she would start proving she could do something on her own, without her father’s money or her mother’s pushing, instead of waiting for someone to see her worth and marry her. She was going to lay her aunt, and hopefully the bad blood flowing through the family, to rest.
Copyright © 2025 by Eden Royce
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2025 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
