“Tomorrow, perhaps.” Remi held it for a second longer before putting it away. When she closed the box, she felt a shard of ice pierce her heart. It was a beautiful gift, but not one she felt ready to wear yet. Her marriage had been rushed, her relationship with Edgar stilted, if not altogether awkward. She was young, and marrying someone older wasn’t unheard of, but she had reservations about the arrangement. Initially, when her uncle mentioned it in passing, she was delighted by the notion of marrying into the Leone family.

How foolish she felt when she learned the truth about her groom later on.

Remi climbed into bed and waited for Sylvie to finish tending the fire. She hoped that once her head hit the pillows, she would feel the day’s exhaustion settle in completely.

“Goodnight, Madame,” Sylvie said.

“Goodnight, Sylvie. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

The maid nodded and bowed out into the hallway, disappearing as the door closed.

Almost an hour later, Remi tossed and turned in her bed. The mattress, like everything else—including herself—was new and untouched. Its stiff, cold shape did not cradle her figure like the one at Tante Beline’s.

Remi threw the covers back, first too warm and then too cold. She could not keep her eyes closed long enough to grasp the edges of sleep as it evaded her. What she would do for a visit from Somnus, to be sent into baleful dreams as she wanted. But the house creaked as the wind blew, and Remi’s mind wandered to far darker corners than those of a golden childhood spent with a boy whose hair was as warm as his eyes.

Remi moved the blankets from her legs and slipped on her dressing robe. A quick look through her bedside drawer turned up a matchbox, and she lit the candle Sylvie left behind. Grasping it with a shaking hand, she started down the hall from her room. She felt out of sorts, remembering at time when she was young and happily traipsing through the manor, rather than tiptoeing quietly through the night.

Like being in the belly of a great beast, she thought.

Time may have aged her, but the manor remained as large and expansive as ever. There were the family’s quarters on one end and a partition on the other half dedicated to guests. In the days before it closed its doors, the manor used to welcome plenty of visitors. But that was years ago, back when his wife was alive. Their wedding was the first time anyone was allowed to step foot inside again.

An absolute privilege, she heard her uncle’s voice echo in her mind. I wonder what flowery words he used to convince my father to let me marry.

Still, it was hard to forget, given that he’d delivered the line more than once to guests who were curious about their match. It made her ponder the question of whose privilege it really was to marry into the Leone family. Hers or her uncle’s.

Creeping further down the hall, Remi observed paintings of landscapes and people as they stretched on into endless shadows. She did not dare go near the guest’s quarters, knowing some were sleeping there. Instead, she headed for the stairs to the first floor. It was quiet and still, with no servants to catch her sneaking about. Still, a house as old as the Leone’s, steeped in a troubled past, must have eyes watching from somewhere in the walls.

It would make for an excellent ghost story, she thought, shuddering at her own admission. It was curious enough behavior to wander the halls so late, but stranger still to imagine that something might be watching her.

Remi went past the cellar door, spying a light at the end of the hall, just beyond the kitchen. A golden glow beckoned from within; she hurried her pace as the floorboards creaked beneath her feet.

Two doors were cracked open at the end of the hall. Curious, she peeked inside.

Edgar sat behind a large desk, reading a stack of papers, his eyeglasses perched on the tip of his nose. He was as she remembered him so many years ago, though the silver in his hair chased away the darker roots. A few more wrinkles joined at the corners of his lips, and the crow’s feet beside his eyes were deeper. He seemed at ease, though tired and weary. So much of Ben lingered there that it was hard to ignore her imagination and what fantasies it conjured.

Enough of that! Ben is gone; you are married to Edgar! Remi sucked in a deep breath but covered her mouth too slowly to hide it. Edgar looked up.

“Hello?” he called out. “Come in.”

She pushed the door open and walked in slowly.

“Good evening,” she said, concealing her curiosity. The room was spacious, a beautiful study with six rows of bookshelves parallel to her and an oak desk off to the right where Edgar watched her tentatively. There were few furnishings in the center: two armchairs and a side table, with an immaculate moth display as the focal point. A fire burned in the hearth to the far left of the study, with the same craftsmanship as the one in her own.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Remi said, ducking her head.

“No?” Edgar asked. “It was quite a long day. I myself am feeling tired.”

“It was.” She agreed. “But there is so much to take in, I feel I can’t sleep yet. The house is...new to me.”

“Ah.” Edgar nodded in understanding. He laid the papers in his hands down and sat back in his chair. “If you find yourself wandering, please know my study is always open to you.”

“Thank you,” she said, slipping into one of the chairs as the floor creaked underneath the new weight. A clock somewhere ticked, beating easily against the sound of the wind outside. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Not at all.”

Remi hummed a reply, distracted by the moth in the glass case. It was much larger up close and so true to life that it could flutter away at any given moment, even though she could clearly see the pins that held it in place. She felt sympathetic to it, dead yet displayed for everyone to gawk at. In a way, it was how she felt standing at the altar, a pretty thing pinned down under a glass dome while prying eyes glittered from the watching crowd.

Distracted by her pitiable thoughts, she didn’t hear at first what Edgar said.

“Saturnia pyri,” he repeated. “The great peacock moth.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“There are nests of them around the Isle.” His chair groaned with the motion as he stood, approaching the glass display. “I have a few other species, but none quite as eye-catching.”

“Is it your favorite?” Remi asked, standing. She felt weak on her knees, but it was necessary to close the space between them. It was still curious to her that he would give her a room and leave her be on their wedding night. She wanted to ask if it was something she’d done or if he felt she was too young.

Edgar moved his hand away from the hardwood base of the display, evading her attempt expertly. “It is.”

“Monsieur Leone…” Remi felt her voice tremble. “I want to ask…”

“About our arrangement?”

She found his eyes watching her. They were kind, just as they were so many hours ago at the altar. “Yes.”

“My dear,” he started gently, “I must tell you that I have only ever loved one woman in my life. Her portrait is there above the mantelpiece. Immortalized in all of her earthly beauty, just as this moth in its display.”

Remi followed his gaze. The portrait he’d fixated on was subtle but large enough that she could make out the woman on the canvas. The late Madame Leone passed well before Remi’s arrival, but the island was never without its stories of their romance. A traveling Romani woman wooed by an upstart young man with startling good looks.

Truthfully, everything she knew about their family came from gossip.

“How many years has it been?”

“Twenty long years.” Edgar moved closer to the fireplace, distant from Remi as he spoke. “She fell ill after a difficult pregnancy. Benoît was six at the time, looking forward to having two siblings to look after.”

Oh my. “To lose children... I cannot fathom it.”

“We were deeply hurt by their loss.” Edgar nodded. “My wife felt that wound deeper than the rest of us, as you can imagine. Her illness took her body, but I believe their loss took her much sooner.”

Remi felt her chest tighten. She dropped her gaze from the portrait, unable to see the late lady without feeling the need to cry.

She never knew about two other children. The truth of her passing was hard to win through constant gossip and twisted iterations of the same tale. Ironically enough, the people preferred their tall tales and fairy tales about the Leone family over the truth of their tragedy.

When Remi’s marriage was first announced, all anyone could discuss was the reception or the wedding colors. A handful of folks mentioned his first wife, but there was little else discussed past that. Even when Tante Beline hosted a tea party for the ladies on the island to celebrate the engagement, the only thing any one of them could think to talk about were the invitations and Remi’s gown. Despite their surprise at Edgar’s intent to remarry, they mentioned nothing else about the family’s past or its dark tragedies.

Remi considered it odd since the backbone of their get-togethers was gossip.

Maybe Tante Beline had something to do with that. Beline would have wanted to keep everything “easy to swallow” for her benefit more than Remi’s.