The
Sullivans, a family of hard-working Irish lawyers, came from nothing
and built a life they can be proud of. The Deschanels amassed incredible
wealth by siding with the North during the Civil War, betraying their
people. Both New Orleans families have a dark and rich history, painted
with secrets, treachery, and colorful, supernatural abilities.
The
House of Crimson and Clover unravels the mysteries surrounding both
families, pulling us further into their tangled, enigmatic lives.
The House of Crimson & Clover Box Set Volumes I-IV
The House of Crimson & Clover #1-5
by Sarah M. Cradit
Publication Date: August 17, 2015
Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, Romance, Urban Fantasy
Amelia wandered into the college pub, looking to see if anyone she
knew was hanging out. Then she saw him: Jacob Donnelly, that goofball from her
high school, who had enough of an Irish accent to sound like he didn’t belong
here. He wore a baby-blue collared shirt, first two buttons undone and one flap
defiantly pulled free of his waistband. The belt cinched at his waist struggled
valiantly to keep his trousers on. Black spiky hair atop his head pointed in
twelve directions, as it always had, but his facial features had matured into a
finer definition. His trademark goofy smile had evolved charmingly, giving an
expression bordering on arrogance, but speaking more to his innocence.
Amelia’s heart caught in her chest as his appearance produced a
completely unexpected reaction. Why is it she never noticed how beautiful he
was? Or how that softly-grooved cleft on his chin invited her finger-tip’s
touch?
Jacob was off in his own world,
eyes closed, lost to an enthusiastic air drum solo of The Foo Fighters’
“Everlong.” He mouthed the words as his hands swung with every wild-yet-precise
drumbeat, oblivious to the gathering crowd. When the song ended, he finished
off his beer accompanied by applause from a handful of college kids. He offered
them an exaggerated bow, and as he came back up, his eyes fell on Amelia, who
shamelessly stared at him in dumbfounded awe.
“Miss Amelia Jameson! Princess of Prytania, Goddess of the Garden
District,” he intoned, a great big smile spreading across his face as he
sauntered over to her. His dimples appeared, accented by a light touch of
facial hair. “You know it’s customary to tip when you enjoy the show.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she protested, flustered.
Worse than the lie was that she couldn’t figure out why she was telling it.
Playing coy had never been her thing, and she was certain he saw right through
her. “I didn’t know you went to Tulane,” she added, attempting to veer the
conversation away from her mortification.
The mischievous glint in his green eyes told her exactly what he
thought of her falsehood. She half-expected him to flat out accuse her of
gawking, when instead he asked, “Have you eaten? I was planning to take the
streetcar into Carrollton and grab a burger at Camellia Grill. We can catch up
along the way, and if you actually have something interesting to say, I might even
buy your burger, too.”
Amelia had been too surprised to say anything but yes. And too smitten
to recognize how dangerous being around him could be for her heart.
This was 1997, the year after the Deschanel Curse last struck the
family, taking more than a half-dozen of Amelia’s relatives. Beyond the deaths,
her cousin Adrienne went missing, and remained that way, fate unknown. Amelia’s
grief was still raw and unchecked, and she hadn’t realized, until Jacob came
into her life, how much she needed someone to brighten her gloomy world.
Someone who was not a Deschanel.
They became fast friends, surprised at how much they had in common.
Amelia found herself inadvertently looking for Jacob between classes, and
caught him doing the same. She warned him she wasn’t looking for a
relationship, and he assured her, with a twinkle in his eye, “Blanca, you couldn’t pin me down if you tried.” The friendship
blossomed.
On weekends, they’d explore the city like a couple of adventurers,
born of Jacob’s offhand comment that visitors likely knew more about the city
than residents. This resulted in the two of them trying to “outdo” each other
with their New Orleans facts. Amelia had a slight advantage because of her
family’s rich past and connections to the area, but it quickly became apparent
Jacob’s stubborn insistence on being right would lead them to an inevitable
stalemate. Mere debate unsatisfactory, they took their conversations outdoors,
determined to find new experiences.
They started in the Quarter, eating at a different restaurant each
night after classes, bringing their historical notes with them. Often
proprietors would eagerly share colorful stories beyond the dry historical accounts.
Napoleon House was an especially fun experience, even though the legend about
Emperor Napoleon plotting there in subterfuge was not actually true.
They branched out into the Garden District, where Amelia’s family–and
many other Deschanels–lived. Jacob’s family lived closer to the river, near the
wharves, but he told Amelia he spent many hours wandering the avenues as a boy,
sketching some of his favorite homes. He would write stories about the people
inside the houses, imagining what their lives must have been like.
“Tedious,” Amelia told him. “Mystery solved.”
“Easy for you to say.” Jacob reached over to her mouth and mocked
wiping something away. “Sorry, you had a silver spoon still stuck to your lip.”
She rolled her eyes, but was smiling. “Calling me ignorant of my
situation doesn’t make you somehow an expert,” she said. “But who cares about
that, I want to see these sketches and stories!”
Jacob’s face flushed bright red. Embarrassment was not an emotion he
showed very often, preferring to cover his awkward discomfort with dry humor.
“They’re dumb. I wasn’t any good at it. Why do you think I’m going to medical
school?”
“You don’t have to be good at something for it to be interesting. I
love photography, but my mom and brother always tease me about how blurry the
photos are. Do I care what they think?” She shrugged indifferently, as he gazed
skeptically, eyebrow cocked. “Well, maybe a little,” she admitted.
“You don’t talk about your family much,” Jacob ventured. They had been
sitting on a bench in Audubon Park, watching the geese play in the pond. It was
spring and a light breeze formed off remnants of an earlier rainstorm, but it
was an otherwise beautiful day.
“I don’t remember hearing your complete family history either,
Donnelly,” she argued.
“I don’t recall you ever asking.”
“Well, I don’t recall you ever asking, either.”
“I just did,” Jacob teased. He leaned back, against the tree behind
the bench, staring at her with that startlingly intense gaze of his.
“Well, my family history is well-documented,” Amelia responded with a
dismissive wave, looking away to hide her unease. “Most of it is pretty simple
to look up.”
“Do I look like I enjoy research?” he asked, leaning back on one
elbow. When he smiled, his dimples appeared, and disappeared, his emerald eyes
never leaving her. Her heart skipped a beat at how handsome he was.
Amelia laughed. “Some doctor you’re going to make then. Doctor of
Bullshit, maybe.”
He sat up, feigning offense. “You know how to cut right through the
heart, Amelia. Straight. Through. Clean cut.” His eyes started twitching and
filling up with obviously faked tears. “Hurtful.”
“I would say I was sorry, but I don’t wish to be disingenuous.”
“Clean through the heart again! But I know how you can make it up to
me…”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, how?”
His face grew serious. Most of Jacob’s “serious” faces were some form
of goofball mockery, but she knew his real one and this was it. Her pulse
quickened. What if he asked for a kiss? What would she do? Her heart was
already softening toward him and she’d been thinking it might be prudent to
start spending less time together.
“First, I have to confess something to you,” he said. Her eyes
widened, but he kept talking. “I actually know quite a bit about your family.”
“Then why did you ask me about it?” she demanded. His revelation had
the effect of an ice cold shower. Foolish to think he wanted to kiss her! “I
don’t understand where you're going with this.”
“Calm down, Blanca,” he said, lightly. “This isn’t some
silly romantic comedy where you discover the dude you’ve been hanging out with
has an ulterior motive. I didn’t plan meeting you on campus, getting closer to
you and extorting you for information, only to fall in love with you against my
better judgment.”
A smile played at the corner of her lips. He was such an ass! She
wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a full smile though, until he told her
what he was up to.
Jacob raised an impertinent eyebrow. “Not as funny as it sounded in my
head? Okay, well, anyway... I know about all of the things that happened to
your family last year.” He let that sink in.
Amelia’s breath caught, but she hid her annoyance. “Everyone does,
Jacob, it isn’t exactly a secret,” she said coolly. Where was he going with
this? Had she misjudged him all along?
“When your Uncle Charles, and his family, got into that car accident
down near Abbeville, my mother followed the story closely. She couldn’t get
over how sad it was, and how horrible it must have been for your cousin,
Nicolas… both parents dead, three of his sisters also dead, and one completely
missing. Her interest drew me in and I found myself wondering what happened to
that family. Like I used to do with the Garden District houses when I was a
boy.”
He looked for her reaction, saw none yet, and kept going. “I
approached Nicolas once but he wasn’t very nice to me. I tried to give him my
condolences and offered my help in finding his sister. He laughed at me and
then told me to go fuck myself.”
At this, Amelia chuckled. This was exactly the response she would have
expected from Nicolas, especially then. “He’s like that with everyone.”
“Yeah, he's charming. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Adrienne. How
does someone disappear? If she had died, there would have been evidence of it.”
She interrupted him, wincing. Two years after this discussion, they
found Adrienne alive and well. At the time of this otherwise happy memory,
Amelia still keenly felt Adrienne had
died, primarily because she could no longer sense her young cousin. None of the
empaths or seers in the family could, either. “The police said the… gators
probably got to her.”
“Amelia, you’re a student of biology. You know even if that happened,
there would still be some evidence… pieces of her clothes, something. The heir
of Charles Deschanel’s fortune… completely disappeared.” He stopped and his
voice took a softer tone. “I’m sorry, I didn’t come here to lecture you about
your family. Putting my foot in my mouth is not a skill I’m proud of. I know
this is still a fresh wound.”
She nodded. “It is. Very fresh.”
Jacob put his hand over hers. “I am so sorry. This was a bad idea.”
Amelia ventured a look up, and in his eyes saw a kindness that gave her comfort
unlike anything else had since the tragedies.
She put her other hand over his. “You’re fine, Jacob. Really. Go on.”
He didn’t move his hand, and continued. “So I thought back to earlier
in the year and remembered what happened to your brother.”
Amelia said nothing. She missed Benjamin every day. Amelia loved both
her brothers, but she had loved Ben best.
He gently squeezed her hand as it was sandwiched between his. “And I
thought, how can one family go through so much? And then at Christmas…”
“Danielle,” she finished. Tristan’s sister.
He nodded. “It seemed almost unreal for one family to go through so
much in a single year. It was really Adrienne’s disappearance that piqued my
interest to do more research. I found a lot of information about your family
online.”
“I can’t say I’ve ever looked,” Amelia said, meticulously wiping away
a tear that had sprung up. For Amelia, tears could be dangerous, her emotional
acuity both a “gift” and potentially her destruction. “But I’ve never needed
to, because my family keeps good records.”
“Mine didn’t,” he said, without elaboration. “So in my digging, I
discovered what happened last year was not the first time large-scale tragedy
struck your family. Maybe you already know those details.”
“I do.”
“I figured. But what was interesting to me was a group of archived
letters I found on a genealogy website. Someone had posted them anonymously as
a contribution to family records, so I don’t know where they came from. They
were letters between an Ophelia Deschanel and a friend of hers, someone named
Edna Wallace. Do those names sound familiar?”
“Edna doesn’t, but Ophelia was my mother’s great-aunt. She died the
year I was born.”
“She lived a long time,” he agreed. “In the letters, she talks about
the stuff that happened through generations of your family, and she
specifically states her belief none of it was an accident.”
Amelia’s heart skipped. She had never seen these letters, and was even
more alarmed they were online, for the public to see. She thought she knew
where he was going, but was terrified of what he might say next. Would he laugh
at the superstitions of her family? What if he asked if she believed in it?
Surely he would. What would he think of her if she confessed the truth?
She swallowed. “Go on.”
“Amelia, are you aware that some members of your family believe the
Deschanels are cursed?”
A sensation, not unlike the pressure of being underwater, came over
Amelia. The world around her muted unnaturally, and she felt light-headed as
her heart attempted to thump clear out of her chest. How was she to answer this
question? Honesty was an option, but she might lose him completely if he saw
her as a superstitious biddy. She had never wanted to be defined by her belief
in this, and she had never, ever shared it outside the family. Amid the swirl
of emotions, she also considered perhaps it would be for the best if he did bolt.
Ultimately, Amelia would never deceive anyone. It was not in her to
pretend to be someone she wasn’t. She always spoke the truth, come what may.
“Yes, Jacob, I am,” she declared, head up, shoulders squared.
“Do you believe in it?” he hedged, carefully.
She paused only briefly. If he judged her for it, then so be it.
“Yes,” she said, “I do.”
Jacob nodded slowly, then moved his top hand off hers. She drew in a
nervous breath. What had she done? Then he lifted the same hand and gently laid
it against the side of her face, in an entirely unexpected tenderness. Amelia
closed her eyes and let herself lean into his touch, as he kissed her forehead.
“Does it feel good to finally say it out loud?” he asked.
She nodded, but her throat was too constricted to respond. This was
not how she expected this conversation to go, if she were ever to have it. He
still hadn’t told her what he thought, but his kindness assured her that he
wasn’t running for the hills. Her emotions warred between relief, and growing
fear of her feelings for him.
“I don’t know what to think about it Amelia, but I grew to respect
your aunt through her writing. And while I don’t know your mother all that
well, she seems like an incredibly sharp lady. She would have to be to operate
on brains all day, right? And obviously, she produced you.” Jacob smiled
warmly. Her heart rate slowly subsided to normal.
“If three very smart, astute women believe in this, then there’s
something to it. I don’t know what, exactly, but something,” he concluded.
When she sat speechless he added, “I didn’t plan for you to show up at
the pub and ogle me, Amelia. I never expected any of this, but since we’re here
now, I thought you should know. I don’t want secrets between us.”
Amelia’s eyes welled with more perilous tears as the weight of this
discussion pushed her thoughts to more serious matters. “I can never have
children.”
He processed that for a moment and then nodded. “Okay.”
She released a long, slow breath. Jacob didn't think she was crazy. He
knew her darkest truths, and he was still sitting beside her.
“Amelia, I don’t want children,” he said to her, in a tone that
suggested he’d been mulling her comment over. “I never have. I didn’t have…
well, the best childhood growing up. Maybe I will tell you about it someday.
But I want to dedicate my life to helping others. I could live happily with
someone amazing by my side. Someone who also accepts children aren’t a part of
our future.”
Their careful tempo established, Jacob allowed her to digest his
words.
When she didn’t speak, he clarified, “I’m not proposing, you
ridiculous girl! I’m not even asking you out.”
Amelia drew back in mock offense. “What the hell was all that about
then, Donnelly?”
He put his arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him, easily.
It felt natural, as if she were with family. “Because I want you to know you’re
safe with me.”
She fell in love with Jacob Donnelly, at precisely that moment. From
then on, there was never a chance of protecting her heart, for it already
belonged to him, and always would.
With Jacob, she was safe.
Sarah
is the USA Today Bestselling Author of the Paranormal Southern Fiction
series, The House of Crimson & Clover. The series was born of her
combined loves of New Orleans, family dramas, and the mysterious nature
of love and desire. Her books combine elements of paranormal, mystery,
suspense, intrigue, and romance. She is always working on the next book
in the series, and absolutely loves connecting with her fans.
Sarah
lives in the Pacific Northwest, but has traveled the world from Asia to
Europe to Africa. When she isn’t working (either at her day career, or
hard at work at writing), she is reading a book and discovering new
authors. The great loves of her life (in order) are: her husband James,
her writing, and traveling the world.
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