Kiss of Crimson by Samantha Coville (best love story novels in english txt) 📕

The small graveyard was only about a hundred meters away and I stared at the wooden cross headstones, the names almost illegible under the decades of wear and tear, and not a small amount of graffiti.

Maman. Papa. Marie-Claire. Jacques. Grandmere. Grandpere.

They were all there, in somewhat crooked and ramshackled rows, all of them in worse condition than pauper graves given to executed criminals.

Next to me, I heard Eloise swallow audibly, her hand convulsing in mine.

"I don't..." she whispered, shaking her head. "I..."

I led her to the cross at the very end of the second row and knelt down.

"You see this?"

She stared at the cross I was pointing to, my forefinger a mere breadth away from the faded white letters that were almost unreadable.

Almost, but not quite.

She bent down, her eyes narrowed, mouth working silently as she fought to decipher the ancient and no doubt terribly written lettering.

"O... Oli... Oliver?" She cocked her head to one side and glanced at me. "Oliver Mo... rea...u. Oliver Moreau? Who is this Oliver Moreau?"

I straightened back up and waved toward the other headstones. "This is my origin, Eloise. This is where I come from."

She stared around the tiny graveyard, her light brows furrowed. "I don't..."

Her eyes widened, and she pointed a shaking hand at me. "Oliver Moreau. That's you. Your birth name."

I nodded slowly, grateful that I didn't have to say it out loud.

"You are correct."

She shivered, wrapping her arms around her, even though it was hot and humid, the air almost the same temperature as the blood that flowed through her veins. "This is where you grew up."

"Yes."

She walked a slow circle around the small collection of gravestones; her gaze seemingly unable to leave the deeply cracked and pockmarked earth. Surely by now the cheap wooden coffins would have rotted, leaving behind only the stark white bones of my family members.

She let out a small sound, shaking her head. "I don't understand. Your name...you're here. This is your grave. But how is that possible?"

She stopped at the opposite side of the crooked fence that separated the graveyard from the rest of the tiny property. "Surely it's not your body underneath that gravestone?"

"If there is a body under there, it is not mine." I put a hand over the heart that had ceased beating over a hundred years ago. "As I am here. Before you."

"So there is no body, then?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. There shouldn't be. I can only assume that my family had given me up for dead and buried an empty coffin, if only for closure."

She was silent for a moment, still shivering slightly.

I wanted to go to her, wrap her in my arms, kiss the top of her head.

But I got the feeling that she needed distance, needed to process this on her own without any interference.

"I will be back at the house," I said, taking a step back. "Take as much time as you need."

She said nothing, her gaze riveted to my gravestone, and I quickly retreated, returning to the house that had borne and housed over five generations of Moreaus, ever since we escaped France during the Rebellion in the late 1700s.

My grandmere always used to brag that we, Moreaus, were distantly related to Marie Antoinette, and that is why we had to flee France and Robespierre's reign of terror. That we were once so wealthy, and ate from plates of gold and silver, our utensils studded with precious gems.

Her tales had left a ten-year-old me absolutely smitten, filling my young, adolescent head full of dreams of gilded thrones and rich, soft furs curling about my neck.

Looking back now, I was almost sure that if there had been any royalty or nobility in our family, it would have been bred out of our bloodline long before my father met my mother at a gathering in Shreveport.

Still, those dreams had sustained me.

A corner of my mouth lifted up in a somewhat rueful grin as I thought about Eloise's grand mansion, all the jewels that laid within her jewelry box.

Did anyone ever know that Oliver Moreau would once again elevate the family to the riches that we had supposedly been so accustomed to?

What a strange turn of events.

I ran a hand across the railing, but I did not trust the porch to bear my weight, so did not proceed into the building.

It didn't matter. I already knew what the interior had looked like and had little desire to see what kind of horror it looked like now.

The only thing that mattered was the truth.

It was the only thing I could bring to Eloise.

Honesty.

I will give you all of me.

I hoped her mother didn't have delusions that when I offered everything; it had meant material wealth, because aside from the goods that Jardin gifted me, I was as penniless as a church mouse.

A few minutes later, I heard Eloise returning, the dead grass crunching under her soft-soled espadrilles.

There was a strange, almost tragic expression on her pretty face and wordlessly, she wrapped her arms about me, pinioning my arms in place, her face pressed into the hollow of my chest.

The shirt fabric in that area grew a bit damp, but I said nothing, because in truth, I didn't think there was anything to say.

With a suspiciously loud sniff, Eloise pulled back, swiping at the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Th—thank you," she said, in a barely audible, but wavering voice. "Thank you for bringing me here."

I nodded. "Of course. How could I not? I told you that I would show you everything, didn't I? That I would hide nothing from you."

She gave me a lopsided grin, a thin sheen of wetness in her eyes that reflected like glass in the moonlight. "And you have stuck to your word, haven't you?"

I gave a little courtly bow. "Anything for my queen. Shall we then?"

I held out my elbow, and she put her hand at the bend, her other hand on the outside of my elbow.

It