Young men with silver pockets and velvet ring boxes gallantly approached the notoriously haunted Tempest Mansion while blood still stained the grand foyer where the Lord of the house shot himself with an ornate pistol three days ago. The final male heir was dead. The curse had finally claimed him. The Tempest fortune laid within, upon the shoulders of the fair Lady Guinevere Tempest.

      Black horses belligerently toted three hunched carriages toward the grand foyer. The suitors ogled the flying buttresses and arching windows. There were three of them.

      Lord Hector, with elegant spectacles and a tailored black jacket, was short and scrawny. Renowned for his book-smarts and little else, coupled with his status as the youngest in his family, was cause for concern; he had very few prospects. The Tempest curse could be his blessing, bestowing enough fear to keep more striking suitors at bay. That isn’t to say he wasn’t frightened.

      Lord Winslow, with slick-backed brown hair and a hand-carved walking cane, was the youngest of the three by some years, yet closest in age to the Lady they sought. He considered this an advantage. But he struggled with his pride, allowing success on the battlefield to cloud his assessment of his intelligence. A strategist is different from a soldier, and he was certainly only the latter.

      Lord Fairley, with untamable blond curls and sun-kissed freckles, was poised and charming. He was shrewd and calculating. A middle child with nothing but brothers, he understood his inheritance would be slim. Lady Guinevere offered resources he lacked and a beauty that matched his own. He was too dismissive to be frightened of a concocted curse.

      The three suitors sized the other up in the grand foyer rather than scan the eaves or observe the chandelier or admire the sconces.

      Lady Guinevere Tempest descended the velveted staircase in a black mourning dress. Her first footfalls were in-time with the tumbling thunder above them, crippling the sky and jostling the horses. Lady Guinevere was dainty and voluptuous. Her impossibly tiny waist, blanching skin, and wide doe eyes threatened to make her a dilapidated caricature of a porcelain doll. Raven curls thundered down her back, floating around her bony shoulders.

      Lady Guinevere hovered in front of a family portrait hung on the wall where the staircase split. Her likeness stared forlornly ahead. The late Lord and Lady Tempest, dead for over a decade now, stood behind their ten children, Guinevere and her nine brothers. In the portrait, only Guinevere’s face was discernible. The others were muddled smudges of grey and beige, except for one. One was a splotch of crimson blood, unable to be scrubbed from the portrait without risking its authenticity.

      A butler guided Lady Guinevere and her three suitors to the dining room. Platters of roast quail and green grapes were paired with bitter red wine. A black tablecloth was draped across the spruce table, matching chairs drawn tightly together at one end of the looming table. The windows were shrouded, and flickering candlelight from sconces on the stone walls cast a demented, romantic light across room.

      Guinevere’s rings clinked against her wineglass. She had one on every finger, except for her left ring finger. They were a dazzling array of shining silver and chiseled rubies, emeralds, sapphires, garnet, and amethyst. “I apologize for the gloomy reception,” Lady Guinevere mused. “It has been a trying week.”

      “My condolences,” the three suitors chorused.

      Lord Winslow cleared his throat. “You’ve been nothing but a graceful hostess. I hate to have imposed upon you in your time of grief.” His velvet ring-box in his pocket grew heavy.

      “This is what my brother would have wanted,” Guinevere replied. She reached under the table and her hand reappeared with a fuzzy tarantula nestled in her palm. “He tried to hang himself from the staircase,” Guinevere continued, stroking the tarantula with her one ring-less finger. “I begged him not to, and he shot himself as he was walking down the stairs.”

      The three suitors exchanged alarmed glances. Lord Hector went white, then green. Lord Fairley stopped chewing. Lord Winslow swallowed hard and asked, “You were there when he died?”

      “My family is cursed,” Lady Guinevere said simply.

      After dinner, Lord Winslow and Lord Fairley retired to their chambers.

      Lord Hector fled the estate.

*** 

      Lady Guinevere was a tumultuous young woman. She cried in the evenings, the whole estate weeping with her. The mansion creaked and the wind whipped. In the early mornings, she desired fresh air, and the skies would calm, granting her this wish. She returned to the Tempest Mansion with a wet dress hem and cheeks rosy from the cold. The moment her deliberate feet stepped over the threshold, the skies opened up and wept once more. In the afternoons, she retired to the library and consumed penny dreadfuls and literary classics alike.

      Lord Winslow and Lord Fairley joined her in the library the second day of their visit, the Lords in stately armchairs and the Lady reposing on a black-velvet couch. As they read, an onyx cat appeared and nestled on Lady Guinevere’s lap. Lord Winslow rapped his walking cane against the floor to jostle Lady Guinevere out of her penny dreadful. She raised a slender eyebrow. “The Tempest family curse is fiction, is it not?” he asked.

      The cat leapt out of Guinevere’s lap. “Of course it isn’t.” She closed her book and set it beside her on the couch. Lord Winslow and Lord Fairley laughed, and thunder cackled outside. Lady Guinevere narrowed her eyes. “My brothers were every bit as cursed as society has so gossiped.” The Lords stopped laughing.

      “But you are not cursed, then?” Lord Winslow asked intently. “Society says only the Tempest men are cursed.”

      “Indeed, I am not cursed,” Lady Guinevere sighed. “It is an utmost disappointment.” Lord Fairley smirked and Lord Winslow shivered as Lady Guinevere picked up her penny dreadful and her cat companion returned to her lap.

*** 

      “When are your birthdays?” Lady Guinevere asked her suitors during dinner the following evening. Her rings clattered against her wineglass.

      “January 4th,” Lord Winslow blurted, edging in a word before Lord Fairley could speak.

      “Garnet, then, for you Lord Winslow.”

      “Garnet?”

      “Your gemstone!” Lady Guinevere declared exuberantly. “And you, Lord Fairley?”

      “August 22nd,” Lord Fairley supplied, eager to be in on the intimacy of the conversation.

      “Peridot for you, then.”

      “What is your gemstone, Lady Guinevere?” Lord Fairley asked sweetly.

      “Diamond, for April 20th.” Lady Guinevere reached below the table once more and extracted another tarantula. Her lips pursed as she cooed to the friendly creature.

*** 

      The witching hour descended, and Lord Winslow found himself unable to sleep. He tossed and turned, the sheets a tourniquet around his ankles. Wind rapped against the murky window and the dim sconces flickered. As he lay in a lucid half-sleep, the bedroom door creaked open and footsteps stuttered across the floor.

      “Who’s there?” Lord Winslow stuttered. He sat up in bed and blearily scanned the room.

      Lord Fairley stood at the foot of the bed, hands folded behind his back. “Are you unable to sleep, too?” Lord Fairley asked simply.

      Lord Winslow scrubbed a hand down his face. “This house is getting to me,” he admitted.

      “Are you going to give it up?” Lord Fairley titled his head to the side. His eyes gleamed in the scarce light.

      “The Manor?” Lord Winslow scoffed. He untangled his ankles from the sheets and reached for his walking cane. “It may be a disturbing property now, but after my renovations, no haunting remnants will remain.”

      “You’re certain Lady Guinevere will select you, then.”

      “Absolutely.”

      Lord Fairley clenched his jaw. “Your sons would be cursed.”

      “Lady Guinevere is not cursed.”

      “But any of her sons would be cursed,” Lord Fairley advised as he rounded the bed, shuffling closer and closer to the pallid Lord Winslow. His hands were still folded behind his back.

      “Any of her sons will be Winslow men, not Tempest men,” Lord Winslow reassured himself. He dabbed at his brow with the corner of the sheets.

      “How can you be so sure?”

      “I have to be.” Lord Winslow’s eyes flickered back and forth and he paled. He shook his head. “Lady Guinevere Tempest will marry me and be Lady Winslow. The curse, if it even exists, won’t touch our children.”

      “Your confidence is irritating.” Lord Fairley withdrew his hands from behind his back, a gleaming knife clutched in his fingers. As Lord Winslow froze in terror, Lord Fairley drew a deliberate line from ear to ear. Blood dripped down Lord Winslow’s throat and stained the sheets. When Lord Winslow stilled, Lord Fairley left the knife on the bed and returned to his chambers.

      Lady Guinevere would be his by morning.

*** 

      “I am not surprised by violence,” Lady Guinevere mused over breakfast. Her raven hair was done up in an elegant twist with diamond clips woven throughout. She sparkled. “My life is violence.”

      Lord Fairley’s velvet ring box was open on the table. One of his knees pressed into the dining room floor. He had expected an eager “yes” from the lady, not whatever this pondering was. “Will you-” he tried to ask again.

      “Do you have brothers?” Lady Guinevere interrupted. She had another tarantula nestled in her palms. Its spindly legs slipped against her rings. “I miss mine dreadfully.”

      “Four brothers, two elder, two younger,” Lord Fairley replied impatiently. His eyes narrowed and he glared at the tarantula.

      “Have you lost any of your brothers?” Lady Guinevere was in quite the inquisitive mood, and Lord Fairley was irritated by it. He wanted a succinct answer.

      “I have not,” he clipped.

      “Your family is not cursed, then,” Guinevere sighed. She brushed a stray lock of hair off her forehead.

      “Neither is yours.”

      Guinevere raised an eyebrow. “You don’t believe in the Tempest curse?”

      “It’s hearsay to excommunicate your family. A dreadful rumor that got out of hand.”

      “Hm.” Guinevere tilted her head sideways. “The Tempest curse is very much real, just not in the way the rumors dictate. You see, my brothers were cursed to fall in love.”

      “That’s hardly a curse. I love you, and I couldn’t feel more alive.” Lord Fairley regretted the words as soon as he said them and shuffled back into his seat under Lady Guinevere’s scrutiny.

      “My great-great-grandfather claimed he was in love with a servant, and when he impregnated her, he abandoned her and married my great-great-grandmother. The servant cursed his male heirs to understand the power of true love. They were cursed to find their soulmate. For my great-grandfather and grandfather, this had little bearing on their lives. They found their true loves and existed in a flurry of blessed matrimony.”

      Lady Guinevere sighed and set the tarantula on the table. It scuttled away from her. “My father, however, ignored the curse. He married my mother and met his true love when I was three. It destroyed him. He hung himself.”

      Lord Fairley swallowed hard as the tarantula toddled across his plate. “Condolences,” he muttered.”

      “My brothers, one by one, feared what would become of them when they met their true love. They chose fear. They left me alone.” Lady Guinevere’s shoulders hunched. “What they didn’t understand is that they were blessed. Blessed to find power in the mundane, power in human connection. I am the one who’s cursed. Cursed by their reputations, by this manor, by my last name.” Lady Guinevere’s lip curled. Her voice darkened and her eyes flashed.  “How am I supposed to find my love when my only three suitors in the entire country only want my inheritance!”

      She pulled a knife from her skirts and stabbed Lord Fairley above the notch of his collarbone. He stared at her in vacant, slack-jawed shock, then slumped back in his chair.

      Lady Guinevere sighed and placed her elbows on the table, throwing her head in her hands and rubbing her temples. She glanced at Lord Fairley’s engagement ring, still gleaming beside her breakfast plate. Lady Guinevere plucked the ring from its velvet box and clucked her tongue. “Diamond,” she whispered to herself. She slipped it onto her vacant, left ring finger. The tarantula clambered back over the table, back to her.

      “I’ll have to replace it with peridot.”