Prologue #2
He stepped toward his wife before pausing and turning around. Her heart skipped a beat as he took a few steps up the stairs toward her.
But he stopped, his fingers gripping the ornate wooden railing, pausing at the carving of a lion, part of the Anderson family insignia.
His fingers grazed the family heirloom ring he always wore—an intricate band with a beautiful black gemstone.
He heaved out a deep breath, and she could feel his gaze cascading over her features, landing at her swollen womb carrying their child.
Her abdomen cramped—she wanted to tell him she was bleeding, not only from her womb but also in her heart.
But he never gave her a chance to tell him.
He paused at the foot of the staircase, the muscles in his shoulders bunched tightly.
“I’m sorry, Emma. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Silas, are you coming?” the duchess called from a few steps away.
He sighed and took out a few banknotes from his pocket and set them on the ground. “I’m sorry.”
Anger burned through her veins at the memory, how he carelessly stood by as her future was burned to ashes in front of him. His promises, words of love and eternal devotion were all lies, poison disguised as beautiful prose and haunting promises.
This was the end of the road for her, for society would never give a woman like her another chance.
Her future as a fallen woman saddled with the debts of her father would be unthinkable.
No one would employ her after she was cast out by the influential Andersons.
She had little education growing up, no connections, nothing to her name.
Soon, the debtors would arrive and she would have absolutely no value except for what was between her thighs.
“Go to the whorehouse where you belong.” The duchess’s words carved themselves inside her chest.
There was no other choice.
The frigid morning air penetrated her thin dress and straight into her heart, temporarily stemming the agony leaching out from the tattered organ. Despite everything, she couldn’t stop loving him, even as she hated him at the same time.
“Silas.” She gripped her necklace, her most treasured possession from him—a pearl and gemstone locket with beautifully carved flowers and his eternal devotion carved inside—and whispered once more, “Perhaps, in another life…”
She looked toward the heavens, hoping she’d experience the happiness she lost in this lifetime there.
With her arms spread, she stepped off the ledge, her dark brown tresses billowing like a halo around her head, an angel falling down from the skies just as the first raindrops descended.
Silas
Half an hour later, a thick branch broken off by the storm shattered the windows of the sitting room causing glass shards to scatter across the carpet.
A scream tore through Wraithmoor Abbey, echoing in the cavernous foyer, before a groundskeeper dashed in and alerted the duke of the body found in the rose garden.
Silas dashed toward the doors, his thoughts in disarray, the mysterious pain he felt in his chest deepening into scything agony.
Icy dread slithered up his spine, curling around his rib cage. Whipping winds and pelting rain thrashed his face as he threw open the doors and stormed outside, not bothering to wait for the butler or the footmen to follow him.
A figure laid motionless in the distance.
It can’t be. Please.
His feet hurtled desperately toward the woman sprawled on the ground in the rose garden. His clothes quickly became sodden from the turbulent storm, but he couldn’t care less.
Silas’s heart dropped to the floor, unfathomable pain carving through him when he recognized the unmistakable deep chocolate of her hair, the lithe and graceful frame of her body clad in her uniform, the dark gray wool worn by all the staff.
No. Please, I beg you.
Clutching his chest, he charged toward her, hoping she was still alive yet knowing from the stillness of her figure that she wasn’t.
Choking back a sob, he knelt before her, his fingers shaking as he brushed a few wet strands from her face.
Her body was twisted and broken, lying amongst her beloved roses.
Her eyes were closed, but her face was unblemished, beautiful even in death, even when lying in the macabre river of red soaked to the soil below her.
“Emma, sweetheart,” he rasped. He cradled her broken frame in his arms, tears slipping down his face. “Why didn’t you wait for me? I told you in my letter I was going to find you… Why didn’t you wait?”
He buried his face in the crook of her neck and sobbed, “I’m so sorry, my love. It’s all my fault. I’m so, so sorry.”
Crushing regret twisted around his lungs, robbing his breath.
He was trying to do the right thing by his family—his legitimate family in the eyes of the law.
He was going to find her when things were in order, when he settled his affairs with his younger brother to take over his duties and ended things with his wife, a cruel woman his father forced him to marry at a young age.
He was going to. He was going to do so many things…
And now there’d be no opportunities to do any of them, for what he’d done to her, to their child, was irreparable.
As he held her cold body in his crushing embrace, willing the lightning to strike him so he could go with her to the great beyond, his thoughts were filled with memories of her—them painting together under the moonlight in the rose garden.
She whispered, her hand clutching a paintbrush, “‘Hope is the dream of a waking man,’ and I’m living my dream every day with you.”
His voice was rough. “Aristotle said that.”
“And he would be right. I’m the happiest person with you.”
How wrong she was. If he had known the ending of their love story, he would never fall in love with the woman who could see through the glamour of his wealth and estate and could see the lonely man living inside him.
Then she would be alive.
“My love, didn’t you say hope is the dream of a waking man?
Why did you give up on hope…on us?” His cries were loud in the garden as he held her tightly, her blood soaking through his clothes.
His mind held tightly onto denial, even though he knew it was too late…
much too late. “Don’t leave me. Please…don’t leave me. ”
He should’ve known from the desperation in her voice as she pounded the door of his study last night, the hopelessness in her beautiful eyes when he told her there was nothing more he could do for her, that he wouldn’t leave his wife for her.
They were all lies he spewed from his mouth because he knew his wife was listening in the next room.
And now, she and their unborn child were gone—her melodious laughter, her gentle touch, her warm heart, all vaporized into the rain, swallowed by the hallowed ground.
Something sharp scraped his forearm, and he looked up, finding a crow pecking at a crumbled cream envelope clutched in the hand of his beloved.
He pried the envelope from her icy fingers as the storm raged around them, his breath choking in his throat at the elegant swirl of his name on the front, the smudges from the rain blurring the words.
My Beloved Silas
With shaking fingers, he took out her letter, miraculously kept dry in her tight grip. Her last words to him.
My Beloved Silas,
If you read this, then I and our unborn child have already departed this world. I have risked everything and given you my all—my love, my dignity, my reputation. Being the foolish woman I am, if I could rewind time, I’m not sure I would’ve had the strength to stay away from you.
I want to tell you I understand the pressures of being an Anderson, of upholding your righteous family name to keep it untarnished from scandal. I want to tell you I forgive you and love you all the same so you can close your eyes at night in peace.
But I can never forgive you for depriving our child of a chance at life. As I bleed and feel his life snuffing out, I finally know what true agony is, and I wonder, had you been a man of your word, if things would’ve turned out differently.
You are a coward, Silas, and I can’t help but hold both immense love and hatred toward you. Your love is poisonous, a taker of lives. As retribution for our child who was innocent in our affair, I leave you with this:
I wish for your family to learn not to give love so cruelly, so selfishly. To learn the meaning of true sacrifice. Should a firstborn son of the Anderson name fall in love and marry, the person of his affections shall fall to an untimely demise lest the lesson be learned.
Yours, faithful in death,
Emma
“My love. It’s all my fault. I-I failed you. I should’ve acted much sooner. I’m a c-coward.” She was bleeding and losing their child, and he never knew. She had no one to comfort her as she was cast out of this house. How devastated and hopeless she must’ve felt.
“I’m sorry, Emma.” He pressed a kiss on her cold forehead.
The butler and footmen pried his arms off his sweetheart, but he held on tightly, not willing to let go of his soulmate, the woman who’d always hold his heart, even in death.
He shouldn’t have loved her. He killed her.
“No! Let me go!” he screamed, his eyes wild with anguish.
Amid the struggle, the necklace around Emma’s neck broke off from its owner. The storm carried it away in blood-tainted waters, but Silas barely noticed as he was dragged back into the estate.
I’ll find you again, my love. Death cannot separate us.