Chapter To whoever finds this
To whoever finds this,
I don't know who you are, or when you're reading this. Perhaps years have passed. Perhaps decades. Perhaps you're a servant, or a stranger, or someone I loved who never knew how much.
It doesn't matter. What matters is what I need to say.
I made a mistake. The worst mistake of my life. And I've spent ten years paying for it—not in any external way, but in the currency of regret that accumulates daily in a heart that has forgotten how to feel.
I loved someone once. Truly loved him, with all the passion and madness that love entails.
He was a scholar, brilliant, kind, full of dreams that made the world seem larger and brighter.
We were going to run away together. We had plans, a future we'd imagined in whispered conversations and stolen moments.
But my family found out. My father, my sister Helena, and everyone who was supposed to love me; they made it clear that if I chose him, I would be choosing exile. Poverty. Shame.
And I was afraid. So terribly, pathetically afraid.
So I gave him up. I married the man my family had chosen for me, a duke, cold and distant and utterly incapable of love. I came to live in this beautiful, empty house, and I tried to be what everyone expected.
I failed. Of course, I failed. You cannot build a life on the ashes of the one you destroyed.
My husband never loved me. My sister, who pushed me into this marriage, never understood why I couldn't simply accept my good fortune.
And my son, my beautiful boy, who deserved so much better, grew up watching his mother fade away, and learned that love was something to be feared rather than cherished.
I'm writing this because I know I'm dying. The fever they say is killing me is just an excuse; I've been dying for years, from the inside out. The body is simply catching up to the spirit.
But before I go, I need to say this to someone. Anyone.
If you ever have the chance to choose love, real love, the kind that makes you feel alive, choose it. Don't let fear make your decision for you. Don't let other people's expectations shape your life.
I gave up the man I loved because I thought I was being sensible. Being responsible. Being a good daughter and a proper lady.
I was wrong. I was so terribly, devastatingly wrong.
Love is not madness. Love is the only sanity in a world determined to crush the life out of us. And if you are lucky enough to find it, if someone looks at you and sees the person you really are, not the person others expect you to be, hold on to them with everything you have.
Don't make my mistake.
Don't spend your life writing letters that no one will ever read, wishing you had been braver.
Choose love. Choose life. Choose to be happy, even if the world tells you that happiness is not for people like you.
You deserve it. We all deserve it.
With all the regret in my heart, Catherine.