Ghost in the Machine (Undertaker x Female Reader)

Chapter Twelve.

Time passed, as it is bidden to do. I gained a governess—not as a substitute for the care my mother would have given me, my father insisted, but because she was needed to keep me protected. As I've mentioned, I was not keen on learning the ins and outs of aristocratic life from her at first, but knowledge of these things would serve me as the boat that kept me afloat in the mire of criticism and suspicion that had lost my mother as its target, and now settled upon me. Social warfare among the peerage was not a thing of blunt words, typically, and between my awareness of their expectations and the success my father enjoyed from his estate and his investments, they were little motivated to be the first to strike at me publicly.

My uncle was on a different level entirely. He was still living in the house of his father-in-law, a lord whose daughter—my aunt by marriage, though hardly one in spirit—had given their family the only son in a generation; her own brother had passed away from illness before he could inherit the title. My baby cousin would eventually take it on, but instead of being pleased for his son, my uncle bemoaned the fact that it was only a barony, and that he himself would be left untitled.

If this bothered my father, I was not aware of it at the time. He remained as placid as ever, tending to my needs and those of his tenants. He did not let on that by then, he had already set the wheels in motion on developments that would alter our lives quite thoroughly. He had done so believing in a happy ending for us both. I do not blame him for making this his goal, just as I do not blame him for his actions being our ultimate undoing.

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As I grew older, I had taken on the work my mother had dedicated herself to, looking after the villagers and tenant farmer families in their times of need. So, too, had the "ghosts" grown with me, their whispers louder and more frequent with each year that passed. Their warnings sometimes offered me more time with which to fight against them than in other instances, and I found myself in my mother's position, hurrying to find the owner of the names they breathed into my ear before they could be taken from us.

Of course, I was never able to save them.

I felt the sting of the words that my mother had suffered, even though—like her—I was still summoned for my skills. I saved many lives, and welcomed as many into the world. I was bolstered by this, and it kept me determined to not give up on the work I was doing to honor my mother and challenge my heart to fight on.

However, I was also quite aware of the situation in which my father found himself: Without a male heir, his title would pass to my uncle upon his death. If I didn't marry and have a son, the dukedom would be handed over to his brother George, including all of our tenants, the farmers and others who benefitted from my father's custody of their land. My uncle was less likely to care to invest in the people our estate supported, himself favoring investment in up-and-coming industrial ventures. I, of course, would be simply out in the cold.

My father never spoke of any of this at length to me in the blur of my teenage years, seemingly unwilling to lay the pressure of progeniture upon my shoulders along with everything I had already insisted on carrying. However, I felt the shame of being so useless in that capacity, with boys of my station turning up their nose at me; many nights I cried in private, sorry that my father should have what remained of his heart broken at the thought of his only child being so utterly unwanted. I cared not so much for my own feelings in the end, but for the crime of denying him what should be one of life's great happinesses. He himself had chosen not to wed again after losing my mother, although I hoped he might. He could still take steps to guarantee himself the son and heir he needed, and I would be free. He showed no inclination to do so, though, and I worried it was as much because he feared appearing to "give up" on me as it was about his love for his first wife.