only human

Three

At the age of five-and-twenty, John Kabronskawich was well overdue to get married. Ever since his older brother had died, and it was him who’d inherit the Kabronskawich family fortune, there had been immense pressure on him to marry and father children who would continue the Kabronskawich name. But after having spent the first twenty three years of his life as the downtrodden younger sibling, he saw no reason why he should now suddenly adhere to his father’s wishes. He grew quickly defiant, and swore he would die a bachelor.

Yet one sunny day in 1796 he met a young, radiant Caroline Rochford, and was immediately besotted by her. Caroline at fourteen looked much older than her years, and, standing next to her then-thirteen-year-old sister Sylvie who at the time looked a lot younger than her years, she could have passed for at least twenty. Her features were smaller than Sylvie’s – she’d inherited her father’s small brown eyes, thin lips, slim face and the straight, pointed nose that both she and her sister shared. Her hair was lighter than Sylvie’s: the colour of gold rather than the colour of hay. Her character was sensitive, yet fiery, proud, yet loyal.

Through her, Kabronskawich found a part of himself that he never knew existed: he was a romantic. He sent her flowers – roses, tulips, unknown wild beauties he’d hand pick from a meadow – wrote to her often, visited her on many an occasion, and as she grew older her affections for him grew equally. She was easily flattered by his compliments, and that was a good thing because the sight of her smiling brought the warmest glow to his heart.

However, John wasn’t quick to act on his passions; he knew he had to be sure. So after two years of courtship; after he was certain that his heart was hers and her heart was his, he travelled to London to consort her father, and then proposed to her on her birthday when on a walk around the grounds of her home in Hertfordshire.

Naturally, she accepted his offer of marriage. Multiple romances did not interest Caroline: her dream was to marry sooner rather than later, and to love her husband unquestioningly for all eternity, and in Kabronskawich her hopes were answered.

Sylvie had been infinitely supportive of the match. While Caroline’s behaviour could at times be impractical around her fiancée, John brought out the softer side of her sister. Their wedding was to be in June; a summer wedding; and Sylvie was to be the maid of honour.

Caroline and John’s love was much the envy of Mrs Jane Rochford. There was no love between her and her husband – affection, perhaps; the sort of affection that meant they were friends, but it was definitely not love. Had Christopher Rochford been in love with his wife, he was not the sort of man to show it. He was an honourable man, and averse to displays of affection be they public or private. His heart was a closed box and only one held the key. That key-holder, though she little knew it, was his daughter Sylvie.

Once, Christopher Rochford had been in love. At the time married to Jane, though, he would not allow himself to acknowledge his burning passion, this fire that coursed through him. The woman in question was everything he was not: lively, curious, quick-tempered, and kind. She breathed life into the old Rochford and changed him from a cruel man into someone, well, not altogether loving and caring but definitely something less harsh. Even after she was long gone and he knew he never see her again, when his second daughter Sylvie began to mature into a woman herself, he saw in her a similar energy to the woman he’d once loved. Christopher knew that without this reminder, this echo of the past, he might just regress into that spiteful man he’d once been, and every day when his daughters were asleep he thanked Sylvie for helping him in this way, although she never knew how much she meant to him, and never would.

The only person who had ever seen the heart of Mr Rochford was John Kabronskawich when he asked Christopher to let him marry Caroline. “Mr Kabronskawich,” Rochford had said, “I will let you marry my daughter, but promise me that you will take care of her. Sylvie is the most important thing to me, the most precious person in this world, do you understand?” Mr Kabronskawich had quietly said that he did understand, but he had rather intended to marry Caroline, not Sylvie. In an instant, the Rochford heart was closed once more. Caroline was Jane’s child. By blood she was his too, of course, but really she belonged with Jane. Mr Rochford had no trouble with allowing this man he hardly knew marry Caroline. And so John Kabronskawich left quietly, his head troubled by Rochford’s conduct, but his heart too elated to care.