The English Descendants

1

Sir Thomas Sharpe is dead.

He hasn't been dead for very long, but the thing about being dead is that, with the ability to drift in and out of time, it feels like both a very short and a very long time at the same time. Which gets rather confusing to the newly deceased.

He has been thinking, though, and that, he discovered quite quickly, is a good way to become a very sad ghost.

But at the same time, death gives one the time to figure things out and much about his life is quite a lot clearer without the trappings of actually being alive getting in his way. He likes also that he can escape into himself entirely and close out everything else. It is a bit like a sensory deprivation, but being dead, he has few senses that work the same way as they did before. Even sight is different. But at least there is time away from her.

Lucille started this. His childhood was hell, but he was happy at boarding school. So long as he minded his studies and kept to himself, no one hit him. No no one coerced him into anything in exchange for protection against beatings. And no on locked him away in the attic and told him to stay out of the library, a blessing he was entirely grateful for. When he had realized that this was possible, that the books were there for him, he had felt an entire world of possibility explode into his imagination. It was in that room, by the light of a candelabra that had a terrible habit of dripping wax on books, that he had discovered his love of engineering. Of steam powered things and the exciting mechanisms that brought steel to life.

And then she had come for him. He had begged her to leave, to wait for him at the house, but she was insistent. It was only after he promised to come home for holidays and to send her whatever he could spare from his work as a page in the nearby university library that she agreed to let him finish his studies. He dreaded the house. He dreaded her, even though he loved her and could not imagine his life without her. He dreaded the look on her face when she would ask him to repay the kindness of his poor, oft-beaten older sister who had spared him all those lashes, especially that one time when their father caught her, not him, in the library. And even more-so, he dreaded the look on her face when she pushed him back on the bed. But at the same time...it was the only love he'd ever known. There was something there he recognized from the night she killed their mother that frightened him even more than the sounds the old house made as the wind whipped through the collapsing roof. A taking of power and control that he knew he fighting was a terrible idea. Lucille would have what she wanted, one way or another. And so he came to believe she was who he wanted as well. The only person he would ever need and the only love he could possibly ever feel.

He wanted to attend university, but she was insistent that he care for her and to keep the legacy of the Sharpe family alive at Allerdale Hall. He told her this was best done working from the city and he would be even more capable with his coveted engineering degree in hand. But she said no. And she begged him so insistently not to leave her alone that he stayed home and tinkered in the attic.

Then what little money he had managed to save ran out and Lucille had a plan. She knew he was pretty, more than most young men his age. There were things, she said, they could do to make this work. He could marry a wealthy young woman who was attracted to his face and his title. He resisted this plan, but she told him he would never have to consummate this marriage...or any other. She would take care of him. Just like she always did. And because he had no other plans, no other ideas on how to make life work when his mining invention wasn't yet functional and they needed money to finance the project, he went along with it. He hadn't realized she had such a skill for poisons. He had assumed she would be messy in her work, but she was not. He wondered, though, after she dumped the first body in the vat of clay in the cellar, if she really believed in his machine or if she just wanted to kill someone so she could be comfortable. He had the sneaking suspicion it was the latter. After his second wife died and joined his first, it was no longer a suspicion and this terrified him. He had no idea if she would stop. And he had no idea if, when the invention worked, there would be any freedom for him or if she would hang this over his head so he would never leave, no matter how wealthy the clay made them.