Promises Unkept

A bottomless bottomful feeling.

Eden, as she raised herself slowly up from the floor, could feel her whole body swaying like rag in the wind. It might have been the slap, she considered. Or just the way Lord Adelwood’s eyes excelled right now.

She was cautious, not to make the slightest noise as she did that. There was no point dragging all the attention to herself in a room, where hush was booming in the air. And perhaps that wasn’t even the word. It was stillness of the terrible kind.

The calm that calamities bring.

It was that.

When she was up and on her feet, a little behind her uncle, another wave of that earlier drowsiness hit her. She clutched the arm of the nearby chair that had been formerly occupied by her uncle. For support.

She could just see what kind of man Lord Adelwood was.

A gentleman, who could beckon giant waves of heavy silence by his mere presence in the room. A single glare was all it took. Especially so, when he was angry.

Eden had never seen Lord Adelwood this deadly before. Not even on the day of their wedding. Not even when she had aggravated him utmost by her monotones. The only comfort, perhaps, was that for the first time_ this outrage that she was witnessing was not aimed at her.

But that only made it worse.

It meant that it was directed on her uncle.

Elegantly, she saw, Lord Stephen crossed the span of the room and was now just a counter distance away from her.

The way his eyes looked like marshland on a stormy day, flaring in the tumult of rain and withering winds, it suddenly made her nervous for her old uncle. 

“You cannot barge into our private conversations like that my lord.” She protested breaking in the heavy silence before his lordship could have said anything.

With calculated smoothness, his scornful eyes turned to her as they darkened the very same instant.

“Cannot I?” He sneered. “And is that what you call conversation?”

He extended his hand and touched the corner of her mouth making her freeze from his touch. When he pulled back his finger, it had a thick crimson blob of blood on it.

He showed it to her. “Is this what your ‘Private Conversations’ involves?”

Yes.

She wanted to tell him that this was indeed what private conversations meant for her. It had been like this for ten long years. Slaps and kicks were what her childhood had been molded of. He had no right to judge what patterns her life followed.

“That shouldn’t concern you.” She deadpanned looking sharp into his eyes. “You must leave us alone, your lordship.”

He didn’t say anything as he countered her gaze. His eyes then turned to the old man who tactlessly stood there, with a small urn in his hand_ drinking_ something of a stale medicinal alcohol.

Lord Adelwood coldly regarded him with contempt and then raising his hand, he signaled one of the footmen from the door. “You there! Yes you. Get this drunkard out of my property. Dump him in some coach, tip the driver and get him hauled as farther from here as possible.”

This now had gone too farther. Eden couldn’t believe it. How dare he pick that tone with her uncle and yes, he was her uncle! Bewildered, she stepped against the footman who was coming to manhandle the old man and glared at Lord Adelwood in offence.

“You cannot do that, Sir.” She challenged as angry moisture filled her eyes, a tremor in her voice. “He is my family, you get it? You cannot put down everyone under your shoes just because you think you are too high and important for them. What he does to me or does not is none of your business.”