Three months.
Three months and life would be the way it should have been. Or, better yet, be the way it always was. Eden will not be attached to him anymore, not her name, nor would her responsibility weigh him down and he shall be free. Free to be_ what?
Free?
He would be free to be free.
Three months ago, this reflection would have delighted him to no bind and what not would he have conferred to hasten this affair from beyond months to within days. Hours. However, that would have been then.
And because, things can change in a day, because a few moments and a lifetime can be altered, it was not the same anymore.
It was a bit distorted. Bent, in its consign.
It didn’t rouse the crucial warmth in his chest to think that after these ninety days to follow, a prim paperwork and a few formalities would thrust the woman named Eden Henleyout of his life. Eternally. It didn’t make him breathe freer.
And yet, what worried him more was the fact that instead of warmth, he felt a wariness nibbling at his horizons on the contemplation that three months from now and Eden would be no one to him.
Not that she was anyone to him right now….….but a man can imagine.
His chest heaved like an ocean on full moon.
High tide.
Tranquil waves.
He gazed through the massive window of his room that was rain beaten from the outside. Drops after drops incidenting all over. The world beyond_ too dark to be seen. Too remote. Too greedy.
Where he was about to lose her tonight.
His finger, long and lean, touched the glass panel. It was cold.
It felt icy.
The way his heart had felt when he had heard of that ominous death of a girl uphill this evening.
He frowned.
Three months and what had changed?
His intense promises for dismantling her future and twisting her life into a hell set lose; when did that change into keeping her safe and animating her_ just in his darkest, deepest fantasies_ as his wife? And a true wife, whom he could love, cherish and bestow the rest of his essence and existence. To whom he could make promises that were meant to be kept. With whom he could imagine sharing same roof in living and same grave in death.
Oh, what an unearthly harmony it would be, to be laid in peace with someone you have lived in pleasure by.
Soft, cold soil embracing. Placid darkness. Flowers blooming all over the loosen earth above.
He sighed in the deep glee that this envisage offered.
Certainly, Eden Henley didn’t have to be that person. His soul-mate.
She didn’t had in her what he wanted for a wife.
It was another thing altogether, to say, that whatever he wanted in his wife was all that he had seen in Eden Henley.
He wanted a wife like Eden Henley.
***
Eden hurriedly combed through the wet, tangled and snarled net of her bleak hairs with the thick comb teeth, yanking at the knots hard and almost too savagely for a girl, until she had tinged her cheeks red in anguish and forehead wrinkled in annoyance.
YOU ARE READING
Promises Unkept
Historical FictionThe 'marriage' was against his will. The woman was beyond his liking. So, when Lord Stephan Adelwood was married to the poor girl named Eden Henley, his fire did bruise the lady badly enough to change her entirely. Promises were broken, hearts were...
