𝐋𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐋𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐄𝐒

Chapter 13

LADY ARAMINA EMBRY WAS CRYING. It was stupid, ridiculous, and childish. But the tears wouldn't stop. They had free rein and they wouldn't listen. She had tried counting to a hundred, her back against the cold wall of the dark room she was bounded in. She had told herself that tears don't help, they never help, but nothing seemed to do the trick. Aramina wasn't afraid of her world ending, as far she knew, her happiness had been butchered the moment she left London in a run from the uncle who was supposed to care for her— who was the only family she had left in London. What was a life without happiness? She knew the world she had known for her had ended then and there. So she wasn't afraid of it anymore. 

The only question that bothered her was the fact that she had done nothing to deserve it. Where did her fault lie? Had she made a mistake without knowing? A terrible one that had landed her in here? Did she deserve this somehow? 

She wouldn't ever right this though, because there was no righting it, at least that's the conclusion she had drawn from every angle she had looked at her situation in. She could never give up her inheritance to Thomas Cranmer willingly. It was her father's gift to her. She may have done nothing to deserve it, but it was his legacy. The lands, the money, it was everything of her father that she had left. Why would she give it away? Death was better— nay honourable, than wilfully giving her father's legacy to a criminal who didn't deserve it. 

Aramina's father was the rock of her life, while her mother had fled the first chance she'd gotten. He had worked all his life to make sure Aramina and her mother had a good life, and on the eve of his daughter's sixteenth birthday he had come home to find a sobbing Aramina clutching a hastily written letter in her hand that she had been much to young to read.  

Aramina wiped at the tears on her face and let out a scoff as her thoughts ventured to the contents of that letter. Her mother had eloped with a navy officer, making claims of love that Aramina had hoped and wished would unravel like a loose thread in her mother's face. That woman hadn't deserved the respect and love her father had given her— if Aramina knew anything for sure in this world, it was that. 

Lord Montague Embry had taken it like a hero. He had stayed by his daughter's side, kept on working for her until the social ladder promised him the life of comfort for his daughter and himself. And then, when Aramina had thought she'd have him to herself finally, he had succumbed to an illness and died in her arms. 

At the funeral, Aramina had wondered if the navy officer's arms kept her mother warm— because she herself now had no embrace to fall into. 

If her father could see her now, from the crevices of heaven, what would he think of the bounds on her wrists, the darkness of this room, and the tears going dry on her face? 

Suddenly, the door to the room she was in burst open and Aramina stifled a scream of shock. Her frantic eyes found a pair of similarly anxious grey eyes cast upon her from the door. Philip. Slamming his eyes shut and shaking his head to ward off what Aramina believed were thoughts, he darted towards her, instantly landing on his knees in front of her and reaching for her bounds desperately. 

"What is it? What are you doing?" Aramina let out, voice laced with fear. Would he hurt her? or was he taking her to be hurt? She was finally going to meet her uncle since he captured her, wasn't she? 

Philip lifted his head to look at her, freckles sitting on his nose like glitter, grey eyes peering into her. Aramina realized how close he was to her, their noses could brush if she leaned just half an inch. 

"I— I can't do this anymore," He spoke with his broken voice that Aramina had come to find so much comfort in. 

"Do what?" She hastily spoke, "Is it Cranmer? Are you taking me to him?"