Duke of Camellias

THIRTY-TWO

Blair was dressed, Flemings had helped him pack his luggage, and insisted Blair take the clothes the Duke had brought for him, and then he was ready to go.

That morning, all the staff came to say their farewells. Ethan was sobbing, and Josephine comforted him. Even Alicia was quiet. Flemings walked up to him, and seemed to want to say something, but he couldn't say anything. Finally, he spoke.

"Are you sure you wouldn't take your payment?"

"No, I made a gamble with the Duke," he said. "And I've lost, fair and square."

It was only a week away from March, but it didn't matter anymore.

Ethan and Douglas had loaded his trunk into the carriage just as Blair walked out of the door and felt the wind on his face. He loved the wind. He hadn't realized how long it had been since he last felt it. The wind rustled the bushes and branches, and they seemed to sing a sorrowful lullaby for him as he helped himself onto the carriage.

It was so lonely and big without another passenger, and when he looked at the seat before him, he could only remember that man.

He couldn't bring himself to look up at the window neither, the window Emmanuel—no, Charles—was always at, looking down at his beloved garden. He knew he wouldn't be there.

The staff, however, were all gathered below, and waved at him. Only Flemings stood there with a somber face. Blair wished he could've said something to him, but he couldn't. Only Flemings knew how much he cared for the Duke, and knew what their relationship meant to him.

"Come back sometime!" Alicia said, unaware of what had transpired between him and the Duke.

"Yes," Ethan shouted, "don't forget us when you become famous!"

"Tell us your stories someday!"

The carriage began to move, and Blair's chest tightened. He leaned out the window, but he could not speak. The faces who had been with him these months, nearly half an year, were soothing, and now he had to leave them all behind. He would never return again.

Never watch them bicker, never hear their good mornings and good nights. Never have Flemings dress him and talk about the Duke. Never go to the market, walk about the garden, draw in the study room, and sleep on the soft bed and eat the warm breakfasts and dinners.

He would never walk up the familiar carpeted staircase, running his fingers on the lacquered bannister, never typewrite at the table in his room at candlelight, never see the faces of the sad and forlorn girls in the paintings that lined the halls and walls of the room, and sit at the dining table which faced the windows.

Never would he see the Duke again, the curls falling into his face, his occasion sly smirk, hear his clever remarks, hold his hand, kiss his lips, and share secrets in the presence of others.

It had all disappeared because he could not love the Duke.

The horses's hooves fastened from a trot to a run and the carriage began to wobble and shake. It was all too familiar, the scent of the flowers on his jacket, the paint that once got onto his trousers, and the swaying windows in the carriage. Even the empty seat.

Blair closed his eyes and leaned back. He had tried so hard but he cried anyways.

Charles was a murderer, an imposter, a liar. Like he said that day in the painting room, he was an actor. Too good of an actor. Somewhere, Blair had thought he would win the wager, and he trusted the Duke and thought he trusted him back.

He thought they would leave together, but he was so foolish. He was so terribly arrogant and naive.

"I never knew you," Blair whispered, to no one in particular. "I never knew you, Charles."

***

After getting off from the train, the sky had grew dark. He walked alone, to the once familiar cemetery. There, he stopped by the grave. Once there had been so many flowers on it, but now it was empty. He forced on a smiled before falling to his knees on the wet soil.

"Eleanora," he whispered. He had never talked out loud to her grave before, and it felt strange, but he yearned to. He hadn't spoken to anyone about his feelings, and here, he finally could.

"Eleanora," he repeated, clutching his face. "Eleanora, you've left me. I never knew how much it would hurt. Even now, it doesn't seem possible. I've always tried to believe you were here, waiting for me. Now that I've returned, I can't imagine you not being here. It's so strange. It hurts.

"I have fallen in love, Eleanora. With a man. He's such a lonely man. He is an imposter, he's not even who his name is. I just realized I don't know him at all. And yet I still love him.

"This love is strange. It's not the love I always wrote about. It doesn't feel like a fire at all. It doesn't burn. No, it's so strangely cold. When I think of him, I only want to cry. I am afraid of holding him, when he cries, I cannot kiss him without fear in my heart, and every night, I feel sinful and I beg for forgiveness.

"I feel so worthless, because I could not do anything, not for him, nor me. This love feels much more like snow, floating there in the air, never quite reaching the ground and melting. It floats, like a leaf, in the air forever. It never ends."

Blair laughed, and then he realized his hands were soaked with his tears and snot. He continued to laugh, and the salty tears fell into his mouth, and he closed his mouth and his hands were in the ground, fingernails digging into the soil.

"Eleanora! Eleanora—it hurts so much! It all hurts, losing you, and him, too! I am so alone! Again and again!"

He pulled his shoulders up with every sob, and was unable to even cry. He sobbed, and the dark world merged in his eyes. They were all one dark hazy blue, and it was so scary.

The cemetery was cold and he was all alone.

Eleanora, Emmanuel, Charles, and Christopher, Laurence, Morris, and Flemings, Ethan, and Josephine and Alicia—they were nowhere to be found. They would never find him here, crying at a small cemetery past midnight. No one knew who Emmanuel and Charles really were, and what they really thought, and felt. Blair could publish the book, but what did that do?

Charles, known as Emmanuel, would be hated, prosecuted as a murderer, and he would be lynched. And then? The duchess would still be there, weeping for her children, and although she was a villain, she had suffered, and the previous Duke of Thornton was dead. Gregory and Jeremy were somewhere out in the world, hurting others, and they could never repent for their sins, revive the cat they killed. And Cynthia—she could never go back to how she was.

Most of all, Emmanuel was dead. Blair would never know who he really was.

Who Charles really was.

The world was so terribly wrong and nothing could right it.

So he sobbed, all night, before the grave, in the cemetery, cries undistinguishable from the dog's howls and cat's screams.