A Broken Inheritance

Chapter 49: The Diary of Edouard Marchant

She is not cruel about it.

But she knows.

And still, she does not send me away.

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June 23, 1682
Voclain Estate

I caught a fever last week. It should have been nothing—a brief affliction, a few days of bedrest—but it lingered longer than I expected.

I had not expected her to tend to me.

But she did.

Not like a healer. Not like a concerned friend.

She was precise, efficient, unmoved by my suffering. And yet, when I woke in the dead of night, feverish and disoriented, she was there, seated beside my bed, reading by candlelight.

"You should sleep," I rasped.

She did not look up.

"So should you."

I fell asleep to the sound of pages turning.

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August 17, 1682
Voclain Estate

I have been here a year today.

I wonder if she remembers.

No—not remembers. That would imply she had ever marked the occasion in the first place. And Selene Voclain is not the type of woman who keeps track of things as insignificant as time.

Still, I find myself wanting to tell her.

I do not know why.

Perhaps because I am no longer the man who arrived at these cliffs twelve months ago, stepping into this house with ink-stained hands and a mind full of certainty. Perhaps because I want her to see it, to acknowledge it. That I have changed. That she has changed me.

But if I were to tell her, she would only tilt her head in that way she does, studying me like one of her books, like something curious, and say nothing at all.

So I do not say it.

Instead, I watch her watch the sea.

She stands at the edge of the cliffs, motionless, her gaze fixed on the waves below as if waiting for something long lost to return.

She does this often.

I used to believe she admired the view, that the vastness of the ocean offered her something even she could not name.

But now, I wonder.

Now, I think she watches the water the way one watches a grave.

As though something of herself was buried beneath it long ago.

I think—though I have no proof—that she is lonely.

She would never admit it. She would never allow it. And yet, there are moments, fleeting as they are, where I see the way her fingers twitch at her sides, as if resisting the urge to reach for something. Someone.

I wonder if she knows that I would let her.

That I would stand beside her in silence for as long as she needed.

That if she asked me to follow her into the sea, I would.

It terrifies me, this realisation.