Loveless

Chapter One

No one knows why it happened, the fire it started from basically nothing. But just like that, everything was gone. The manor, the servants, Mother and Father. All were gone, nothing stood but ashes where a fine Manor once stood, and her memories. She stood, beside the old foundation, her dress covered in soot; she had searched for anything, a relics of some kind to remember by. For hours she searched on her hands and knees, but the fire took everything. It was all gone. Everything.

"Miss." Slowly she looked up to the carriage on the stone pathway, the driver had his hat in his hands. Hair was falling from the top of his head. "If you are quite done, your sister is waiting for you." He gripped his hat and looked up to the sky growing dark, and so did she. "Plus it's getting dark."

"Very well," she attempted to brush the soot off her dress, she didn't want to walk to her sister Eleanor and her brother-in-law Jon's Manor looking like a chimney sweeper; but with no other garment, this would have to do. "We mustn't keep her waiting, she worries like Mother had done."

Mother. Yes, Mother had been a worrier, and paranoid of basically everything. And all that worrying, and all that paranoia had helped nothing and left Mother in a ash pile. "Come Miss Josephine, I will help you into the carriage." Josephine took one step towards the carriage and driver, and looked back one last time. Yes, if she would have arrived a minute sooner that day she too would have been ablazed along side her parents. Josephine sighed and took the drivers hand and lifted up into the carriage. She looked no more at the ashes as the driver closed the door, nor did she look at it through the window. No, instead Josephine starred forward; didn't even turn her head to look when the carriage jerked forward. Remorse stung in her heart as the pulled away, for this was the last time she would see her childhood home ever again.

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The moon poured through the crack of the tapestry, in the carriage as they came to a stop. Long ago, the Manor was buzzing with live. Brightly lit, vivid with colors. The noise of many parties, could be heard. But now? It was m