The Unchaste

Thoroughly - *Edited*

The moor remained snowbound for three successive days onwards that night, the roads all too obstructed to be traversed and that forestalled Delilah's departure back home. Meantime, She did her very best to steer clear of the Lord of the Stormcastle, nattily avoiding any such occasion that risked their encounter.

He himself seemed to be much in the same vein of intention. Three days and Delilah hardly met him for more than two times, both unincidental. Three days and they didn't talk once.

She was not shying away from him.

It wasn't as if she had kissed him in spur of passion or delicacy of the moment. In truth, Delilah had needed an essential closure.

Realizing that the man had been her childhood ally; that he grew up with her and had watched her grow with such intimacy made it exceedingly hard for Delilah to picture him as her rival anymore.

What illicit things he did, or did not do, eclipsed under the fact that he was Jake's best friend back then_ that he had been dear to the one she had once considered dearest. He held, even if barely, a string of her childhood recollections and that alone made her unconsciously impartial towards him.

She could not have killed him loving him.

With that kiss, she valedicted first, then destroyed that invisible boy_ Jake's Richie the very day she learnt of him and against her, once again, he stood as His Grace Richard Winter, Duke of York, her suspected necrophilac villain who had cadavers in his basement and who smuggled bodies of young, dead girls.

Hence, after that night, Delilah had no reason to keep running into him, or to run into him at all. He was just the man he had been. Not hers, Andrew's and Jake's escapade mate. He was no one, no more.

She kept telling herself that the fourth day, as she stood staring in the mirror, cautiously doing her hair so as not to stretch the bruise on her forehead and conceal it too. It had lightened somewhat, the purplish smudge, but it sat utter against her pale complexion. Her cheek was worse. Was the bruise there even healing? She plainly doubted.

Her toes were about two weeks away from actual recovery.

Ghost instructions had been that she was not to exert herself much but since there was no point sitting grimly in a single room, she remained in the library all day long.

Fourth day however, the sky apparently ran out of snow and Delilah, of her lady luck.

Andrew arrived at Stormcastle.

To say she was horrified would have been an impassive explanation of Delilah's deepest fear. She was incensed, to state it simply. With Andrew here, she had undoubtedly exposed her most vulnerable portion_ her family_ to the danger lurking around and upon her.

She had been attacked out of oblivion by someone here from Stormcastle and now, her attackers probably knew of her brother had they not known it before.

She entered the parlour furious like a vicious storm.

"Andrew. You didn't have to come!"

Her brother, who had been scanning the book collection on the mantelpiece, turned to face her with his big, autographic smile but it washed off his face almost the moment his eyes landed on her.