Sir Thomas Sharpe is dead.
He hasn't been dead for very long, but the thing about being dead is that, with the ability to drift in and out of time, it feels like both a very short and a very long time at the same time. Which gets rather confusing to the newly deceased.
He has been thinking, though, and that, he discovered quite quickly, is a good way to become a very sad ghost.
But at the same time, death gives one the time to figure things out and much about his life is quite a lot clearer without the trappings of actually being alive getting in his way. He likes also that he can escape into himself entirely and close out everything else. It is a bit like a sensory deprivation, but being dead, he has few senses that work the same way as they did before. Even sight is different. But at least there is time away from her.
Lucille started this. His childhood was hell, but he was happy at boarding school. So long as he minded his studies and kept to himself, no one hit him. No no one coerced him into anything in exchange for protection against beatings. And no on locked him away in the attic and told him to stay out of the library, a blessing he was entirely grateful for. When he had realized that this was possible, that the books were there for him, he had felt an entire world of possibility explode into his imagination. It was in that room, by the light of a candelabra that had a terrible habit of dripping wax on books, that he had discovered his love of engineering. Of steam powered things and the exciting mechanisms that brought steel to life.
And then she had come for him. He had begged her to leave, to wait for him at the house, but she was insistent. It was only after he promised to come home for holidays and to send her whatever he could spare from his work as a page in the nearby university library that she agreed to let him finish his studies. He dreaded the house. He dreaded her, even though he loved her and could not imagine his life without her. He dreaded the look on her face when she would ask him to repay the kindness of his poor, oft-beaten older sister who had spared him all those lashes, especially that one time when their father caught her, not him, in the library. And even more-so, he dreaded the look on her face when she pushed him back on the bed. But at the same time...it was the only love he'd ever known. There was something there he recognized from the night she killed their mother that frightened him even more than the sounds the old house made as the wind whipped through the collapsing roof. A taking of power and control that he knew he fighting was a terrible idea. Lucille would have what she wanted, one way or another. And so he came to believe she was who he wanted as well. The only person he would ever need and the only love he could possibly ever feel.
He wanted to attend university, but she was insistent that he care for her and to keep the legacy of the Sharpe family alive at Allerdale Hall. He told her this was best done working from the city and he would be even more capable with his coveted engineering degree in hand. But she said no. And she begged him so insistently not to leave her alone that he stayed home and tinkered in the attic.
Then what little money he had managed to save ran out and Lucille had a plan. She knew he was pretty, more than most young men his age. There were things, she said, they could do to make this work. He could marry a wealthy young woman who was attracted to his face and his title. He resisted this plan, but she told him he would never have to consummate this marriage...or any other. She would take care of him. Just like she always did. And because he had no other plans, no other ideas on how to make life work when his mining invention wasn't yet functional and they needed money to finance the project, he went along with it. He hadn't realized she had such a skill for poisons. He had assumed she would be messy in her work, but she was not. He wondered, though, after she dumped the first body in the vat of clay in the cellar, if she really believed in his machine or if she just wanted to kill someone so she could be comfortable. He had the sneaking suspicion it was the latter. After his second wife died and joined his first, it was no longer a suspicion and this terrified him. He had no idea if she would stop. And he had no idea if, when the invention worked, there would be any freedom for him or if she would hang this over his head so he would never leave, no matter how wealthy the clay made them.
Then came Enola and Lucille became pregnant. Enola wanted to care for the child, no matter how strange he was, and this was something Lucille had not prepared for. Thomas felt something change in him, staring at the little face that he had made. And when the baby died, he deeply grieved, even though he did not let Lucille see this. She killed Enola shortly after. And Thomas knew that he could not live with any more deaths. The child was something innocent, something different, and something all the women he had lured to their home had once been. Something he had once been.
So he went to New York. Lucille had met Eunice and teased her about her brother, hinting that they might strike up a friendship, she could introduce the girl, and they could see where things would go, the bright and brilliant waltzing baronet. Thomas said nothing, but went ahead with his plan to visit the banks. There he met Edith, bright and witty, and saw the spark of something different. He hoped they would fund him. That this place would be different. That the plan to lure a young woman home could be abandoned in exchange for a new plan- one that required machines and steam and so much red clay that they would be rich as kings. But the answer was no, and as his heart sank, he knew this time that it was not just for one more person rejecting his ideas, the only thing he had that was truly his. It was also for the young woman who would die. He had to make his own plan, one that could run tandem with his sister's, one that might give the girl a chance of survival, and maybe even his own escape.
And that plan was Edith.
He knew she was tenacious. He knew she would fight for herself. So he told Lucille he wanted a different girl than the society woman she had found. He wanted to choose, this time, the wife he would bring home. And Lucille, who had never seen her brother participate in 'the work' of survival, begrudgingly consented. When she realized Edith was the daughter of a man who would hunt for her if she disappeared, a man who had also humiliated Thomas by forcing him to publicly shame the girl, she decided that this death had to be particularly brutal. No knives, no poisons. And then she stepped onto a train heading home having given Thomas explicit instructions. Seduce her. Kiss only when necessary. No sex. And come home quickly. She had not told him just how she had dispatched Mr Cushing, just that she had. But he knew her handiwork when he saw it. Edith's reaction was not one he was prepared for. He had never had to watch a wife react so immediately to brutal death. This time was different. And because his own plan depended on Edith's strength, seeing it falter frightened him.
When they returned to Allerdale Hall, he was happy to report to Lucille that he had done as asked. Here she was, untouched, and as quickly as possible. More quickly than any of the others. The workmen were always gone for the season when they returned, out of the way so his wives would never meet them.
Edith reacted to the house differently than the others. Awe, yes, but also with interest. It was not simply a fairy tale place, or a decrepit one she feared to enter. It was a mystery, and a place fit for the writer of novels with ghosts. This was not something Lucille liked about her. So she made tea as quickly as possible. Thomas mentioned it was not suitable for consumption, a hint he knew she would miss. Lucille later punished him dearly, as though he had given away their secret entirely.
Edith was the first wife to show an intense interest in his mechanical aptitude. And his interest in her story was not feigned, either. He wanted desperately to know if her protagonist could possibly escape his ghosts. And he knew he was falling in love with the young woman who brought sunlight into the darkness of Allerdale hall. Lucille would be unhappy with him and it was going to hurt. He would have to break the promise he made her when she set her gruesome plans in action- his promise to never fall in love. But it was not something he could help. It just happened. Kissing Edith in the workshop felt so natural, so instinctive. It was simply something he was compelled to do by every heartstring and nerve ending in his body. And he wanted to do it again and again and never stop. So when the opportunity came to stay the night away from the house, he could not have been happier, even as he slipped a letter in the post he knew would never be delivered. He finally had a night at peace. No one looking over his shoulder. No one telling him that he was hers and hers alone for all eternity, his own happiness second to hers. This was partnership of minds, bodies, and lovers and what he had been dreaming of since he discovered that marriage, for his classmates, was something to look forward to- something filled with laughter and light and a corner of the world all their own. For the first time in his life, he felt whole. In the morning, he realized what he had done and what Lucille was likely to do when she found out. Even if he never told her, she would know. He steeled himself for hard decisions, holding back tears he had not cried since he was a child and had seen his sister drive a cleaver through his mother's skull. She had been cruel, but she had been mother. In the grey dawn light before Edith woke, as she slept angelic beside him, he silently acknowledged that he might watch her die, too. He wanted to flee, then and there, but did not have the courage to tell Edith why. Because he could not admit to everything and risk losing her, they returned to Allerdale Hall.
Edith's face upon discovering he and Lucille broke his heart in a way he had not thought it could be broken. And then he felt terror for her. When she fell, Lucille shrugged as though she had dropped a toy. He knew she hoped they could be rid of her and move on to the next girl. Thomas wanted to tear her throat out. But he could never merely leave her, that much was true, no matter how much he wanted it. She would always find him.
Lucille had so firmly convinced him that to let any wife live would lead to his hanging and her institutionalization. He did not see any other end than his own if they survived. And he would take the blame for all of it, even though he had never touched the tea, touched the knives, done anything to actually kill anyone, merely been complicit. Running down the stairs after Edith's still body in the snow, he realized just how perplexing it was that his sister assumed she would simply be sent away and not tried for murder. How presumptive she was to believe that he would confess to save her. Perhaps if one of them were to die for these crimes, they both should. But greater than these, he feared for Edith and hoped that if she survived, she would accept a plea for forgiveness as the noose was tightened on his neck.
That Edith survived the fall was both a relief and a horror. And Alan's arrival was both a hope and a hell. He had never stabbed anyone before, but he knew he had to. It was the only way Edith might live. If this man loved her even a little, he would endure pain and struggle away from death for her. At least, Thomas thought, that was what he would do. It surprised him that he was thinking this way. That he was predicting the actions of a man in love based on his own beliefs about himself. That he had beliefs about himself at all, let alone those about love.
He knew he would confront Lucille one last time. That she would likely kill him in the process, but that there was a chance she would want to leave as badly as he did. As he had for years. But before he did, he had to tell Edith the truth with two short words. Two words he had said four times before and never once meant at the time he said them.
"I do."
He returned to Lucille and burned the pages. As the paper curled in the flames, he felt a part of his past dying, a wave of relief and peace following. He would not do this to Edith. He could not. Not to the first woman who loved him- probably the only person who had ever really loved him.
When Lucille stabbed him, he knew that he was right. This was not love. Or maybe it was the only kind of love she knew how to give- that of possession. When the blade pierced his skull, he knew it was death and it was an immense burden off his shoulders. But he knew he could not leave. Edith was still living, and he had to keep her that way.
Thomas had asked Lucille once when they were small children what happened after death. Did the kittens she drowned go to heaven? What about the people? Did their father go to hell? She had laughed and told him, no, there is nothing after death. We simply end. This terrified him. He had been still only a child and the idea of something later appealed to him during his harsh youth. At least if his parents beat him to death, there was something better waiting. But no, she said, quite authoritatively, there was nothing. Just an end. When they were older, after she was released from the asylum, she told him she was wrong. There was something there. But it sent most people to burn in hell, especially ones like her, and like him. He had no idea why he would burn in hell, but she seemed to know what she was talking about.
As the very freshly dead, he knew that he would rather stay around the house than find out. If anyone deserved hell, it was the man who lured young women to his sadistic sister for poisoning. He was feeling sorry for himself when Edith called out for help. It was not easy, but he stood still and silent while she bashed Lucille's head with the shovel. He thought he should possibly say something, but after all the years of watching her kill, it seemed only right that she should die for it. He only hoped that she would be merciful in the afterlife. He knew even then that she would haunt the house with him.
Sir Thomas Sharpe is dead.
And as he watches Edith sleep, Alan's wounds bandaged, a surgeon having been sent for, he thanks whatever is out there that she survived. That he chose someone strong enough to break the cycle of death. To free him from it, even if only a little, and even if not from the house or Lucille. He fades back to the house. He will watch her. He will guard her. It will be his purgatory, his payment for all he has done horribly wrong in his life. And unless she wants to see him, or he gets so terribly lonely he cannot stand it any longer, he will make sure she does not know.