It was simply morbid.
What Eden felt like right now, the maelstrom of words that inexplicably swirled within her skull - those that her husband had admitted down in the altar back at the church, the way he had handled her since...all of it was cruel enough for any girl to soak a mountain soft with her tears.
And especially so, when she held no idea over where her deeds had gone flawful.
But with Eden, the impacts of this disgrace went quite on the opposite extreme.
She suddenly quietened like some immaterial entity. Thoughts, reactions, replies and references stopped streaming her head. The offensive humiliations stopped making any sense, any more. In a way, her head went blank and so did her eyes. The expression she carried was one of unthinking which Lord Adelwood certainly mistook as her audacious overbearing. Her insolence.
But for herself, Eden had nothing to lose. Far less for questions, she had no tears. Not one at all.
She descended the coach stairs once Lord Adelwood was let out and stepped down on the graveled lane, looking at the wide, huge manor which she knew to be the Ashleyton. One of the oldest, richest constructions, this state offered. One of the most beautiful ones.
One, where impoverished people like her had no business to be.
The sun was a comfortable eavesdropper as it rendered the silent chattering of the wind and her cheeks blushed as warmth of it enveloped her body.
"Do you wish to waste the day out there?"
"No Sir." She voiced her words even before she had realized the question.
Her eyes met the vain green ones of her husband and apparently, his lordship didn't take rash replies very kindly on his person. She backed off impulsively, troubled by the intense arrogance his emerald eyes implied. Afraid, in fact.
"You ought not to be so impertinent." He hissed, stepping nearer to her, towering her with his lean, impressive height. "Especially around your husband."
Stone and gravel crunched beneath her sole as she retreated further behind, until her back was against the coach but her eyes never fell away from his gaze. They leveled him.
"Noted, my lord." She mumbled. Again. Impertinently.
By now, he was fuming, she could tell. His eyes grew hellish green and his jaw was set in hard composure. He shook his head with a conceited air and then, just in exasperation or perhaps annoyance, he threw his hand up in the air.
This gesture however gave Eden the usual impression of being hit and impulsively, she crossed her hand over her face in defense.
One big moment passed away. Several such slipped by. But no strike came down upon her.
Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and to her great embarrassment, noticed the way her fingers quivered. But then, it had always been like that. Some fear do not fade with age. They just grow on. And on. Till they become you. She lowered her hands slowly, only to see an astounded Lord Stephen Adelwood gaping at her with a triggered air and stunned pair of eyes.
He backed off two steps or so hastily and his gaze fell on the ground.
"I ....I will never do that." He whispered, more like telling himself so than assuring her that. "I will never assault a woman."
She was surprised somewhat at his sudden gentry, his straightforwardness but that was a surprise too short-lived.
"Contain yourself, my lord." She mumbled. "I didn't mean to dart an insult on your principles. My fear was impulsive." And Habitual.
For this ones, he didn't say anything. But his eyes came up to her face as he read her eyes cheerlessly for long.
"Come with me." He said without a shift in his gaze and turning around, marched off to the architecture while she stayed rooted on her ground.
"After him." She told herself.
And followed down his trail to the huge shade.
***
No doubt, a manor so colossal from outside had to be equally extensive from within.
So after a substantial phase of twenty minutes, Eden was led into some remote depth of Ashleyton lead by the majestic Lord himself to a chamber that could have been the study of Lord Adelwood or even a library, if judged on its layout. There were endless number of books. A too large desk that was too stuffed as well. Walls were all riddled with maps, newspaper cut-outs and parchments of ink-ridden sheets.
And it was cool. The heat of the outside that lingered on their skins as sweat beads began to cool down in the shaded beautiful darkness of within.
She was gawking at the painted ceiling above her when his lordship, her husband addressed her indifferently...
"You shall have enough measure of time to admire those, Miss Henley."
She straightened instantly, looking forward though not at him and nodded her head.
"I will not riddle you with stories." He declared walking alongside his desk. "I am in no disposition to challenge you with my feelings over this wedding or to question yours over it but by now, I hope that I have made it abundantly clear to you that this marriage in an unfavored one from my behalf."
"Yes sir." And saying so, Eden did not feel the slightest of feelings in herself. "You have."
He was not being polite with her. He was being diplomatic. He was being commercial.
"And let me tell you this Miss Henley that I intend to end this wedding on the earliest possible date for the more we delay, the more shall we suffer."
This however, alarmed Eden to an extent where she looked up at him with fright-filled eyes. "And t-thence?"
"And thence, we both shall be free from each other to lead our own independent living." His tone was condescending one. It was cold and it implied to her how much he despised her.
But what terrorized Eden was the fact that with the end of this marriage, she would be forced to accost back her old life with her uncle back in his cottage. With his late night drunk stupors, his reckless, merciless beating her and so much work that would all again break her spine at the end of the day.
"And what will become of me, then?" she asked, not wishing to check this single question of her.
"That would not be my concern miss, if you see."
But this was not enough to satisfy her. She unraveled the deepest of her courage and moved infront of his desk, facing him now.
"When you leave me..." she swallowed, "When they would discover the fact that Lord Stephen Adelwood had once been my husband but then for some cause he left me_ he annulled the arrangement, what shall become of me? Who will have me? No gentleman with a slightest reputation would accept me as his.....his wife. They would all question my integrity."
That made Lord Adelwood laugh a small laughter.
"Indeed?" he quirked a brow at her for response but wordlessness had clogged her throat unanswerable. "You should have thought of that before agreeing onto this marriage despite all my warnings."
"What warnings, my lord? I had no knowledge that you were so much against this wedding. I thought_"
"You didn't, huh?" and a vile grimace filled his lordship's face as he interrupted her. "I do not approve LIES Miss Henley." He growled.
And that simply confused Eden. How was she supposed to know what he had wanted? She had never met him but on this day.
Her silence induced the necessary triumph and his lordship continued, "And you believe that a gentleman would have accepted you as his wife even if any of this would not have happened? Do you really think that with the grade of a tramp, you could have ever been a part of British social class? That a gentleman would have proposed you his hand? Oh my, then I must say, you walk around in an illusion."
Although, no.
Eden had no such belief or illusion of the kind.
Not because she knew how tramp her gradewas but simply because before all this, she never had enough peace of mind to think of her life. Of her future. Her marriage.
Every other day was a struggle to put a bread on her table or to survive the poisons her drunk uncle used to put upon her. She never had been considerate enough towards herself.
"Now that you have asked it, the simplest way to avoid such dishonor on yourself, Miss Henley, would be to never let them know that you have been tied onto me." Lord Adelwood said after a moment long of sincere pondering. "I have taken the precaution of letting the least know of what happened today. Most of them do not care of what comes out of this marriage_ your uncle, for the instance. I had allowed the day off to my servants so that they did not witness your arrival with me in such state. Rest of the confidentiality has to be maintained by you, for your own sake."
She nodded looking in the blank air.
"All the while to our parting, you may just stay here or move back to where you belonged. Belong."
Eden took in a deep breath. How well he managed to insult her with his every simple statement.
"How long will the divorce take?" she posed, weakly.
"Six month at the earliest." He said, with a bit frustration that was implied clearly to her. "And I want no games from you for I am sure all you will put your best effort in repositioning this wedding."
"You presume a lot, Sir." Eden bit out, without glancing his way. "I will make no efforts to displease you by doing that. I only have one single request that you must grant me."
His eyes got narrowed in suspicion as emerald green gaze sharpened onto her.
"What is it?" he demanded warily.
"Let me work here for that time interval." She stated, very seriously while the man infront stared at her as if she had lost her sanity. "Let me stay here as your servant till the annulment. I shall work and you should pay me the way you pay them, as much as you pay them. Besides, that would be the best disguise for me if I stay here."
"Why would you do that?" Lord Adelwood mumbled darkly as he regarded her. "Why would you rather stay here as a worker than go home?"
"There won't be a difference anyway, my lord." She replied. "I shall be working there as much as I shall work here."
But his frown deepened.
"I didn't ask you the story of your life." He deadpanned. "Why do you chose this place than that if there is no difference eitherly?"
"Merely because you promised you won't hit me here."
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