My Abusive Relatives Treated Me Like Dirt — Until The Empire’s Strongest Duke Knelt Before Me
Part 3
Ash under the fingernails scarcely truly washes out.
It stubbornly settles into the cuticles, a permanent marker of a ruined life.
For ten years, Megan scrubbed the the estate floors until her knuckles bled.
Afterwards, the empire’s most feared commander dropped to his knees in the soot.
The lye soap smells like sour milk and chemical heat.
It does not lather so much as it strips, peeling away grease, dirt, and eventually the top layer of skin.
Megan kept her hands submerged in the scalding water of the wash basin, eyes fixed on the greasy surface of Brenda’s morning plates.
The wash water was turning gray.
It was consistently gray.
She scrubbed a piece of hardened egg yolk off the porcelain with her thumbnail, the nail bending uncomfortably backward.
She didn’t sigh.
Sighing required a surplus of breath she hadn’t possessed since she was twelve.
Ten years ago, her father, a minor baron with a major gambling addiction, had fallen off his horse and broken his neck.
He left Megan to the mercy of her distant cousins, Brenda’s family.
They hadn’t locked her in a tower or beaten her with whips.
Their brand of cruelty was far more practical.
They had simply handed her a mop, told the servants to stop taking her orders, and let the crushing weight of daily labor erode her identity.
One doesn’t need to torture a girl to break her.
One just needs to make her wake up at four in the morning to haul coal until her spine aches so badly that she forgets how to dream.
Megan pulled her hands from the water.
They were raw, pink, and felt as rough as untreated timber.
She wiped them on her coarse linen apron, leaving damp patches over her thighs.
The kitchen around her was a cacophony of frantic, sweating bodies.
The cook, Patty, was screaming at a scullery boy, her face the color of raw beef.
Thick steam rolled off boiling pots of cabbage and venison stock, coating the stone walls in condensation that smelled faintly of marrow and panic.
The duke, Craig, was arriving today.
The family estate, known as the manor, had been in a state of hysterical upheaval for three weeks.
Craig functioned as the military arm of the emperor, a man who had spent the last decade subjugating the northern rebellions.
He was exceptionally rich, entirely unmarried, and supposedly coming to inspect the regional garrisons.
Brenda, conversely, saw him purely as a solution to the estate’s rotting roof and mounting debts.
She fully intended to throw her daughter, Heather, at the duke like a piece of raw meat to a starving wolf.
Megan didn’t care about the politics.
She only cared that the duke’s arrival meant she had to polish the grand staircase’s silver banisters twice a day because Brenda was paranoid about tarnishing.
Patty barked Megan’s name, slamming a bloody wooden mallet onto the chopping block.
She ordered Megan to get the ash buckets from the hearths and make them spotless before the horns sounded.
Megan didn’t argue.
She grabbed the two iron pails and walked toward the servants’ stairwell.
The air grew colder the higher she climbed.
The overpowering smells of the kitchen giving way to the sterile, suffocating scent of lemon oil, beeswax, and dried lavender.
It carried the scent of a museum, a place where things were preserved yet dead.
She reached the main hall.
The marble floor was a checkerboard of black and white, cold enough to seep through the thin soles of her worn leather boots.
She knelt by the massive fireplace, her knees popping loudly in the quiet expanse of the room.
She began to sweep the gray dust into her pan.
The soot plumed, catching in her throat.
She coughed, a dry, harsh, hacking sound, turning her head to spit a speck of black phlegm into her rag.
The massive oak doors of the manor suddenly groaned inward.
No brass horns had sounded, no herald had announced him.
The doors just opened, letting in a violent gust of freezing wind that blew half of Megan’s collected ash back across the pristine hearth.
Megan swore softly, a gutter curse she’d learned from the stable boys.
Loud, rhythmic footsteps echoed on the marble, spurs clinking.
Megan didn’t look up.
She was too busy glaring at the ruined ash pile.
She reached out with her brush, frantically trying to herd the dust back into the pan before Brenda could appear and dock her meals for a week.
A shadow fell over her.
A pair of boots stopped inches from her hand.
They were high, black riding boots caked in fresh, wet mud.
The wet mud dripped onto the white marble.
Megan’s vision tunneled.
She had just spent three hours on her hands and knees washing this floor with a bristle brush.
Slowly, deliberately, her gaze trailed up from the mud-spattered leather, past dark woolen trousers, a heavy riding coat smelling strongly of wet horse and ozone, up to a face that looked like it had been carved from granite by someone who lacked patience.
The duke, Craig, did not look like a romantic hero.
He appeared utterly exhausted.
He bore a faint scar cutting through his left eyebrow, making his expression perpetually severe.
His dark hair was heavily windblown and plastered to his forehead.
His eyes, a pale, startling gray, looked down at her.
He remained silent.
He seemed to be assessing her as an obstacle.
Megan told him he was tracking mud on the stone.
Her voice was scratchy from the soot.
Not a whisper, nor a tremble, an accusation.
The duke’s gray eyes narrowed slightly, imperceptibly.
The oppressive silence stretched.
Any normal servant would have pressed their forehead to the floor.
Megan remained on her knees, sitting back on her heels, holding her filthy brush like a weapon, smelling of lye and cabbage, staring him down with the absolute fearlessness of a woman who literally had nothing left to lose but her broom.
Craig glanced at the mud dripping from his boot.
He stared at the clean floor ahead of him.
Then, without a word, he shifted his weight, took a wide step around her small frame, and walked toward the grand staircase, leaving a trail of dirt that conspicuously avoided her freshly swept hearth.
Megan stared after him, her jaw tight.
She didn’t feel a flutter in her stomach.
She felt a deep, profound irritation.
She muttered to the empty hall that she would have to mop again.
The main dining room was a furnace.
About three dozen tallow candles burned fiercely in the iron chandeliers, dripping hot wax onto the linen below.
The air felt thick enough to chew, saturated with the smell of roasted pheasant, heavy claret wine, and the cloying musky perfume Brenda had doused Heather in.
Megan stood in the shadows near the servants’ entrance, a heavy silver pitcher digging into her calloused palm.
Her back ached with a dull, throbbing rhythm.
She had been on her feet for nineteen hours.
The cheap canvas corset Brenda forced the serving girls to wear for appearances dug its rigid whalebone into Megan’s lower ribs with every shallow breath she took.
At the head of the expansive oak table sat Craig.
He seemed even larger sitting down, his broad shoulders dwarfing the delicate high-backed chair.
He had changed into a rich dark velvet doublet, but he wore it like armor, stiff and unyielding.
He was not drinking the wine.
He was systematically dissecting his pheasant, chewing with the joyless efficiency of a soldier consuming rations.
Heather sat positioned to his right, wearing a gown of emerald silk that practically spilled over the arms of her chair.
She was chattering endlessly, her high-pitched laugh cutting through the heavy air like a glass shard.
She chattered about how dreadful the northern winters must be, leaning so far forward her cleavage was practically resting in the gravy boat.
Craig did not look up from his plate.
He curtly replied that the cold keeps the rot away.
His tone was a low, resonant baritone, entirely devoid of conversational warmth.
It sounded like the voice of a man giving an order to the executioner.
Heather blinked rapidly, her smile faltering for a fraction of a second before she recovered with another trilling laugh.
Brenda hissed at Megan from the corner of her mouth, demanding wine for the table.
Megan moved silently to the head of the table.
She stepped between Heather and Craig.
The large silver pitcher weighed at least ten pounds.
Megan’s right wrist, strained from scrubbing the stones earlier, trembled slightly as she hoisted it.
She poured the dark red wine into Heather’s crystal goblet.
Heather, visibly annoyed that the duke was looking at the tablecloth instead of her silk dress, abruptly threw her hands up in an exaggerated gesture.
She declared she would bring warmth to the north herself, her elbow striking Megan’s forearm hard.
Megan’s exhausted muscles gave out.
The massive silver pitcher tipped.
A bright splash of crimson wine arced through the air.
It completely missed the duke, but it caught the edge of Heather’s emerald sleeve and splashed violently across the pristine white tablecloth.
A heavy silence slammed into the room.
The constant clinking of silverware stopped.
Heather stood out of her chair, her face contorting from a sweet smile into a mask of pure ugly rage.
She called Megan a stupid clumsy wretch.
Before Megan could step back, before she could even brace herself, Heather’s hand lashed out.
The harsh slap echoed sharply off the high ceilings.
It was a very solid hit.
Heather wore heavy gold rings and one of them caught Megan right on the cheekbone.
Megan’s head snapped to the side.
A blinding flash of white light popped behind her eyes, followed instantly by a hot radiating sting.
Megan didn’t fall.
She staggered a half step, her heavy boots planting firmly on the floorboards.
She didn’t drop the pitcher.
Her white-knuckled grip held it against her stomach.
Slowly, she turned her face back.
She didn’t cry.
The natural instinct for tears had dried up years ago.
Instead, a metallic taste flooded her mouth.
She ran her tongue over her inner cheek, feeling the torn flesh.
A thin trickle of blood welled up from a cut just beneath her eye where the ring had bitten into the skin.
She looked at Heather, her expression entirely dead.
There was no hurt in her eyes, only a cold, calculating understanding of the violence she was subjected to, and the knowledge that reacting would only mean starvation tomorrow.
Brenda ordered Megan to clean it up and get out of their sight, her voice like cracking ice.
Megan knelt.
She reached for the soaked linen napkin to dab at the spilled wine, her movements mechanical, detached.
Her cut thumb from a broken glass earlier that morning throbbed in time with her cheek.
A hand suddenly clamped around her wrist.
Megan flinched, a sharp intake of breath hissing through her teeth.
She looked up.
Craig was suddenly out of his chair.
He had maneuvered with a terrifying silence.
He was crouching beside her, his large, rough hand encircling her thin, bruised wrist.
From close up, he smelled of leather, soap, and something metallic, like unsheathed iron.
His pale gray eyes were locked onto the cut on her cheek, tracing the thin line of blood that was slowly dripping down to her jaw.
Megan whispered for him to let go, the words slipping out before her survival instinct could stop them.
Craig didn’t release her.
He rotated his head slowly, looking up at Heather.
The ambient temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
He ordered Heather to sit down.
He did not yell.
The calm quietness of his voice made it infinitely more dangerous.
Heather visibly swallowed hard, the color draining from her face.
She fell back into her chair, her silk skirts rustling nervously.
Craig dug into his breast pocket with his free hand and pulled out a plain, square handkerchief.
He pressed it toward Megan’s face.
Megan jerked her head back, batting his hand away.
Her rough, raw fingers swiped against his clean knuckles.
She hissed at him not to touch her, her voice low, venomous.
She didn’t want his pity.
She didn’t want the duke playing a benevolent god in front of his audience.
His interference wouldn’t save her.
It would only make Brenda punish her worse once his carriage rolled away.
She hated the way he looked at her, not with lust, but with a sudden, sharp recognition that made her skin crawl.
She snatched her wrist out of his grip, grabbed the dripping napkin, and stood up abruptly.
The room spun for a fraction of a second, black spots dancing in her peripheral vision.
She ignored them, clutching the soiled cloth to her chest, and turned her back on the most powerful man in the empire.
She walked quickly toward the kitchen doors, the sound of her heavy boots thudding against the floorboards, leaving the suffocating silence of the dining room behind her.
The cold rain began at midnight.
It was not a gentle shower.
It felt like a punishing, freezing deluge that turned the estate grounds into a treacherous swamp of freezing mud.
Megan was in the rear courtyard.
Brenda, true to form, had delivered her punishment quietly through the head housekeeper.
Megan was to scrub the cobblestones outside the kitchen doors until the grease from the slaughtering blocks was entirely gone, in a torrential downpour in late autumn.
Megan knelt in the sludge, a bucket of freezing, soapy water beside her.
She wasn’t wearing a cloak, only her thin canvas dress and the heavy apron, which was now soaked through and clinging to her shivering frame like a second skin.
Her teeth were chattering so violently, she thought her jaw might crack.
The cut on her cheek throbbed with a hot, localized fever, a sharp contrast to the ice water running down her spine.
She scrubbed.
The rough bristles of the brush scraped against the wet stone.
It proved to be a useless task.
The rain was washing the soap away faster than she could apply it.
It was purely an exercise in breaking her.
Her vision was blurring.
A deep, bone-rattling ache had settled into her chest.
She was sick.
She had felt the fever creeping in behind her eyes since the afternoon, a heavy, dull heat that made her thoughts sluggish and fragmented.
She stopped scrubbing for a moment, letting the brush rest on the stones.
She stared at her hands.
Her knuckles were split, bleeding sluggishly, the blood washing away instantly in the rain.
She thought about lying down, just curling up on the wet stones and letting the cold take her.
That would be quiet.
She wouldn’t have to carry the ash buckets tomorrow.
A sudden heavy splash broke through the monotonous roar of the rain.
Megan didn’t turn around.
She assumed it was a stable hand, or maybe one of the guards seeking shelter.
She picked up her brush and dug it back into the grooves of the cobblestone, her movements stiff, mechanical.
A deep, resonant voice asked if she was trying to kill herself, or just annoy him by dying on his boots.
Megan’s breath hitched.
She slowly turned her head.
Craig was standing three feet away.
He was wearing no hat, his dark hair plastered flat to his skull, the rain running in rivers down his stern face.
He wore a heavy wool greatcoat thrown over his shoulders, but it was already darkening with the wet.
Within the gloom, his pale eyes seemed to glow with a strange, furious intensity.
Megan told him to go away, her voice barely a croak drowned out by the storm.
Craig moved forward, his boots sinking deep into the muck.
He reached down, grabbing her by the upper arm.
His grip was entirely ungentle, firm, calloused, and startlingly hot against her freezing skin.
He hauled her upward.
Megan’s legs were entirely numb.
As he pulled her up, her knees buckled.
She slammed into his chest, her wet face pressing against the rough wool of his coat.
It strongly smelled of wet sheep, expensive tobacco, and him.
She panicked.
Ten years of surviving told her that powerful men touching you in the dark meant danger.
She shoved him hard.
Her hands hit his chest, finding no give in the hard muscle beneath the coat.
She snarled at him not to touch her, thrashing wildly.
She swung her arm, the heavy wooden scrub brush still clutched in her fist.
The rough edge of the wood clipped his jaw.
A dirty streak of filthy, soapy water smeared across his face.
He did not flinch.
He didn’t raise a hand to strike her.
He just tightened his grip on her arms, holding her steady as she fought him like a feral cat.
He commanded her to stop.
Megan gasped for him to let her go, her breath coming in ragged, painful wheezes.
She kicked his shin with her heavy boot.
She told him he was ruining everything and that Brenda would kill her.
Her voice cracked, turning into a wretched, wet cough that tore at her throat.
She sagged against him, the fight draining out of her instantly, replaced by an overwhelming, suffocating exhaustion.
Her legs simply ceased to function.
Craig caught her weight.
He didn’t try to drag her back to her feet.
When he looked at her, really looked at her, he saw the fever burning brightly in the sunken hollows of her eyes.
He saw the violent trembling of her frail shoulders.
He saw the utter, devastating hopelessness that had momentarily cracked through her armor of rage.
He realized then that trying to pull her up into his world was useless.
She didn’t trust his world.
His world had enslaved her.
So, he stepped into hers.
Slowly, without loosening his grip on her shoulders, Craig, the duke of the northern reaches, commander of the royal armies, bent his knees.
The thick, pristine wool of his coat dragged through the mud.
The muddy water soaked into his tailored trousers.
He slowly knelt.
He lowered his massive frame until his knees were planted firmly in the freezing sludge, bringing him exactly to eye level with her as she slumped on the ground.
Megan stared at him, her chest heaving, the rain washing the blood from her cheek.
Her mind could not process the image in front of her.
Noble men like him did not kneel in the dirt.
Craig did not look at the mud covering his clothes.
He looked only at her.
His stern expression was no longer severe.
It appeared stripped bare, revealing a raw, terrifying sincerity.
He told her he was not going to let them kill her, his voice a low rumble that vibrated over the sound of the rain.
He added he was not going to let her die there to spite them.
Megan looked at the mud on his knees.
She looked at his hands holding her shoulders, grounding her in the storm.
For the first time in ten years, the frozen dam inside her chest cracked, just a fraction.
She didn’t nod.
She just closed her eyes and let the darkness take her.
Fresh linen.
Fresh, dry linen smells like sunlight trapped in woven threads.
That was the first thing that registered.
The second was the total, unsettling absence of pain in her lower spine.
Megan opened her eyes.
The room ceiling was entirely wrong.
It was not the rotting, damp, stained beams of the servant quarters, but smooth plaster edged with intricate crown molding.
She tried to sit up and the world violently tilted.
A dull roar filled her ears, a leftover symptom of the fever that had boiled her blood for however many hours or days had passed.
She collapsed back into the pillows.
The pillows were filled with down, yielding and obscenely soft.
She felt trapped by the comfort, her body so accustomed to resisting hard surfaces that this softness felt like a trap waiting to spring.
A voice to her left commanded her to drink.
Megan snapped her head sideways, ignoring the sharp spike of nausea the movement caused.
Craig was sitting in a high-backed leather chair near the hearth.
He was not wearing his armor or his heavy coat.
He dressed in a simple white linen shirt, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows, exposing forearms corded with muscle and crisscrossed with faded silvery scars.
He studied a stack of ledgers, a quill resting loosely in his right hand.
He did not look up from the pages.
A small tin cup sat on the small table beside the bed.
Hot steam curled from the rim, carrying the bitter earthy scent of willow bark and dried mint.
Megan stared at the cup, then at him.
Her throat felt like it was lined with shattered glass.
She dragged herself upright, clutching the heavy velvet quilt to her chest.
She realized, with a sudden spike of cold panic, that she was no longer wearing her soaked, filthy canvas dress.
She was wearing a men’s sleeping tunic, easily three sizes too big, the fine cotton swamping her small frame.
She rasped out a question about who changed her clothes, her voice sounding like two stones grinding together.
Craig at last looked up, his gray eyes flat, betraying zero emotion.
He explained that his physician had tended to her because she was drowning in her own fluids.
Megan processed this, the panic subsiding, replaced immediately by a crushing, familiar dread.
She asked what time it was, and when he said it was past noon, she breathed that she had missed the morning fires.
She threw the quilt back and swung her legs over the edge of the mattress.
As soon as she tried to stand, her knees turned to water.
She pitched forward.
She didn’t hit the floor.
Craig acted with a sudden, violent speed that defied his massive size.
He caught her by the waist, lifting her effortlessly and depositing her back onto the mattress.
He ordered her to sit down.
Megan fought against the heaviness in her limbs, trying to push his hands away, explaining that Brenda didn’t forgive this and if she rested, she wouldn’t eat.
He told her she was not going back to the kitchens.
Megan froze and looked up into his face, asking bitterly if he was going to have them throw her out the front gates into the mud he pulled her from.
Craig sat back, crossing his arms over his chest.
He stated her full name, Megan Davis.
Megan flinched.
She hadn’t heard that surname spoken out loud in ten years.
He coldly recited the public record of her father’s gambling debts, then revealed what wasn’t public.
Her mother had established a dowry trust meant to unlock on her eighteenth birthday.
When her father died, Brenda claimed wardship to absorb the debts, but in reality, she assumed control of Megan’s trust.
She had drained it for a decade to pay for Heather’s silk gowns, the rotting manor, and her own gambling habits.
Megan looked down at her hands.
The darkly ingrained ash was still there.
Ten years of being treated like an infected stray dog, all while they stole what was hers.
The rage that spiked in her chest was too hot, too dry for tears.
She asked him why he cared, a man who subjugated rebellions.
He noted he was here to commandeer the estate because Brenda’s family were bankrupt and owed forty thousand gold pieces in taxes.
He retrieved a heavy iron key from his pocket and tossed it onto the bed.
It dropped on the velvet quilt with a dull thud.
He told her it was the key to the estate’s main vault, containing a ledger detailing every copper Brenda stole.
That was enough to see her and her daughter hanged.
He gave her two choices.
She could take that key, hand it to the magistrate, and spend five years in court.
Or, she could walk out the door, get in his carriage, and leave them to the rot.
He needed an estate manager who knew exactly how much a loaf of bread cost and how to spot a rotting floorboard.
He was offering her a job, giving her one hour before he left for the capital.
The courtyard smelled of damp earth, horse sweat, and freezing autumn air.
Megan stood on the grand steps of the manor wearing a deep navy traveling dress supplied by the duke’s pragmatic physician.
It fit decently enough, though the wool felt impossibly heavy against skin accustomed to thin canvas.
She held a small leather satchel containing the physician’s medical supplies and a single change of undergarments.
She had nothing else to her name.
She hadn’t taken the key.
She had left it sitting on the velvet quilt.
The realization had come to her with a cold, absolute clarity.
Destroying Brenda’s family would require her to stay tethered to them, requiring her to care.
She simply didn’t have the energy left to care about Brenda or Heather.
Let the crown take their home.
Let them freeze in the streets.
A heavy black carriage stood in the center of the cobblestones hitched to four massive draft horses.
Brenda stood in the doorway of the manor, her face an ugly mottled purple.
She was flanked by two royal soldiers who had arrived an hour ago to begin the eviction process.
Heather was behind her, sobbing loudly into a lace handkerchief, looking at the soldiers with terrified wide eyes.
Brenda screamed that they had taken Megan in and fed her when her degenerate father left her with nothing, accusing Megan of stealing their home.
Megan turned slowly and looked at Brenda.
For ten years, this woman had been a towering monolith of terror.
Now, standing in the harsh morning light, Brenda just looked small, old, desperate, and remarkably pathetic.
Megan didn’t shout back or spit.
She just adjusted the strap of her leather satchel on her shoulder.
She told Brenda quietly that the roof leaked and the bread was moldy.
She turned her back on the screaming woman and walked toward the carriage.
The heavy iron door swung open from the inside.
Craig was seated on the far bench, wrapped in his dark wool greatcoat.
He watched her climb the steps, his expression unreadable.
Megan settled onto the opposite seat, the leather freezing stiff against her back.
Craig ordered the driver to drive, rapping his knuckles against the wooden panel behind him.
The massive carriage lurched forward.
Megan kept her eyes fixed firmly on the brass handle of the door.
The sound of Brenda’s screaming faded, drowned out by the rhythmic thud of the horses’ hooves and the creaking of the carriage springs.
The heavy metal gates clanged shut behind them, a definitive, final sound.
The silence inside the carriage was thick, broken only by the rattle of the road.
Megan sat rigidly, her hands folded in her lap.
Her knuckles were still split, the skin around her nails raw and inflamed.
Craig observed that she didn’t take the key.
Megan leaned her head back against the velvet interior.
She murmured that carrying their debt was exhausting and she just wanted it to be empty.
Craig didn’t reply immediately.
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small, round tin, tossing it across the carriage.
Megan caught it clumsily against her chest.
Craig told her it was beeswax, camphor, and sheep’s tallow for her hands.
He added gruffly that if she was going to manage his estate, she would be handling sensitive parchment, and he couldn’t have her bleeding over his tax ledgers.
Megan unscrewed the lid.
The smell of camphor was sharp, medicinal, and incredibly grounding.
She dipped two rough fingers into the waxy salve, rubbing it into her split knuckles.
It sank into the cracks of her skin with a deep, soothing burn.
She looked up at Craig.
He hadn’t rescued her out of love, but out of a terrifying, shared understanding of what it took to survive in a world that wanted to grind you into dust.
Megan stated that her starting salary would be forty silver pieces a month, room and board included.
She required two hot meals a day, entirely devoid of cabbage, and she would not polish silver, ever.
Craig stared at her, the silence stretching heavy and taut.
Then, slowly, the hard, severe lines of his face fractured.
The corner of his mouth twitched upward just a fraction of an inch, revealing a phantom hint of a smile that didn’t quite reach his pale eyes.
He countered with thirty-five silver pieces and told her she would learn to ride a horse because he didn’t wait for carriages when surveying the borders.
Megan looked at her greased, healing hands.
She looked at the passing trees, blurring into a continuous streak of freedom outside the glass.
The air in the carriage smelled of camphor, damp wool, and cold leather.
It didn’t smell like lye.
Megan agreed.
THE END
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Disclaimer
This story is a work of fiction inspired by real events. Names, characters, and details have been altered. Any resemblance is coincidental. The author and publisher disclaim accuracy, liability, and responsibility for interpretations or reliance. If you would like to share your story, please send it to [email protected].
