My Husband Built a Shrine to His Ex — So I Froze Them Both Out
Part 3
Megan didn’t find out through a scandalous letter or a whispered rumor from a kitchen maid.
Megan found out because of a teacup.
For 3 years her husband strictly forbade lemon in his tea.
He said the acidity ruined the delicate leaves.
But when she walked into their parlor damp from the rain and shivering, he didn’t even ask.
He simply poured the tea, sliced the lemon, and handed it to her.
That was the exact moment Megan knew.
Megan was merely the understudy.
It is a strange thing to build a life on the foundation of someone else’s silence.
For 3 years Megan believed her marriage to Greg the Duke was a triumph of pragmatism over passion.
They were not the subjects of breathless gossip.
They did not share stolen glances across crowded ballrooms, nor did they tear at each other’s clothing in the dimly lit corridors of his ancestral estate.
Their beginning was a transaction signed in a heavy oak-paneled room smelling of floor wax and her father’s stale cigar smoke.
Megan came with a substantial dowry of coal-rich land.
Greg came with a title older than the trees in his sprawling park and an estate desperately leaking money through its slate roofs.
Megan was 22, pragmatic to a fault, and thoroughly unremarkable.
Her hair was a dull heavy brown that resisted pins, her shoulders a fraction too broad for the delicate silks currently in fashion in London.
Megan did not possess the kind of beauty that ruined men.
Megan possessed the kind of competence that kept them comfortable.
When Megan moved into the manor, Megan found a house holding its breath.
The staff spoke in hushed tones.
The heavy velvet curtains were drawn against the afternoon sun.
The place smelled of old dust, damp wool, and something vaguely metallic like cold iron left out in the frost.
Greg matched the house.
He was a tall man, lean and angular with eyes the of a winter sea.
He moved quietly, spoke softly, and possessed a deeply entrenched melancholy that Megan, in her naive arrogance, thought Megan could slowly dismantle.
Megan went to work.
Megan threw open the windows to let the crisp country air chase away the stagnation.
Megan fired the lazy steward, rolled up her sleeves, and spent her mornings with ink staining her fingertips balancing ledgers that had been neglected for half a decade.
Megan ordered the chimneys swept.
Megan commanded the gardeners to tame the overgrown grounds.
And slowly, the house began to breathe again.
And slowly, Megan thought Greg began to look at her.
Their intimacy was built on routine.
Breakfasts were defined by the subtle ring of silverware on porcelain bowls.
It was the scent of his shaving soap, sharp peppermint and cedar, lingering in the hallway.
It was the heavy, warm weight of him beside her in the massive four-poster bed at night.
At night he was tender yet cautious, rarely keeping his eyes open as he held her.
Megan didn’t mind.
She told herself that passion was a volatile, destructive thing.
What they had was a fire built for warmth, not for burning the house down.
She molded herself to his preferences, believing she was carving out a space for herself in his heart.
“I prefer white roses.”
“Megan,” he had said mildly one afternoon as they walked the neglected terrace.
“The red ones are too loud.”
Megan spent two years painstakingly cultivating a massive garden of white roses.
Megan learned to prune them myself.
Her hands bore the tiny white scars of their thorns, a physical testament to her devotion.
“Lavender,” he murmured, once his nose brushing her neck after Megan had bathed.
“It suits you.”
Megan threw away her expensive jasmine perfumes.
Megan bathed in lavender water.
Megan kept dried sprigs of it in her linen drawers.
Megan smelled of it permanently, a walking, breathing monument to his offhand preference.
Megan drank her tea plain because he disliked the smell of sugar and lemon in the parlor.
Megan wore pale blues and soft grays because he once mentioned that bright colors gave him a headache.
She eroded her own edges to fit perfectly into the hollow space beside him and she was proud of the fit.
She thought it meant she was a good wife.
Megan thought the occasional distant look in his eyes when he stared out the drawing room window was just the burden of his title.
Megan would watch him trace the heavy gold signet ring on his right hand, his jaw ticking, and Megan would feel a swell of quiet protective affection.
Megan believed Megan was enough to anchor him.
Megan was the solid ground beneath his feet.
Megan didn’t know he was only ever looking at the horizon waiting for a ghost to walk over it.
Her name was Heather.
Megan only knew it from a single locked drawer in his study that Megan had accidentally bumped into while cleaning in a hastily covered ledger entry from years before they met.
A cousin’s widow, a political exile, a fleeting mention by a drunken uncle at their wedding who was quickly shushed.
Megan hadn’t asked.
Megan was too proud, too secure in her ledgers and her white roses and her lavender soap.
Megan didn’t care about the women who came before her because Megan was the one wearing the ring.
That was her first mistake.
Assuming that presence equated to permanence.
It was a Tuesday in late October.
The sky over the estate was the color of a bruised plum, swollen and heavy, threatening a downpour that finally broke just past 3:00 in the afternoon.
The rain did not fall.
It threw itself against the glass panes of the manor like gravel.
A fierce gale rattled the windowpanes, smelling faintly of damp soil and autumn decay.
Megan was in the library, a wool shawl pulled tightly around her shoulders, verifying the grain yields from their eastern tenant farms.
The fire crackled in the hearth, casting long erratic shadows across the bookshelves.
The afternoon had felt entirely mundane and secure.
Then the dogs started barking.
The hounds were not simply baying at a stray animal in the brush.
A sudden uproar of panicked voices spilled out from the entrance hall.
Megan set her pen down.
The ink left a tiny dark period on the page.
Megan rubbed her eyes feeling the grit of exhaustion in them, and stood up her heavy wool skirt swishing against the floorboards.
By the time Megan reached the top of the grand staircase, the massive oak front doors had already been hauled open by their butler.
The wind ripped into the hall, nearly extinguishing the wall sconces, and sending a spray of cold rain across the polished marble.
A carriage stood in the driveway, its horses stamping and steaming in the cold air.
The driver was hauling a leather trunk from the back, but her eyes were not on the carriage.
A woman stood in their foyer.
She was soaked to the bone.
A heavy dark traveling cloak clung to her slender frame, dripping water into a dark puddle on the marble.
The hood had fallen back, revealing hair that was plastered to her skull and neck, a startling luminous shade of pale gold even in the gloom.
Megan began to descend the stairs, the words of a polite, authoritative hostess forming on her tongue.
“Who are you?
Are you lost?
Bring her a towel.”
Before Megan could reach the midway landing, the door to Greg’s study banged open.
He stepped out, irritation etched into his features at the noise.
He was holding a stack of papers, his spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose.
He looked up, ready to scold the servants.
He saw her.
Megan stopped walking.
Megan stopped breathing.
Megan watched a man Megan had known intimately for 3 years entirely disintegrate and reassemble himself in the span of 3 seconds.
The papers slipped from his hands scattering across the floor with soft wet slaps.
He didn’t blink.
The muscles in his throat worked convulsively an involuntary swallow.
Every line of tension, every stoic boundary he had erected over the years vanished.
He looked suddenly terrifyingly young.
“Heather.”
He whispered.
He didn’t shout it.
It was a breathless exhalation, a sound torn from the deepest, most heavily guarded vault of his chest.
It barely carried over the sound of the rain, but it hit her like a physical blow to the ribs.
She swayed.
She looked exhausted.
Her face pale and drawn shadows bruised beneath her large eyes.
“Greg.”
She rasped.
Her voice was husky, raw.
“Megan had nowhere else to go.
He he is dead.
Megan was sorry to intrude.
Megan didn’t know.”
She didn’t finish the sentence.
Her knees gave out, sending her sinking toward the floor in a heap of damp skirts.
Greg moved faster than Megan had ever seen him move.
He crossed the foyer in three long strides catching her before her knees hit the stone.
He fell to the floor with her uncaring of the mud or the water.
He pulled her against his chest, his large hands frantically sweeping the wet hair from her face.
“You’re freezing.”
He muttered, his voice trembling.
“Get Mrs.
Hughes.
Have a fire lit in the East Wing immediately.
Bring blankets.
God, Heather, you’re like ice.”
Heather.
Megan stood on the stairs, a large, solid, unremarkable woman in a sensible brown dress holding onto the banister so tightly her knuckles ached.
He was stripping off his own fitted wool jacket, wrapping it tightly around her shivering shoulders.
Megan remembered a time early in their marriage when their carriage had broken down in the snow.
Megan had shivered for an hour.
Greg had sat opposite her, politely concerned, and offered to close the window blind.
He had never offered her his coat.
Megan forced myself to walk down the remaining steps.
Her boots felt like they were made of lead.
Every scuff of her heel seemed obscenely loud, but neither of them looked up.
Greg, Megan said.
Her voice was steady.
It was the voice of the woman who balanced the ledgers and scolded the butcher.
It lacked poetry.
S- He finally looked up at her.
For a fraction of a second, Megan saw profound, unfiltered annoyance in his eyes.
A stranger interrupting a sacred moment.
Then reality crashed back into him.
The mask slammed back into place, but clumsily.
Megan, he said, clearing his throat.
He did not let go of Heather.
This is This is Lady Heather, a childhood friend.
Her husband passed away recently in France.
She requires their hospitality.
Heather turned her head, resting it against his chest.
She looked up at her.
Her eyes were a stunning, vivid violet blue, framed by wet, dark lashes.
Despite the chill and the grime, her delicate allure remained utterly undisturbed.
She was a porcelain doll.
Megan was a brick wall.
Ma’am, she whispered to her.
Megan was so terribly sorry.
Megan didn’t mean to burden your home.
Nonsense, Megan heard myself say.
Her tone was crisp, efficient, the perfect duchess.
The manor is always a haven for her husband’s friends.
Let them get you out of those wet things.
They moved to the parlor to wait for the room to be readied.
Megan followed.
The air in the room felt thick, suffocating.
Heather sat on the settee wrapped in Greg’s coat.
It was then that the matter with the tea unfolded.
The butler brought a silver tray.
Without a word, without looking at her or asking for her preference, Greg poured the tea.
He picked up the silver tongs, selected a thick slice of lemon, dropped it into her cup, and handed it to her.
His large hand brushed gently against her freezing fingers as he offered the delicate porcelain saucer.
Megan stood by the fireplace, the heat scorching the back of her legs, and felt a cold sweat break out along her spine.
He forbade lemon.
He said it ruined the leaves.
He hadn’t forbidden it because of the tea.
He had forbidden it because the smell of it reminded him of her.
And her lack of it was just another space he kept empty waiting for her return.
Dinner that evening was an exercise in sophisticated psychological torture.
The storm raged on outside rattling the tall windows of the dining room.
Inside the massive crystal chandelier cast a harsh, unforgiving light over the long mahogany table.
Megan sat at the foot.
Greg sat at the head.
Heather sat to his right.
She’d been bathed and dressed in one of her old gowns because her trunks had fallen into a flooded ditch during her journey.
Megan had instructed her maid to alter a dress Megan hadn’t worn in years, a pale, shimmering blue silk.
It was a dress Greg had bought for her during their first year in London.
Megan had worn it proudly thinking the color pleased him.
Seeing it on Heather, Megan realized the truth with a sickening thud in her stomach.
The bodice, which had always been a fraction too tight across her ribs, fit her delicate frame perfectly.
The color made her violet eyes luminous.
He hadn’t bought it for her.
He had bought it because it was a dress Heather would have worn.
Megan had been walking around wearing the ghost of his dead romance.
The roast is excellent, Megan, Greg said.
Megan looked up from her plate.
Megan hadn’t tasted a single bite.
The roasted mutton and rosemary tasted like wet ash in her mouth.
Thank you.
Megan replied evenly, setting her silver knife down.
The scrape against the porcelain was sharp.
Their new cook is quite adept.
Greg was transformed.
The quiet stoic man Megan had lived with for 3 years was gone.
In his place was a vibrant animated stranger.
He was leaning forward, his elbows on the table, a breach of etiquette he would usually silently condemn.
His eyes, usually a flat stormy gray, were bright.
He asked Heather about Paris.
He asked about mutual acquaintances Megan had never heard of.
He laughed.
It was a deep resonant chest-rumbling sound.
Megan stared at him.
In 3 years, Megan could count the number of times he had smiled on one hand.
Megan had never not once heard him laugh like that.
Megan felt ugly.
Megan felt entirely profoundly inadequate.
Megan was suddenly hyper-aware of her broad hands, the small ink stain near her thumbnail, the practical severe cut of her dark green evening gown.
Megan must say, Greg, Heather said softly, taking a sip of her wine.
She touched the rim of the glass with a slender pale finger.
The estate looks beautiful, better than Megan remember.
When Megan left, it was so gloomy.
Megan has worked miracles with the staff, Greg said.
He threw her a brief polite smile, the kind you give a competent employee.
She is highly organized.
Organized, not beautiful, not brilliant, not cherished.
Organized.
Heather turned her large eyes to her.
You must have the patience of a saint, your grace.
Greg was always so stubbornly attached to his gloom.
Megan remember trying to get him to open the curtains in the south drawing room when they were 20.
He sulked for a week.
Greg.
She called him Greg.
Megan called him Greg.
Megan had never dared shorten his name.
It felt like a liberty he had not granted her.
One learns to adapt, Lady Heather.
Megan said, picking up her wine glass to hide the slight tremor in her hand.
Oh, please call her Heather.
Everyone does.
She smiled a sad, sweet thing.
Then she looked toward the window out into the pitch-black, rain-lashed night.
Megan saw the gardens as they drove in, even in the storm.
All those white roses.
They survived.
Her heart stopped.
Pardon?
Megan managed to push the word past the tight constriction in her throat.
Heather looked back at her, her expression entirely innocent.
The white roses.
When Greg and Megan were young before well, before Megan married, they planted a row of white roses near the old fountain.
Megan always loved them.
Megan was so afraid they would have died out by now.
Megan’m so glad you kept them, your grace.
Megan didn’t look at Heather.
Megan slowly turned her head and looked down the long expanse of the table at her husband.
Greg was staring at his plate.
He had stopped chewing.
A dull flush crept up the back of his neck, disappearing into his collar.
He would not meet her eyes.
He gripped his heavy linen napkin so tightly his knuckles were white.
The silence stretched thick and suffocating.
The only sound was the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway and the relentless drumming of the rain.
Every memory of the last 3 years began to recontextualize itself in a violent, dizzying rush.
Those specific flowers had never been a reflection of his own taste.
They were a monument to her.
The lavender soap.
Megan remembered with a wave of pure nausea unpacking Heather’s damp cloak in the foyer.
The faint sweet smell clinging to the wall beneath the scent of rain.
Lavender.
The blue dress.
The quietness.
He wasn’t naturally silent.
He was just mourning.
He wasn’t comfortable.
He was merely tolerating the void until it could be filled again.
Megan had spent 3 years meticulously building a house brick by brick entirely unaware that Megan was constructing a shrine to another woman.
Megan was not his partner.
Megan was the caretaker of his grief.
Megan was the placeholder.
The humiliation was a physical agony.
It burned in the back of her eyes and clawed at her throat.
But beneath the humiliation, a slow, freezing anger began to pool in her stomach.
Megan was practical.
Megan did not throw tantrums.
Megan stood up.
Her chair scraped loudly against the floor.
Both of them jumped slightly.
“Megan find Megan was suddenly quite fatigued,” Megan said.
Her voice was eerily calm, detached from the violent storm raging inside her ribs.
“The ledgers took a toll today.
Please excuse her.
Heather, ensure you take a hot brick to bed tonight to ward off the damp.
Greg will show you where the extra blankets are kept.
Megan.”
Greg started half rising from his chair.
His voice carried a note of panic.
Not because he was worried about her, Megan realized with brutal clarity, but because he knew he had been caught.
The illusion was shattered.
“Enjoy your evening.”
Megan said softly.
Megan turned and walked out of the dining room.
Megan kept her back perfectly straight.
Megan did not run.
Megan walked at a measured, deliberate pace, holding her breath until Megan was safely around the corner and out of their sight.
When Megan reached the heavy oak door of her bedchamber, Megan finally let out a jagged, shuddering breath.
Megan walked inside and locked the door.
Megan walked past her bed straight to the washstand.
There, sitting on the marble rim, was a fresh bar of expensive lavender soap.
Megan picked it up.
It smelled sweet.
It smelled like obedience.
It smelled like her.
Megan threw it into the fireplace, watching it hit the burning logs and begin to melt, sizzling and hissing, filling the room with a sickly, overwhelming perfume that Megan swore to myself Megan would never wear again.
Megan woke to a room that smelled violently of burnt lavender and wood smoke.
Her mouth was dry, tasting of stale wine and copper.
Megan lay perfectly still in the center of the massive, cold mattress, staring up at the velvet canopy.
Her chest felt hollowed out as if a butcher had taken a clean knife and scooped out her lungs during the night.
A lesser woman, or perhaps a more romantic one, might have wept.
She might have torn her hair, hurled a porcelain vase at the mirror, or run weeping to her husband to demand an explanation.
But Megan was the daughter of a coal baron.
Megan was raised in a house where weakness was a liability and tears did not balance the quarterly accounts.
Megan sat up.
The air in the unlit room was freezing, raising gooseflesh along her arms.
When the head maid entered half an hour later with a pitcher of warm water, she found her standing before her open wardrobe.
“Ma’am?” the maid asked softly.
Setting the pitcher on the washstand.
She glanced at the blackened lump in the fireplace, then quickly averted her eyes.
Servants always knew.
The house was a living organism.
It felt every shift in the air.
Listen to me.
Megan said her voice crackling slightly from disuse.
Take all the pale blue, gray, and cream gowns.
Pack them in trunks.
Have them sent to the parish charity by noon.
The maid blinked her hands pausing on the linen towel.
All of them, Mom?
But, that is nearly your entire afternoon wardrobe.
Megan was aware.
Megan pulled out a heavy dark burgundy wool dress.
It was severely cut devoid of lace or ribbon.
It was the dress of a woman who meant to do business, not a woman who meant to be admired.
And fetch her the harsh lye soap from the scullery.
Megan have developed a sudden aversion to floral scents.
Megan washed with punishing vigor.
The lye soap was rough and unscented, stinging the small abrasions on her knuckles where Megan had pruned her white roses just days before.
Megan scrubbed her neck and her arms until the skin was flushed and raw, until Megan smelled of nothing but clean sharp soap and her own sweat.
Megan would not be an echo anymore.
If Megan was to occupy this house, Megan would take up her own space.
Breakfast was served in the small morning room, a space that caught the thin gray autumn light.
When Megan walked in, they were already there.
They were seated close together at the round table.
Greg was reading a passage from a newspaper, his voice a low soothing murmur.
Heather was leaning on her elbows watching his mouth as he spoke.
They looked like a painting.
They looked complete.
Megan walked in the heavy soles of her leather boots clocking sharply against floorboards.
The reading stopped.
“Good morning.”
Megan said briskly, taking her seat opposite them.
Greg looked at her, and Megan saw his eyes snag on her dress.
He frowned slightly.
The burgundy wool swallowed the light.
It made her shoulders look broader, her posture uncompromising.
“You are not wearing your blue silk.”
He noted a hint of confusion in his tone.
“No.”
Megan replied, reaching for the silver bell to summon the footman.
Megan found it suddenly suffocating.
Heather offered a small tentative smile.
She was wearing one of her cream day dresses, the lace collar framing her delicate jaw.
“It is a cold morning.
Wool is much more sensible.”
“Sensible.”
The word grated against her spine.
The footman entered.
“Your grace.”
“Coffee.”
Megan said smoothly.
“Black.
And have the cook prepare eggs with cracked pepper and sharp cheddar.”
Greg lowered his newspaper entirely.
“Coffee?
Megan, you detest coffee.
It is much too bitter.
And you always take mild tea in the morning.”
Megan met his gaze.
His winter sea eyes were entirely bewildered.
It was almost comical how little he truly knew her.
How easily he had mistaken her accommodations for her personality.
“Megan have decided Megan require something with a bite.”
Megan said, holding his stare until he was the one who looked away, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.
“A palate cleanser, if you will.”
Megan turned her attention to her plate.
The silence that settled over the table was thick and suffocating.
But for the first time in three years, Megan was not the one suffocating.
Megan ate her eggs.
Megan drank the scalding bitter coffee.
It tasted like ash and earth, and it was the most magnificent thing Megan had ever consumed.
After breakfast, Megan did not go to the parlor to read.
Megan put on a heavy woolen cloak and marched out into the biting wind tracking mud against the hem of her skirt.
Megan found Mr.
Harrison, their head gardener, near the greenhouses.
He was an old man skin like tanned leather who had worked for the estate since Greg was a boy.
Harrison.
Megan called out over the roar of the wind.
He tipped his cap.
Your grace.
A foul day for a walk.
Megan turned and pointed toward the South Terrace.
The long immaculate rows of white roses shivered in the gale.
They were her pride.
They were her labor.
They were her humiliation.
Dig them up, Megan said.
Harrison froze his spade slipping in the wet earth.
Ma’am, the white roses.
But you you spent years coaxing them from the rot.
They are the finest in the county.
They are taking up valuable soil.
Megan said her voice flat betraying none of the acid churning in her stomach.
Dig them up, every last root.
Burn the briars.
Megan want the soil turned over and prepared for spring.
What shall they plant instead, your grace?
He asked looking at her as if Megan had gone mad.
Potatoes, Megan said.
Turnips.
Something that actually feeds this estate rather than merely sitting there looking pretty.
Megan turned on her heel and walked away.
The wind whipping her dark cloak around her like a storm cloud.
Megan didn’t look back.
Megan didn’t need to.
Megan knew the exact moment the first spade broke the earth because Megan felt a phantom root snap somewhere deep inside her own chest.
The house fractured into two distinct territories.
The drawing rooms, the library, and the conservatory belonged to them.
Megan would walk past closed mahogany doors and hear the soft lilting cadence of Heather’s laugh followed by the low rumbling timbre of Greg’s response.
Megan would hear the pianoforte, always Chopin, always the melancholy nocturnes that Greg claimed gave him a migraine when Megan attempted to play them.
Megan realized he didn’t hate the music.
He had just hated her hands on the keys.
Megan took the rest of the house.
Megan took the kitchens, the estate office, the tenant farms, and the account books.
Megan buried myself in the architecture of their survival.
The truth was the manor was bleeding.
Greg’s title was a grand gilded shield that hid a crumbling fortress.
Before their marriage, the estate had been heavily mortgaged.
Her dowry, the dirty new money from her father’s coal mines, had paid off the creditors, patched the slate roofs, and restocked the tenant farms.
Megan held the purse strings, though Megan had always discreetly handed the coin to Greg so he could pretend he was the one paying the piper.
Megan stopped handing him the coin.
Three days after the roses were dug up, Megan was sitting at the massive oak desk in the estate office.
Her fingers were stained with black ink.
The fire was roaring, but the chill of the room still seeped through her heavy wool dress.
The door opened without a knock.
Greg stepped in.
He looked tired, but it was a different kind of exhaustion than the hollow haunted look he had worn for the past 3 years.
This was the exhaustion of a man who was acutely, painfully alive.
He smelled of rain and faintly, maddeningly of lavender.
Megan, he said, closing the door behind him.
He looked around the office as if he had never seen it before.
In truth, he rarely came in here.
The ledgers bored him.
Greg.
Megan replied, not looking up.
Megan dipped her pen into the inkwell.
The scratch of the metal nib against the thick parchment was the only sound in the room for a long moment.
He cleared his throat.
Megan have just spoken with the seamstress in the village.
Heather’s trunks were entirely ruined by the water damage.
Her gowns are unsalvageable.
Megan have told the seamstress to come up to the manor tomorrow to take her measurements for a new wardrobe.
Her pen paused.
A small black drop of ink blooming on the white paper like a tiny dark bruise.
Megan slowly placed the pen down and looked up at him.
He was avoiding her gaze looking instead at the mounted stag’s head above the fireplace.
A new wardrobe, Megan repeated her voice terrifyingly calm.
Yes.
It is only proper.
She is their guest.
And she has suffered a great tragedy.
He ran a hand through his hair, a nervous gesture Megan recognized from their early days of marriage when he had to ask her to approve a repair to the stables.
Megan will need you to authorize a draft from the household account.
50 pounds should suffice for a modest selection.
50 pounds.
A small fortune.
Enough to repair the leaking roof in the eastern tenant cottages three times over.
Megan felt a sudden hysterical urge to laugh.
He was standing in the house her money had saved asking her to use the wealth her coal mining father had bled from the earth to buy silk gowns for the woman he actually loved.
The audacity of his blindness was staggering.
No, Megan said.
The word dropped into the room like a stone into a glassy pond.
Greg finally looked at her.
His brow furrowed.
No, Megan be reasonable.
The woman cannot wear your old cast-offs indefinitely.
It is humiliating for her.
It is humiliating for her.
Megan asked, keeping her voice low.
The anger inside her wasn’t hot.
It was glacial, carving out deep frozen canyons in her chest.
Is that your primary concern?
Greg Heather’s humiliation?
She is a widow, Megan.
She has nothing.
She has an estate in France.
Megan corrected smoothly, pulling a leather-bound ledger toward her.
Megan took the liberty of wiring her father’s solicitor in London to inquire about her late husband’s affairs.
The estate is heavily taxed, yes, but she is hardly destitute.
She is receiving a modest widow’s pension.
More than enough to purchase her own wool.
Greg’s face darkened.
A muscle ticked in his jaw.
You had her investigated.
Megan manage the finances of this estate.
Megan said, closing the ledger with a sharp, definitive snap.
Megan do not fund charities without investigating the beneficiaries.
The household account does not have 50 pounds to spare on French silk and lace.
I am the Duke, he snapped, his voice rising, shedding the polite veneer he usually wore.
And Megan say the money will be provided.
Megan stood up.
Megan was not a small woman.
In her heavy boots and dark dress, Megan was nearly as tall as he was and twice as solid.
Megan walked around the massive desk, stopping a mere two feet from him.
Megan could see the faint stubble on his chin, the panicked tightening of the skin around his eyes.
You are the Duke.
Megan agreed softly, looking dead into his eyes.
But it is her name on the bank drafts in London.
It is her father’s coal that heats these rooms.
It is her money that pays the butcher, the baker, and the seamstress.
You may have the title, Greg, but Megan own the roof over your head.
If you wish to clothe your mistress, you will have to find a way to pay for it yourself.
Sell a horse.
Sell your signet ring.
But, you will not use her money to dress her.”
He flinched.
The word mistress hung in the air between them ugly and bare.
“She is not her mistress.”
He hissed, his face pale.
“How dare you speak of her that way?
They are They are friends.
They grew up together.
Do not insult her intelligence.”
Megan whispered, stepping closer until Megan could smell the stale brandy on his breath.
“Megan spent 3 years wearing her colors, bathing in her scents, and cultivating her flowers because you were too cowardly to mourn her openly.
You built a ghost of her out of her.
But, the ghost is dead, Greg.
Megan was awake now.
And the bank is closed.”
He stared at her, his chest heaving as if he were looking at a stranger.
And perhaps he was.
The compliant, desperate girl who had arrived here 3 years ago was gone.
He turned on his heel and stormed out, slamming the door so hard the stag’s head rattled on the wall.
Megan stood in the middle of the quiet room, her hands shaking so violently Megan had to grip the edge of the desk to stay upright.
Megan had won the skirmish, but the victory tasted like rust and salt.
That night, the storm returned, rattling the window panes with aggressive bursts of sleet.
Megan was sitting in her bed chamber, staring into the fire.
Megan had not gone down to dinner.
Megan had instructed the maid to bring a tray of cold meats and bread to her room.
Megan chewed the bread mechanically, swallowing past the tight, dry knot in her throat.
At midnight, the handle of her door turned.
It wasn’t locked.
Megan hadn’t thought to lock it.
Greg walked in.
He did not knock.
He was not wearing his jacket or his cravat.
His white linen shirt was unbuttoned at the collar revealing the hollow of his throat.
He looked disheveled, wild, in a way that the Duke never allowed himself to be.
He carried a half-empty crystal tumbler of amber liquid.
He closed the door softly behind him and leaned against it staring at her.
Megan did not stand up.
Megan remained in her armchair by the fire, a heavy wool shawl wrapped around her shoulders.
You are in the wrong wing, your grace.
Megan said, her voice deliberately flat.
Lady Heather’s rooms are in the east corridor.
He ignored the barb.
He walked slowly across the room, his stockinged feet silent on the Persian rug.
He stopped beside her chair looking down at her.
The firelight cast harsh flickering shadows across the sharp planes of his face.
You dug up the roses, he said.
His voice was thick, slurred at the edges.
Megan did.
Harrison said you ordered turnips planted.
They are hardier.
They survive the frost.
Megan looked into the fire watching a log crumble into glowing red embers.
Unlike delicate things.
Greg sank heavily onto the edge of her bed.
The mattress groaned under his weight.
He rested his elbows on his knees staring into his glass.
Why are you doing this, Megan?
He asked, sounding genuinely pitifully lost.
You have been punishing her for a week.
You are cold.
You are cruel to her.
She has done nothing to you.
The sheer arrogance of his delusion snapped the last tether of her restraint.
Megan stood up letting the shawl fall to the floor.
Megan walked over to him snatching the glass from his hand and slamming it onto the bedside table.
The crystal rang sharply.
She has done nothing to her.
Megan demanded, her voice shaking with a rage so profound it felt like a physical sickness.
She hasn’t had to.
You did it for her.
He looked up at her, blinking slowly, defensively.
Megan have never raised a hand to you.
Megan have provided for you.
You hollowed her out.
Megan didn’t shout, but the words tore from her throat with a visceral violence.
Megan pressed her hands to her chest, digging her fingers into her own collarbone.
You took a living, breathing woman, and you hollowed her out to make a vessel for a ghost.
You dictated her clothes, her soap, her tea.
You made her walk and talk and smell like a dead man’s wife, so you wouldn’t have to face the fact that you weren’t man enough to claim her when you had the chance.
He shot to his feet, his face flushed with sudden, volatile anger.
That is enough.
You do not know what you are speaking of.
Megan was penniless when she was of age.
Her father sold her to a baron to settle debts.
Megan couldn’t save her.
So you bought her instead.
Megan countered, stepping into his space, refusing to back down.
You used her father’s dirty coal money to save your rotting estate, and then you used her body to play house with the woman you actually wanted.
And Megan let you.
The admission was a bitter pill, choking her as it went down.
Megan let you do it because Megan thought if Megan fit the mold perfectly enough, you would eventually love the woman inside it.
Greg stared at her.
The anger drained out of his face, replaced by a horrifying, stark realization.
He looked at her hair, at her severe dress, at the rigid, unforgiving set of her jaw.
He reached out his hand, trembling slightly, and tried to touch her cheek.
Megan flinched back so violently Megan nearly tripped over the hem of her dress.
“Don’t.”
Megan hissed.
The smell of him, brandy, rain, and that faint clinging scent of lavender from whatever embrace they had shared in the parlor downstairs, turned her stomach.
“Do not touch her.
Megan was not your reliquary, Greg.
Megan was not a shrine for you to worship at when the real goddess is asleep down the hall.”
His hand fell to his side.
He looked suddenly sick.
“Megan, Megan Megan have always cared for you.
They have a good life, a quiet life, a quiet life.”
Megan repeated, a humorless smile twisting her lips.
“Yes, it was very quiet because Megan was busy erasing myself so you wouldn’t be disturbed.”
Megan walked over to the door and pulled it open.
The cold draft from the hallway swept in.
“Go back to her.”
Megan said, her voice entirely drained of emotion.
The rage was gone, leaving only a cold, barren exhaustion.
“Go and play your tragic romance, but know this, Greg.
From tomorrow, Megan was no longer playing the understudy.
You want Heather, you may have her, but you will not have her, and you will not have her money to fund your fantasy.
Now, get out of her room.”
He stood frozen for a long moment.
He looked at the open door, then back at her.
Megan saw the fracture in his eyes, the realization that the comfortable, compliant foundation of his life had just shattered irreparably beneath his feet.
He walked out.
He didn’t look back.
Megan closed the door.
Megan locked it.
Megan leaned her forehead against the cold wood, and for the first time in 3 years, Megan wept.
Not for him.
Never for him.
Megan wept for the 22-year-old girl who had thrown away her expensive jasmine perfumes believing that a man’s preference was the same thing as his love.
When the tears finally stopped, Megan wiped her face with the rough linen of her sleeve.
The morning period was over.
It was time to dismantle the estate.
Megan did not scream.
Megan did not throw plates at the walls.
Megan simply stopped the blood flow to the estate.
The morning after Megan threw Greg out of her bedchamber, Megan sat at the heavy oak desk in the office and wrote three letters.
The first was to her father’s solicitor in London, freezing the joint household accounts and transferring the remaining balance into a private trust under her maiden name.
The second was to the estate manager ordering an immediate halt to all non-essential repairs and halting the purchase of coal for the main house.
The third was to the local tradesmen, the butcher, the baker, the seamstress, informing them that any further credit extended to the Duke would not be honored by her.
Megan sealed them with thick red wax.
Megan handed them to a rider and watched him gallop down the gravel drive, his horse’s breath pluming in the freezing air.
By Tuesday, the house began to starve.
It started with the fires.
Without the daily deliveries of premium coal, the servants were forced to burn whatever damp green wood they could scavenge from the fallen trees on the estate.
The fires sputtered and hissed producing a thin acrid smoke that stung the eyes and left a film of bitter ash on the tongue.
The grand sweeping corridors of the manor grew bone-achingly cold.
Then came the food.
The elaborate roasts and imported wines vanished replaced by salted pork root vegetables and thin ale.
The house which had once hummed with the quiet expensive warmth of her father’s money suddenly felt like a damp cave.
Megan adapted easily.
Megan had grown up in the smoky industrial chill of a northern mining town before her father struck his fortune.
Megan wore her thickest wool.
Megan ate the salted pork without complaint.
Heather did not adapt.
Megan found her in the conservatory on Thursday afternoon.
The glass walls, usually a haven of trapped heat, were entirely frosted over.
She was huddled on a wicker chair wrapped in three blankets shivering violently.
Her lips were tinged blue.
She looked up when she heard her boots on the stone floor.
The violet eyes were no longer luminous.
They were red-rimmed and panicked.
“Ma’am,” she said.
Her teeth actually chattered.
It was a pathetic clicking sound.
“Is there Is there no wood for the stove in here?”
Megan stood over her.
Megan looked down at the pale, delicate hands clutching the rough wool blankets.
“The wood is being conserved for the kitchen ovens, Heather.
They cannot afford to heat glass rooms simply for leisure.”
She stared at her.
The polite, sweet veneer she had worn since her arrival was cracking under the sheer physical discomfort.
“Greg said He said the estate was thriving.”
“Greg says many things he does not understand,” Megan replied mildly.
Megan walked over to a dying fern touching its brittle brown fronds.
He thought the estate was thriving because his accounts were magically replenished every quarter.
He never asked where the water came from so long as his cup was full.”
Heather swallowed hard.
“You froze the accounts.”
“Megan took back what belongs to her.”
She pulled the blankets tighter around her throat.
She looked small.
Not fragile and romantic, just small and desperate.
“Megan have no money, Megan.
The baron He left her nothing but debts.
Megan came here because Greg wrote to her after her husband died.
He promised Megan would be safe.
The words hit her, but the impact was dull.
A week ago, knowing Greg had reached out to her first would have destroyed her.
Now it just felt like another line item on a ledger Megan was closing out.
“He promised you a safety he did not own.”
Megan said.
“Megan cannot survive in this cold.”
She whispered.
A single tear escaped cutting a clean track through the faint layer of soot on her cheek.
“Megan was not like you.
Megan cannot be hard.
Megan need comfort.
Megan need Megan need to go to London.
Megan have an aunt there.
But Megan have no carriage fare.”
Megan looked at her.
Really looked at her.
Megan didn’t hate her.
The rage Megan had felt in the dining room was gone replaced by a clinical sterile clarity.
She was not a mastermind who had come to steal her husband.
She was a woman drowning and Greg had thrown her a life raft made entirely of her money.
Now that the raft was sinking, she was looking for another piece of driftwood.
She didn’t love him any more than he loved the real living version of her.
They were both in love with an illusion of the past funded by her present.
“Megan will purchase your train ticket to London.”
Megan said.
Her head snapped up.
Relief washed over her face naked and greedy.
“You will first class departing tomorrow morning.”
Megan said turning her back on her.
“Pack whatever you managed to salvage from the rain.
Megan suggest you do it quickly before your fingers go numb.”
Megan left her shivering in the glass room.
Megan didn’t do it out of kindness.
Megan did it because paying her to leave was the cheapest way to amputate the rotting limb from her life.
Greg found out that evening.
Megan was in her bedchamber packing.
Her trunks were open on the floor.
The room smelled of camphor and dust.
Megan was folding a heavy riding habit when the door burst open.
Greg stood on the threshold.
The cold of the house had seeped into his skin, making his sharp features look gaunt and sallow.
The manic energy he had possessed when Heather first arrived was entirely gone, replaced by a frantic hollow panic.
She is leaving, he said.
It wasn’t a question.
Tomorrow at 9:00.
Megan confirmed not looking up from the trunk.
Megan ran her hands over the rough wool, ensuring there were no creases.
Megan have arranged the carriage to take her to the station.
He stepped into the room.
His boots left wet, dirty tracks on the Persian rug.
You drove her out.
Megan stopped folding.
Megan slowly stood up, her spine cracking slightly in the freezing air.
Megan didn’t have to drive her out, Greg.
Megan simply stopped paying for the firewood.
The cold did the rest.
You are a monster.
He breathed, his voice trembling.
She is grieving.
She is weak.
She is pragmatic, Megan corrected him coldly.
She realized that a penniless duke in a freezing manor is not a romantic tragedy.
It is just a tragedy.
She is leaving because you cannot afford her.
He flinched as if Megan had struck him across the face with a riding crop.
She loves her.
She loved the fire in the drawing room.
She loved the roasted mutton.
She loved the idea of a soft place to land.
But you have no soft places left, Greg.
You only have her.
Megan pointed to the heavy ledgers stacked on her desk.
And Megan was done cushioning your reality.
He stared at the trunks on the floor.
His eyes darted from the packed clothes to the empty wardrobe, the realization finally breaking through the fog of his delusion.
You’re packing, he said.
His voice dropped an octave scraping against his throat.
Megan was going back to Yorkshire, to her father’s house.
Panic pure and unadulterated finally fractured his face.
He crossed the room in two strides grabbing her arm.
His fingers were freezing digging into the thick wool of her sleeve.
Megan looked down at his hand until he slowly hesitantly let her go.
Megan, you cannot leave.
He stammered.
You are her wife.
Megan was your banker.
Megan said.
And your housekeeper, and your audience.
But Megan was never your wife.
That isn’t true.
He ran both hands through his hair pacing in front of the fireless hearth.
Megan care for you.
Megan do.
This past week it has been madness.
Seeing her again it confused her.
It brought back the past.
But the past is gone.
You are here.
They built a life here.
You fixed this house.
Megan fixed the roof.
Megan said quietly.
Megan didn’t fix you.
Megan will send her away.
He pleaded.
He stopped pacing and turned to her.
His eyes were wide begging.
Not for her love.
Megan saw that clearly now.
He was begging for the warmth to return to the radiators.
He was begging for the butcher to send the prime cuts again.
He was begging for the quiet organized silence of his life to resume.
He was looking at her the way a man looks at a load-bearing wall when he hears the ceiling start to crack.
You don’t have to send her away Greg.
Megan already bought her ticket.
Then stay.
He took a step closer.
He tried to soften his voice trying to find the gentle melancholy cadence that used to make her heart ache with the need to protect him.
Please be.
Megan Megan have been a fool.
But they can go back to how it was.
They can plant the roses again.
Megan will learn to drink her tea the way you like it.
Megan swear it.
The offer was so pathetic, so tragically empty that it actually made her chest physically ache.
He was offering to play the same twisted game.
Only this time he would be the one contorting himself to fit her shape.
Megan don’t want you to drink her tea.
Megan whispered, the exhaustion settling deep into her marrow.
Megan don’t want your apologies.
Megan don’t want you to pretend to love her because you are terrified of the dark.
Megan walked over to her washstand.
Sitting next to the harsh lye soap was a small glass vial.
Megan had purchased it from the apothecary in the village that morning.
Megan uncorked it.
The heavy, intoxicating, unapologetically sweet scent of pure jasmine bloomed in the freezing air, obliterating the faint smell of camphor and wood smoke.
Megan dabbed it on her wrists.
Megan touched it to the hollow of her throat.
Greg watched her, his nose wrinkling slightly at the pungent floral scent.
It was a smell that commanded attention.
It was a smell that refused to be ignored.
What is that?
He asked softly.
It is jasmine.
Megan said, putting the cork back in the vial.
It is loud.
It is overwhelming.
And it is her favorite scent in the world.
Megan picked up the heavy brass key to her bedroom door and tossed it onto the empty mattress.
It landed with a dull final thud.
Megan will have the solicitor draw up the separation papers.
Megan said, not looking at him anymore.
You will retain the house.
Megan will provide a small monthly stipend to keep the estate from falling to the bank on the condition that you never contact her again.
But the luxury is over, Greg.
You are going to have to learn to live in the cold.”
Megan didn’t wait for his response.
Megan walked out of the room leaving him standing alone in the freezing dark.
The morning Megan left the manor, the sky was a brutal blinding cloudless blue.
The storm had finally broken, leaving behind a hard frost that coated the world in a shell of glittering ice.
The gravel crunched loudly beneath the wheels of the carriage waiting at the front steps.
Megan stood in the foyer wearing a heavy dark green traveling coat.
Her trunks had already been strapped to the back.
The house was dead quiet.
Most of the servants had been let go the day before with a month’s severance paid from her private account.
Only the butler and the head maid remained to manage the skeleton of the estate.
Heather had left an hour earlier in a separate hired carriage.
Megan had not gone down to see her off.
A servant mentioned she wept as she climbed inside shivering violently under a thin wool blanket.
Greg had stood on the steps and watched her go, but he had not tried to stop her.
Now it was her turn.
Megan pulled her leather gloves on smoothing the fabric over her knuckles.
Megan could smell the sharp tang of the frost mixing with the heavy jasmine oil on her skin.
A shadow moved at the top of the grand staircase.
Greg stood there.
He was wearing the same unbuttoned white shirt from the night before his face shadowed with a dark stubble.
The winter light streaming through the high windows caught the gray in his hair illuminating the deep lines of exhaustion carved around his mouth.
He looked like a ghost haunting his own life.
He did not walk down the stairs.
He stood near the top landing, his hand gripping the polished oak banister.
They looked at each other across the vast empty space of the foyer.
The silence between them wasn’t comfortable anymore.
It wasn’t the silence of understanding or shared routine.
It was the silence of a battlefield after the artillery has stopped firing a heavy ringing emptiness full of wreckage.
Megan, he called out.
His voice echoed off the marble floor sounding thin and reedy.
Megan stopped at the front doors.
Megan didn’t turn fully around.
Megan simply looked back over her shoulder.
If you walk out that door, he said his knuckles turning white on the banister, the scandal will ruin you in London.
A woman leaving her husband, society will not forgive it.
Megan felt a small genuine smile touch the corners of her mouth.
It was the first time Megan had smiled in a week.
He still didn’t understand.
He still thought Megan was playing by his rules.
He still thought Megan cared about the opinions of the people who sat in warm parlors drinking tea out of delicate cups.
Megan was the daughter of a coal miner, Greg.
Megan said her voice carrying easily across the cold distance.
Megan was ruined the day Megan was born with soot on her hands.
Your society only tolerated her because her father bought her way in.
Megan no longer require their tolerance.
Megan prefer the dirt.
Megan turned back to the doors.
The butler stood there holding one heavy oak panel open.
He looked old, his face lined with quiet sorrow.
Safe travels, your grace.
He murmured bowing his head.
Take care of yourself.
Megan said stepping past him.
And tell the new boy not to overstate the kitchen fires.
The flues are old.
Yes ma’am.
Megan walked out into the biting winter air.
The cold hit her face like a slap waking her up entirely.
Megan climbed into the carriage the leather seats stiff and freezing against her back.
Megan did not look up at the windows of the manor.
Megan didn’t need to see him standing there watching his bank account and his warmth roll down the driveway.
Yorkshire, ma’am?
The driver asked from his perch, his breath pluming in the air.
Yorkshire.
Megan confirmed.
The driver cracked the whip.
The horses lunged forward.
The carriage wheels ground against the frozen gravel, a harsh, rhythmic crunch that sounded like bones breaking.
But to her ears, it was a hymn.
Megan leaned back against the leather.
The carriage swayed as it hit the main road, leaving the high iron gates of the manor behind.
Megan took a deep breath.
The air inside the carriage smelled of old leather, freezing wind, and the loud, overwhelming, beautiful scent of jasmine.
Megan was 25 years old.
Her heart was fractured, her pride was bruised, and her hands still bore the tiny white scars from pruning a dead woman’s roses.
Megan was not a heroine in a romance novel.
Megan had not found true love, and Megan had not been miraculously saved.
But as the carriage picked up speed, rattling toward the north, Megan looked down at her hands resting solidly in her own lap.
Megan had saved myself.
And for the first time in 3 years, the space beside her was entirely, perfectly empty.
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].
