My Husband Locked Himself In A Tomb For Seven Years — Until I Broke His Priceless Urn

Part 1

The rain in London did not fall.

It hung in the air like a filthy, wet sheet.

My Tuesday morning was the color of bruised iron.

I stood in the vestibule of St. Jude’s, staring blankly at the peeling plaster above the heavy oak doors.

My father, a man sweating so profusely he smelled strongly of sour wine and desperation, gripped my arm tight enough to bruise.

Lord Thompson had sold his twenty-six-year-old spinster daughter to clear a mountain of gambling debts.

My purchaser was Dan, the Duke of Rothbury.

He was thirty-four years old, but his bones looked like they belonged to a man of eighty.

For seven years, ever since a fever took his first wife, he had moved through life with the rigid, deliberate pacing of a pallbearer.

Society whispered he was a broken, tragic romantic.

The truth was he needed an heir, and we were the cheapest, most desperate option on the market.

The heavy doors groaned on their iron hinges.

The damp air rushed in, carrying the scent of wet cobblestones.

I walked down the aisle, my shoulders hunched forward as I braced for impact.

My dress was an abomination of heavy, rustling taffeta the color of old parchment.

The sleeves were so tight I kept flexing my fingers to force the blood back into them.

Halfway down the aisle, the hem of the stiff taffeta caught on an exposed iron nail protruding from a pew.

A sharp, loud rip echoed through the empty church.

My father hissed something vicious under his breath.

I stumbled, my heavy leather boots scraping loudly against the stone floor.

I let out a heavy, exhausted exhalation that rustled my cheap veil.

I reached down, yanked the fabric free, and kept walking.

When I finally stood beside Dan at the altar, I smelled of mothballs and the sharp tang of nervous sweat.

The church was freezing.

I shivered, a full-body shudder that rattled the dry taffeta.

I bit the inside of my cheek, clenching my jaw muscle to stop the shaking.

Dan slid the heavy gold band onto my freezing finger.

It was too loose.

It immediately slid sideways, knocking against my knuckle.

There was no kiss.

The registry was signed in scratching, halting ink that smelled faintly of vinegar.

As we turned to walk back down the aisle, I looped my rigid arm through his.

My fingers dug into the heavy black wool of his sleeve like talons.

I stared firmly at the floor.

My left boot heel was loose, and losing it in the church would likely give my father an aneurysm.

Dan slowed his pace by a fraction, the muscles in his neck coiled like wire.

The carriage ride to the estate was an exercise in mutual, suffocating endurance.

Every second was counted by the rhythmic, teeth-rattling jolts of the iron-rimmed wheels hitting the rutted country roads.

Dan stared out the window at the blurred, skeletal branches of the winter trees.

I sat entirely rigid opposite him.

The stiff taffeta of my dress expanded like an aggressive, rustling fungus.

The cold seeped through the carriage floorboards, biting at my ankles.

My father had not allowed me to bring a heavy cloak, claiming the Duke would provide one.

The Duke had not provided one, presumably because he had not thought about another human being’s comfort in nearly a decade.

I kept my eyes fixed on the brass lamp mounted to the wall.

The silence between us was heavy, layered with the ghosts of his past and the miserable reality of my present.

Ten minutes into the ride, my stomach grumbled with a deep, liquid resonance.

A slow, dull flush crept up my starched collar.

Dan unlatched a mahogany compartment and held out a tin of dry, dense oat biscuits.

I grabbed a biscuit and bit into it.

Crumbs immediately showered down the front of my dark bodice.

I chewed the dusty biscuit slowly, letting the dry oats soak up the sour taste of anxiety in my mouth.

I knew the rumors about Heather, his late wife.

She had been delicate, beautiful, and universally beloved by the household.

I was none of those things.

I was a transaction entered into a ledger, a necessary inconvenience to secure a bloodline.

I swallowed the last of the biscuit and brushed a crumb from my lap, only to smear it deeper into the fabric.

We did not speak again until the carriage wheels hit the crushed gravel of the estate.

The imposing silhouette of the manor loomed into view.

It was a massive structure of blackened limestone flanked by ancient oaks that looked like gnarled hands.

It looked less like a home and more like a mausoleum waiting for its next occupant.

The carriage lurched to a halt.

Dan stepped out first into the frigid air.

He turned, holding out a gloved hand to me.

I moved to the door.

The loose bodice of my gown caught on the brass handle of the door frame.

A quiet sound of pure frustration escaped my lips.

With a harsh jerk, I freed the fabric, the sound of tearing threads distinct in the quiet evening.

I stepped out.

My foot hit the top iron step.

The loose heel finally gave way, twisting violently inward.

I pitched forward.

I threw my hands out in a desperate bid to find purchase.

My right hand completely missed Dan’s outstretched glove.

My shoulder slammed heavily into his chest, knocking the wind out of him in a sharp huff.

My momentum carried us both toward the grand stone threshold of the double doors.

My heavy ruined boot caught the edge of the thick woven rug.

I went down hard.

My left arm flailed out to brace against the wall.

Instead of the wall, my palm collided squarely with the smooth, cold surface of a massive marble pedestal.

Atop the pedestal sat a towering, hideous porcelain urn.

It was a grotesque, clawed thing painted in garish greens and reds.

My palm struck the marble.

The base tilted.

The massive urn wobbled, teetered for one agonizing second of suspended gravity, and then pitched off the edge.

It hit the black and white checkered marble floor of the foyer with a concussive, explosive crash.

Sharp, jagged echoes bounced off the vaulted stone ceilings.

Shards of violently green porcelain exploded outward like shrapnel.

A fine cloud of decades-old gray dust puffed up into the damp air.

Silence descended upon the hall.

Every servant in the room froze, holding their breath.

The morning Duke’s sacred shrine had been defiled within ten seconds of my arrival.

The butler looked as though he might actually vomit.

Mrs. Miller, the housekeeper, a woman made entirely of sharp angles and black dresses, took a tentative, horrified half-step forward.

Her eyes darted frantically between Dan and the shattered ruin of his late wife’s urn.

Dan stood frozen, his coat knocked slightly askew by my shoulder.

He stared at the empty pedestal.

He looked down at me.

I was on my hands and knees amidst a sea of taffeta and jagged porcelain.

My head was bowed.

I could feel the jagged edges of porcelain biting through the thin fabric of my skirt.

I slowly sat back on my heels.

I raised my left hand.

A long, sharp shard of porcelain had grazed the fleshy part of my palm.

The cut on my palm burned with a sharp, hot intensity.

Thick, dark drops of blood were welling up, slipping down my wrist.

The blood dripped with a quiet, sickening rhythm against the pristine white marble.

Pat, pat, pat.

I did not cry.

Crying required energy I simply did not possess.

I stared at the blood.

I let out a long, ragged breath, blowing a strand of dull brown hair out of my eyes.

I informed him that his floor was incredibly expensive.

My voice was entirely flat and devoid of panic.

Dan stared at me, kneeling in the wreckage, bleeding on his floor.

I braced myself for the furious shouting I was so accustomed to at home.

Instead, he stepped over a jagged chunk of green porcelain.

He stopped in front of me and crouched down.

He pulled me to my feet, his grip like iron, and dragged me down the dark hallway without saying a single word.